Nicole on HubSpot Development at Inbound Talks: Building Effective Solutions

Welcome back to another episode of Sidekick Strategies Expert Interviews, Inbound Talks edition. Of course. I'm your boy, George B. Thomas. And today we're thrilled to be joined with Nicole Cesarez, an inbound professor at HubSpot Academy based in Long Beach, California. I bet the weather is better there than it is here. Nicole is passionate about empowering developers and technologists to create better solutions through web development and HubSpot integrations. In her session, A Developer's Guide getting started with HubSpot development, she walked through essential insights and best practices for developers looking to accelerate their integration projects within the HubSpot ecosystem. Nicole, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks for. Thanks for having me.

You bet. It would be boring if it was just me, and so thank God it is not. By the way, I like to start with this question. How the heck are you doing post inbound?

I got sick immediately after, but I was riding that extra virgin high for several weeks. It was so amazing meeting so many people, but especially the developers. A lot of you are on the east coast, I'm on the west coast. And it was great to just connect face to face.

Yeah, I love that about inbound. Connecting with the other humans who might potentially be using HubSpot, or at least into something that we're into in this case today's topic, development and HubSpot, the best of both worlds. So, Nicole, let's go ahead and dive into the good stuff and we'll start with this question. And all of these questions, by the way, are kind of pulled from your inbound talk and the conversation that happened there. But what makes HubSpot an ideal platform for developers to work with?

One thing I know about many developers is they got into development because they love solving problems. And with working on the HubSpot platform, it allows you to make a huge impact at companies, something that is tangible. Also, there's transferable skills. So on the HubSpot platform, you get to use the skills that you probably already love to use on HubSpot. So you have React, JavaScript, CLIS, and you get to use all those tools to better understand different parts of the business. But more than all of that, it's the developer community. I noticed developers who develop on HubSpot call are incredibly passionate. So being a part of a community who just really geek out about HubSpot is contagious.

Yeah, without a doubt that developer Slack community and in the community itself of developers, is off the chain and on fire. I love too that you referenced this idea of like, even though it might be a new platform, HubSpot. It's the same tools, the same skill sets that you may have been using elsewhere. And so it's easy to adopt and move forward. So that's, that's amazing. So the next question I want to kind of dive into to help people who might not be or are just getting started in the community around this topic is what are the essential components developers need to set up to have like a streamlined HubSpot development environment as they get started?

Well, one, having the HubSpot CLI so you can develop it locally, but also having a HubSpot developer account and sandbox environment. So this will allow you to really play around with HubSpot without interrupting any business you may be working with. But also it allows you to work with some of the features that are only available in enterprise that you might not have access to yet or may not want to currently pay for until you know, you develop in your career or you find a business who you can work on their platform. Also setting up your local code editor to work better with HubSpot, we have a HubSpot VS code plugin that's really great that allows you to just have a lot of autocomplete and really pretty syntax.

I love pretty syntax and that's about the most nerdy thing I'll probably say on this episode, to be honest with you. So they kind of know there's this roadmap to getting set up, to being streamlined with HubSpot. I'm super curious and again, kind of staying with the theme of people might just be getting started with developing on the HubSpot platform. Nicole, what are some of the most common challenges that you've seen developers face when setting up their environments and maybe how can they overcome those?

I think some of the most common hurdles is not taking enough time to understand HubSpot as a platform. So if you are a developer who's never worked with a CRM or specifically HubSpot's CRM, taking the time to understand the standard objects, how marketers and salespeople are actually using this tool, that can be a hurdle because you might not be using the objects the way you intuitively think about them. And also especially like if you come from a different CRM, those names do not always transfer. They can mean completely different things. If you don't go into that in terms of setting up the environment, really diving into those API documentations and specifically understanding the limitations, like maybe taking time to understand how much information you can pull in and thinking about pagination.

So you kind of referenced A couple tools along the way, but I want to dig a little bit deeper. Like are there a list of specific tools or software that you would recommend or that are recommended for developers to use to kind of again optimize their HubSpot development process?

We have the CLI. A lot of what you can do you can just use in your developer Sandbox account. Other than that it really depends on if you're trying to build an integration. So say you're trying to integrate with Gmail or other tools, taking the time to understand how to pull that information across. But besides that, you can do a lot just in the Sandbox account and the cli.

