Ask Howly Turns Your HubSpot Workflow Audit Into a Cleanup Plan
Howly has always told you what is wrong in a portal. Now it tells you what to do about it.
You run the audit and download the report. The portal scores 64 on Health Checker and has 23 flagged workflows. The client is happy to see it.
Then the real work starts. You still have to decide which issues matter, what order to fix them in, which workflows depend on each other, and what to tell the client on Thursday. The report gave you findings. Ask Howly gives you the plan.
Ask Howly is a read-only chat assistant inside Howly that turns everything Howly knows about your connected HubSpot portal into next steps. Type "Give me a cleanup plan," and Howly comes back with what to fix, in what order, and why. Ask what to tackle next, or what happens if you turn a workflow off, and you get an answer you can act on.
Every audit tool stops at the finding
Howly has always been good at showing you what is in a portal. The canvas maps every workflow and its connections, and the Health Checker scores the portal from 0 to 100. Property Impact shows every workflow that depends on a property, while the Audit Report packages the findings.
But all of that is observation. Each one of those features ends at the same moment: you are looking at accurate information about the portal, but you still have to work out what it means.
That last step has always been yours. A Solutions Partner reads the report, cross-checks the dependency map, weighs which orphaned workflow is safe to remove, and turns it all into a sequence the client can approve. That is hours of senior judgment on every engagement, and no audit tool, Howly included, did it for you.
Until today.
What you can ask Howly to do
Ask Howly works across every Howly feature at once: the dependency map, health issues, property usage, recent changes, and enrollment activity from the last 30 days. That is what lets it move past observation and tell you what to do.
"Give me a cleanup plan."
This is the question to start with. Howly reviews the portal's detected issues and dependencies and lays out a cleanup sequence: which workflows to address first, what to check before you touch each one, and which changes depend on others. You get a plan you can work through or put in front of a client, not a list of problems to sort yourself.
"What should I tackle next?"
Halfway through a cleanup, priorities shift. Howly tells you what deserves attention now based on what is still flagged and what is connected to it.
"What happens if I turn this off?"
Before you change anything, ask what depends on it. Howly names every upstream and downstream workflow, tells you whether each connection runs through direct enrollment, a shared list, or a shared property, and explains what that means for the change you are about to make.
"Why is this workflow a problem?"
Howly explains the reasoning behind a flag in plain terms. Howly flags stale workflows (active and not modified in 6+ months), orphaned workflows (active with no upstream or downstream connections), and empty workflows (no actions configured). Howly will also tell you you why a specific one matters and what to do about it.
And so much more
Use Howly to review current setups, look at audits, and so much more. Every paying user will have full access to Ask Howly from day 1.
From findings to next steps
The difference shows up in every part of the product:
| Feature | Before Ask Howly | With Ask Howly |
|---|---|---|
| Audit Report | A list of findings | The plan that resolves them |
| Health Checker | A score | What raises it fastest |
| Property Impact | A list of affected workflows | What happens to each one if you change the property |
| Workflow canvas | The connections | Which connections are safe to cut |
| Enrollment activity | Which workflows ran in the last 30 days | Which idle workflows to retire first |
Property Impact and Health Checker still sit next to the chat as quick actions for when you want the raw view.
What this means for Solutions Partners
For agencies, the gap between an audit and a paid cleanup engagement has always been the plan. The audit proves there is a problem. The plan is what the client buys.
Before Ask Howly, writing that plan meant a senior consultant spending hours turning findings into a scoped sequence of work. Now you run the audit, ask for a cleanup plan, review it with your own judgment, and walk into the client call with next steps already laid out.
It also changes the call itself. When the client asks "What happens if we turn that off?", you can answer it on the spot. Our blog post So You Inherited a Messy HubSpot Portal covers how the audit fits into the wider engagement.
Five questions to ask in your first ten minutes
"Give me a cleanup plan for this portal." Start here.
"What should I tackle first, and why?" Use this when you want the single highest-priority item.
"What happens if I turn off [workflow name]?" Ask before any change.
"Which active workflows had no enrollment events in the last 30 days, and should any of them be retired?"
"Summarize this portal's biggest risks for a client meeting." Use this to prep for the conversation.
Prefer Claude? The Howly MCP server is still available
Ask Howly does not replace the Howly MCP server. If your team already works inside Claude, you can keep connecting Claude to Howly through the MCP server and run the same kind of investigation there, using your own prompts. The MCP server is read-only too.
The two fit different habits. Ask Howly lives inside Howly, next to the canvas, Health Checker, and Property Impact, so the answer and the evidence sit on the same screen. The MCP server brings Howly's workflow data into Claude, where you can combine it with the rest of your work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Ask Howly?
Ask Howly is a chat assistant inside Howly, the read-only HubSpot workflow mapping and audit tool. It turns Howly's findings about your connected HubSpot portal into next steps. You can ask it for a cleanup plan, ask what to tackle next, ask what happens if you turn off or change a workflow, or ask why a specific workflow is flagged.
How do I create a cleanup plan for HubSpot workflows?
A HubSpot workflow cleanup plan needs three inputs: the workflows with structural issues, the dependencies between them, and which workflows are still in use. Doing this by hand means auditing every workflow and tracing every connection. In Howly, you can ask Ask Howly to "give me a cleanup plan," and it lays out which workflows to address first, what to check before changing each one, and which changes depend on others. Our HubSpot workflow audit guide covers the manual process in detail.
Can Ask Howly make changes to my HubSpot workflows?
No. Ask Howly is read-only, like every part of Howly. Howly connects to HubSpot via OAuth 2.0 and cannot write, edit, or change anything in a portal. Ask Howly tells you what to change and in what order, and you make each change yourself inside HubSpot.
Is the Howly MCP server still available?
Yes. Ask Howly is a chat assistant inside Howly, and the Howly MCP server remains available for teams that prefer to work in Claude. Both are read-only and work from the same workflow data in your connected HubSpot portal. Use Ask Howly when you want answers next to Howly's canvas, Health Checker, and Property Impact, and use the MCP server when you want Howly's workflow data inside Claude.
Summary
An audit tells you what is wrong. Ask Howly tells you what to do about it. Ask for a cleanup plan, ask what to tackle next, or ask what happens before you make a change, and Howly turns its findings into steps you can act on. It is read-only, so it plans and you act.
Connect your portal to Howly, run your audit, and ask for a cleanup plan before your next client call. The 7-day free trial requires no credit card.
Howly is the #1 workflow audit tool for HubSpot Solutions Partners. It maps every workflow connection and dependency, shows the blast radius of a property change before you make it, and exports white-labeled audit reports. Trusted by 250+ solutions partners worldwide.
