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HubSpot CRM · Foundations
Turn two raw exports into a CRM anybody can trust.
What you’ll end up with
One finished HubSpot account. A few hundred contacts linked to their firms, company names written one way, a property you defined and filled by import, the missing deals found in the error file and added by hand, every deal owned, and a shared view that answers a named question.
11
hours in all — about 8 guided, 3 on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in HubSpot CRM. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with HubSpot. There’s no payment and no card required.
From four raw files to a finished CRM
01105 min
Get in, and get the first records in
You have a free HubSpot account of your own with Harlow's people in it as records, and you can say how many the import made, how many it did not, and why neither figure is the number of rows in the file.
02120 min
The firms, and the records that point at each other
Harlow's customer firms are in the account as records of their own, every person is linked to the firm they work for, the ones nothing could link are explained rather than lost, and the firm names are written one way instead of four.
0395 min
A field you made, and why
You have defined three properties of your own inside an allowance you were told about first, and filled one of them for every Harlow firm with an import that updated rather than created.
04130 min
Deals that arrive, and deals that don't
Harlow's work in progress is in the pipeline HubSpot gave you, the rows that never arrived have been found in the import's own error file and put in by hand, and the board carries a count and a total you asked it for.
05115 min
Making the pipeline tell the truth
The deals whose recorded outcome contradicted the stage they sat at have been found with a filter and moved, every ownerless deal names somebody, and you watched the totals move by the amount you expected.
06105 min
Something a colleague can open
The best customers are a segment with a count of its own, the open work is a view anybody at the firm can open, and it shows the four things somebody reading it actually needs.
What you need before you start
A laptop or desktop
Sessions need a laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. HubSpot runs in the browser, on Windows or a Mac.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser too, in its own tab beside HubSpot.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
None. Everything this course uses is on HubSpot's free tier, which has no time limit and asks for no card. Three of its allowances shape the course and are stated before the learner meets them: ten custom properties for the whole account, one pipeline per kind of record, and no report builder.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course, and the files are deliberately messy, the way real business data is. Cleaning them is part of the work.
Before you start
The course covers HubSpot, in your browser.
- A computer with a current browser and an internet connection. Nothing is installed.
- An email address you can receive mail at, to make the free HubSpot account with. Session one's first step makes the account; you do not need one before you start.
- The course's data download, unzipped. The panel gives you the link when the session starts, and unzipping it leaves one folder per company: a Harlow folder holding contacts.csv, companies.csv, deals.csv and company-tiers.csv, and a Peregrine folder holding its own four files of the same names.
- Somewhere you can find that download again. Both folders are needed from session one onwards, and both companies' files are named identically, so keeping the two folders apart is the whole of how you tell them apart.
- One thing to know before session one rather than after it: both companies here are invented and so is every person, firm, fee and deal in them. This course never sends an email to anybody, and nothing you build in it should ever carry a real customer's details.
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
Start with two exported spreadsheets nobody can answer a question from, and finish with a working CRM: people, the firms they work for, the deals in progress, every record where it belongs, and every figure on the screen one you can defend — because you can say exactly which records it counted.
A free HubSpot account holding a few hundred contacts, several dozen customer companies and a hundred-odd deals sitting in the pipeline's own stages, with the people linked to their firms, the company names written one way instead of four, a property you defined yourself and filled by an import that updated rather than created, the deals that never arrived found in the import's error file and put in by hand, the stages corrected where the record said one thing and the outcome said another, every deal owned, a segment a colleague can be sent, and a shared view that answers a named question. Four hundred and seventy guided minutes on the first company, then two hundred independent minutes rebuilding it from a brief on the second — just over eleven hours.
How a session works
- Open HubSpot
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open HubSpot and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 11 hours in all·about 8 guided·about 3 on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- HubSpot CRM Foundations — turn two raw exports into a CRM anybody can trust
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The CRM you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Making a free CRM account and finding the three kinds of record it keeps · Importing a file into a CRM: choosing the object, mapping every column to a property deliberately, and naming the import so the records can be found again · Reading what an import actually did — what it created, what it updated, what it linked and what failed — from the import's own record rather than from memory · Knowing which field a CRM deduplicates each kind of record on, and why the records created can be fewer than the rows supplied · Linking people to the firms they work for, and explaining the ones nothing could link · Repairing values a CRM will not repair for you, by filtering and sorting to find them first · Defining a property for a reason, choosing its field type, and working inside a ceiling on how many you may have · Filling a property for every record by an import that updates rather than creates · Reading an import's error file, and putting the rows that never arrived in by hand · Working a pipeline: finding the records whose stage contradicts what is known about them, moving them, and reading what the totals do · Building saved views and a segment that each answer one named question, and handing one to somebody else · Saying, of any figure on a CRM screen, exactly which records it counted
What was built
A free HubSpot account holding a few hundred contacts, several dozen customer companies and a hundred-odd deals sitting in the pipeline's own stages, with the people linked to their firms, the company names written one way instead of four, a property you defined yourself and filled by an import that updated rather than created, the deals that never arrived found in the import's error file and put in by hand, the stages corrected where the record said one thing and the outcome said another, every deal owned, a segment a colleague can be sent, and a shared view that answers a named question. Four hundred and seventy guided minutes on the first company, then two hundred independent minutes rebuilding it from a brief on the second — just over eleven hours.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for HubSpot Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the CRM you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in HubSpot CRM when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s HubSpot?
HubSpot is the software this course is built in. It runs in your browser.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
Harlow Packaging supplies protective packaging — cases, crates, foam inserts and anti-static bags — to small manufacturers across the north of England and the Scottish central belt. Four people sell, one person invoices, and nobody has ever owned the customer list.
The list lives in three exported spreadsheets that came out of an order system the firm stopped paying for. One holds the people. One holds the firms. One holds the work in progress, which the sales team calls deals and the spreadsheet calls rows.
Nobody can answer the three questions the owner asks every Monday. Who is working on what. How much is actually in play as against how much somebody hoped for. And which customers have not been spoken to since the spring.
The reason nobody can answer them is not that the data is missing. It is that the same customer is in the file twice under two spellings, a third of the work in progress has nobody's name against it, and the stage column stopped being maintained the month the old system was switched off.
There is no budget. There is a free CRM, three exports, and a promise that if the Monday questions get answers, the spreadsheets get deleted.
Your job is to build the CRM that answers it.
Do I need to know HubSpot already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 11 hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 8 hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. HubSpot runs in the browser.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
HubSpot CRM Foundations is Foundations in HubSpot. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in HubSpot CRM. All the courses →