So it sounds like it's pretty simple and you don't need a ton at least to get started. And then maybe you could add things as you kind of advance or go a little bit deeper. So let's dive into. You mentioned API keys and APIs and documentation. So what, what are some best practices you would recommend when managing like API keys, oauth tokens and other like sensitive information during the development process?

Understanding that the limits of the API key permissions so use the principle of least privilege by limiting API key permissions to only what is necessary for your application. Sometimes I notice when people are setting up those permissions they might select everything because they don't know what they need. Or maybe they're like well just take everything. Also rotate keys and tokens regularly. So implement a schedule to rotate those keys and tokens periodically to reduce the risk of long term exposure. Implement secure token storage on the client side. Monitoring and log access. A lot of the fundamentals so so if you're new to development, really taking that time to understand like some of the fundamentals. But if you ever decide to get a integration certified on the App marketplace, that optimizing team will also help you out with that. So there is a review process and they'll kind of walk you through all the steps and see where you can improve.

So moving forward onto our next question and you kind of talked about integration projects. What are some maybe mistakes developers should avoid to keep their integration projects efficient and also scalable?

Well, I know I keep on mentioning this API rate limit, but it is just so fundamental. Not accounting for the HubSpot API rate limit can really lead to frequent throttling and slow down the application and impact your user experience. And I think we can all agree that user experience is crucial. We know that if people do not get that information within two seconds, frustration also neglecting error handling and logging, so failing to Implement a really robust error handling leads to difficulties in debugging and troubleshooting, particularly in production. And then thinking about scale. So some things we notice is that developers or people are building integrations, will test for maybe 10 users using their product at once. But if you build an amazing integration, you're going to have hundreds of users hitting those API keys. So really thinking at the beginning at scale, not towards that limit.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, you definitely don't want to get caught by that one. That's definitely for sure. So we talked at the beginning about how it's kind of easy to transition from what you might have been doing to actually using HubSpot. But I do want to maybe hit this idea of like the differences for them to be aware of. So for. So for those developers that are transitioning from another platform to HubSpot, like what key differences should they be aware of when integrating with HubSpot moving forward?

I don't want to name names. So specifically the standard objects for HubSpot are contacts, companies, deals and tickets. And many platforms especially like with contacts and companies that can be blurry. So contacts, you can think of contacts as just people, people that you are connecting with. Companies have to be attached to at least one contact, but a contact does not necessarily need to have it the other way around. Also deals and tickets. So tickets are just like support and deals are kind of what your salespeople use to see where your leads are going. And that's not always the same use case for other CRMs. Also with one thing I want to mention too is custom properties is that HubSpot allow for custom properties on objects. Developers transitioning from platforms that have a rigid data structure should leverage HubSpot's flexibility, but also be cautious because you don't want to make a change just because you can always think about your why your why is the people who are actually using your tool.

So let's dive a little bit into like CMS Hub and What role does HubSpot CMS Hub or the Content Hub as they now call it, play in web development projects? And how can developers take advantage of it for building better customer solutions?

That's a great question. So I started HubSpot on the CMS, so I am particularly excited about it. One thing that I really like about HubSpot's CMS is that all your data is in there already. So this allows you to really create effective workflow automations. So developers can leverage HubSpot's workflow automation to streamline processes such as lead nurturing customer onboarding and content delivery. This automation helps deliver timely, relevant experiences to users, but also in terms of integrating with the CRM, it allows developers to create personalized experiences based on that customer data. So where are they from? Have they filled out any forms that really drives engagement and conversation? Another tool that I really like are the webhooks. So developers can set up webhooks to receive real time notifications about events like form submissions, user interactions that can trigger actions in external systems. So all the data is in one place, the CMS is right in there and you can plug into that data. That's really meaningful.

Awesome. Let's get a little nerdy for a second and can you maybe wax poetic or explain the importance of testing and debugging when working with HubSpot integrations? Are there again specific tools recommendations for this kind of section of what they.

Might be working on, testing and debugging? So important, so crucial. Some reasons you definitely want to do it is ensure functionality, so validate features error handling so effective testing helps identify how the integration handles errors, including the API response errors, invalid data or timeouts. We can also think about user experience. That's another reason we want to do testing. I think the best tool is actually the sandbox account, because if you're new to HubSpot, you can create an account and test on that. But if you're already using a account with actual clean good data, you can create a sandbox account and start debugging in there without potentially harming any other things that are working. And then of course we have GitHub. GitHub is so crucial.

Speaking of that, let's go a layer deeper. How can developers effectively manage version control when working on HubSpot integration projects, and especially in those like collaborative environments they might find themselves in?

