HubSpot's New Task Sorting: Why Your Urgent To-Dos Are Hiding (and What to Do About It)

Hey ESHOPMAN community! You know how HubSpot keeps evolving, bringing us new features and updates that often make our lives easier? We're always excited to see enhancements that streamline sales, marketing, and service, especially for those of you leveraging HubSpot for your online stores and comprehensive RevOps strategies. However, sometimes, an update can feel like it throws a wrench into a perfectly oiled machine.

Recently, a discussion in the HubSpot Community caught our eye, and it’s hitting a nerve for many of you who rely on HubSpot for your daily operations, particularly those managing an online sales website or robust RevOps. The topic? A significant change to how tasks are sorted in the HubSpot Tasks tab following the new universal timeline update. And let me tell you, the community sentiment is pretty unified: it’s causing some serious headaches.

The New Task Sorting: What Changed and Why It's a Problem for E-commerce & RevOps

The original poster in the community discussion highlighted a change that HubSpot Support confirmed as “working as designed.” Previously, your Tasks tab would show you what you needed to act on first – overdue items, then tasks with the nearest due dates. It was intuitive, efficient, and helped you stay on top of your priorities, whether that was following up on a new lead, addressing a customer service ticket, or processing an e-commerce order.

Now, with the universal timeline update, the sorting has flipped:

• Tasks are grouped by month (e.g., April 2026, May 2026).
• Within each month, tasks are ordered furthest-out first.

Think about that for a second. If you have a task due tomorrow and another due in six months, the six-month task might appear first within its monthly group. This is a massive shift, and as the original poster pointed out, it makes task management significantly harder:

• Urgent tasks, like following up on a pending cart or a critical service issue, are no longer immediately visible.
• Users have to scroll and scan through long lists to find what truly needs their attention, wasting valuable time.
• The previous “Upcoming” view, which prioritized urgency, is gone, removing a key tool for proactive management.

For ESHOPMAN users, this isn't just an inconvenience; it can impact critical business functions. Imagine a sales rep needing to follow up on a high-value abandoned cart, or a service agent needing to respond to a customer inquiry about a recent purchase. If these urgent tasks are buried, it can lead to missed opportunities, delayed customer service, and ultimately, a negative impact on your bottom line. Just as e-commerce managers rely on clear shopify automated reports to track performance and identify urgent trends, sales and service teams need an equally clear and immediate view of their daily tasks.

Community Voices: A Unified Call for Change

The sentiment across the HubSpot Community thread is overwhelmingly clear: this change is disruptive. A community member perfectly summed it up, stating, “I totally agreed that this doesn't make any sense. Why have you changed something that was working fine, HubSpot? It's much more confusing for users to see their tasks out of due date order, things will get missed and that's a business and customer service risk.”

Other contributors echoed this sentiment, highlighting that the change "feels like a step back," "makes it harder to prioritise tasks at a glance," and is "very confusing now." The consensus is that users need to see the nearest due date at the top of their task list to maintain efficiency and prevent critical items from slipping through the cracks. For RevOps teams, where every touchpoint and task is part of a larger, interconnected process, this lack of immediate clarity can introduce significant friction.

Current Workaround (and Its Limitations)

HubSpot Support has advised a workaround: navigating to the Activities tab and then filtering by Tasks. This method does indeed show tasks in the expected order (overdue and nearest due date first). While functional, it's not a seamless solution for day-to-day use. As the original poster noted, it's "not as intuitive or efficient for day-to-day use compared to the Tasks tab." It adds extra clicks and a mental shift, which, over hundreds of tasks a week, can accumulate into significant lost productivity.

Navigating the Change: ESHOPMAN's Recommendations for HubSpot Users

While we hope HubSpot reconsiders this sorting logic, here's how ESHOPMAN recommends you adapt your workflows to maintain peak efficiency, especially for your e-commerce and RevOps teams:

1. Embrace Custom Views and Reports for Task Prioritization

Don't rely solely on the default Tasks tab. Leverage HubSpot's powerful custom report builder. Create a custom report for your tasks, filtering by due date (ascending) and grouping by owner or priority. Save this report to your dashboard for quick access. This can serve as your primary task management hub, giving you the immediate overview you need.

2. Integrate Task Management with Your ESHOPMAN Workflows

For ESHOPMAN users, ensure your task creation for sales follow-ups, customer service, or order fulfillment includes clear due dates and, ideally, priority levels. Use HubSpot workflows to automatically assign tasks with specific due dates for critical actions (e.g., follow-up on an abandoned cart within 24 hours). While the sorting might be off in the Tasks tab, consistent due dates are crucial for any workaround.

3. Utilize HubSpot's 'Today's Tasks' or 'Upcoming' Dashboard Widgets

If available and configured correctly, dashboard widgets can often provide a more immediate, sorted view of your most pressing tasks. Customize your main HubSpot dashboard to include these widgets, making them the first thing you see when you log in.

4. Consistent Team Training and Communication

Ensure your entire team is aware of this change and understands the recommended workaround. Regular training sessions can help reinforce new habits and prevent tasks from being missed. Emphasize the importance of checking the Activities tab or custom reports daily.

5. Advocate for Change in the HubSpot Ideas Forum

The most impactful way to see this change reversed is to make your voice heard. A Senior Community Moderator from HubSpot explicitly suggested posting this issue in the HubSpot Ideas Forum. This forum directly presents needs to the Product team. If this is affecting you, please take a moment to upvote the existing idea or create a new one, and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Visibility is key to getting this reconsidered.

Suggested Improvements from the Community

The community has already put forward excellent suggestions for HubSpot to consider:

• Reintroduce sorting by nearest due date within the Tasks tab as the default.
• Allow users to customize sort order (due date, priority, creation date, etc.) to suit individual or team preferences.
• Clarify or redefine what “closest to needing action” means if the current sorting logic is intended to reflect something other than immediate urgency.

At ESHOPMAN, we understand that efficient task management is the backbone of successful sales, service, and e-commerce operations. We're committed to helping you navigate HubSpot's evolving landscape and optimize your workflows. We'll continue to monitor this situation closely and provide updates as they become available. In the meantime, implement the strategies above to keep your urgent tasks front and center.