It's always amazing when you can work with other developers. So some things you can really do to be successful when working with version control and working with a team is establishing a branching strategy. So a branching strategy allows you to create branches for each feature, bug fixes or improvements, and this keeps the main branch stable while allowing multiple developers to work simultaneously. Another thing you can implement is a code review process. So you can have pull requests AKA prs to facilitate code reviews before merging changes to the main branch. You can have team members review the code for quality functionality and best practices. And you can also have comments and feedback. So this encourages constructive feedback. And I know personally not that I work in the code every day anymore, but when I work with other developers I grow so much faster, especially with that feedback, especially on GitHub.

Nice. Speaking of growing faster and being better at what you do, what tips would you give for developers who are interested in building like custom APIs or extending HubSpot's functionality beyond what's available out of the box?

I would definitely define clear use cases so understanding business requirements so start clearly defining business problems that you are noticing or that customers are are wishing. Like a wish list. Start having those conversations with businesses. Especially HubSpot's community is just so collaborative and focusing on those use cases. Also from there Familiarize yourself with HubSpot's API. So before creating a custom integration, thoroughly understand HubSpot's API and then review the documentation to review endpoints, data structures and limitations. Once you have those two like the use case and the API knowledge, you can create some really powerful integrations. But it's always focusing on solving for your customer and that's going to help you build really powerful integrations that your customers are going to want to use.

And Nicole, what steps should developers take to ensure their integrations remain secure and compliant with industry standards alone? The way as well 1.

Authentication. So always use OAuth2 for authenticating instead of API keys to provide more secure authorization process implement strong password policies. You can also incorporate data encryption so encrypt all sensitive data. HubSpot is becoming really good at this because HubSpot has a built in encryption capability for data protection. We also have access control so implement role based access so you can create multiple different types of users in HubSpot. Not everyone needs to be an admin really taking the time to be like what information does this person need and what information does this person not need to know for security reasons like less is more. Also auditing and monitoring. You can utilize HubSpot's audit logs to track all data access and modifications and monitor the API usage regularly. And it's so user friendly too. I really love HubSpot's UI for looking at these things.

Yeah HubSpot has come a long way since 2012 as far as its UI without a doubt. So Nicole, for developers who are just getting started with HubSpot, what lacks their progress?

I'm definitely unbiased with HubSpot. Also if you really like video, I would also recommend the YouTube channel HubSpot Developers that has Dennis in it. Dennis is hilarious. He creates amazing shorts. They have amazing use cases. Also get into the HubSpot Developer Platforms community. There's a Slack channel and there's even developer hugs. I love Attending developer hugs. So immerse yourself in the community, read the documentation and you're going to have a fun time.

Love it. Well, as we land the plane today, first of all, thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Second, I'll ask you the last question and that's what's one piece of advice you would give to developers looking to kickstart their journey in HubSpot development to make an impact on their projects?

I would leverage HubSpot resources. So take advantage of HubSpot's extensive resources, including developer documentation, community forms, tutorials, staying engaged with the community. Like honestly, even create your own D hug. I know when I started tech, I founded Long Beach Women in Tech, just so that I could have a community. If you can. If you're struggling to find a community near you, create, Create one. You know, especially if you are far away from Boston, from far away from the east coast, create your community. There are people out there who are looking for that type of thing. You're not the only one. And also impact through understanding. So focus on the needs of the users always. That will always be your North Star. And integrate their feedback into your development process. So that's how you're going to create amazing solutions that they're going to want to buy and they're going to want to work with you.

Yeah, I love that. You're not the only one. That's a nice little micro tip there. So, Nicole, thank you so much for sharing your expertise today. It's clear that HubSpot offers incredible opportunities for developers to create impactful solutions. And your session provided some steps for them to get started for the viewers and listeners. If you're looking to dive deeper into HubSpot development, Nicole's insights are perfect starting point. And Nicole, if people want to connect online, where do you want to send them?

Go to my LinkedIn. I swear I check it now. So before HubSpot, I never opened up LinkedIn. Now that's. That's where I live. That's where I post information, that's where I post resources. And it's where I love hearing from you.

Love it. And that's it for today, ladies and gentlemen. Remember, you can connect with Nicole on LinkedIn. You can explore the HubSpot Academy for more resources and sharpen your development skills. And as always, don't forget to be a happy, helpful, humble human and do some happy hubspotting along the way.