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IntegrationsAPNOverview

APN Sync — Overview

APN sync keeps your HubSpot deals and AWS Partner Central co-sell opportunities in sync automatically — no manual data entry, no copy-paste between systems.

When you update a deal in HubSpot, the change appears in Partner Central within seconds. When AWS advances a review status or flags an opportunity for action, that update appears on the HubSpot deal so your team sees it in the tool they already use.

Who should enable APN sync

APN sync is for AWS Partners — companies registered in the AWS Partner Network that actively co-sell with AWS through Partner Central. If your team uses Partner Central to manage co-sell opportunities, APN sync eliminates the double-entry that slows down your pipeline and causes drift between the two systems.

If you are not an AWS Partner or do not use Partner Central, you do not need to enable APN sync.

What APN sync does

Outbound (HubSpot → APN)

When a deal in HubSpot has apn_sync_with_aws_enabled = true, FlowState:

  1. Creates a new opportunity in Partner Central via the CreateOpportunity API call.
  2. Associates the opportunity with your partner account via AssociateOpportunity.
  3. Starts the engagement via StartEngagementFromOpportunityTask.
  4. Keeps the opportunity updated as deal properties change in HubSpot.

If a step fails, FlowState retries from the last successful step on the next attempt — no work is duplicated.

Inbound (APN → HubSpot)

When AWS updates an opportunity in Partner Central (for example, advancing the review status or requesting additional information), an EventBridge event triggers FlowState’s inbound handler. FlowState:

  1. Fetches the latest opportunity data from Partner Central.
  2. Reconciles it against the last synced state.
  3. Detects conflicts if both sides have been updated.
  4. Writes the AWS-owned fields back to the HubSpot deal.

What gets synced

See Field mapping for the complete field mapping table and ownership split.

Notes on the deal timeline

Every APN outcome is written as a note on the deal, so the timeline alone tells you whether a change reached AWS:

  • Changes synced to AWS — after FlowState writes your edit to the opportunity. It lists each field that changed. An edit that produces no change to the opportunity posts nothing.
  • Sync failed — when a change could not be written, with the reason and the error code. The same failure is noted once, not on every retry.
  • Action needed — when the write is blocked by an empty required field. This note names the deal properties to fill.
  • AWS-side changes — submission, approval, rejection and each lifecycle-stage advance.

The same information is on the deal’s apn_sync_status property and the FlowState card’s live syncError field; the notes exist so that reading the timeline is enough.

Business-problem templates

When you register a co-sell opportunity with AWS, you write a short business-problem description explaining why the client needs it. Templates give your team a reusable starting point for that description — a name, a skeleton to fill in, and guidance on what a good write-up covers — instead of everyone starting from a blank page.

Manage templates from the Templates page under APN in your FlowState settings:

  • You start with an empty list. Nothing is added to your account until you ask for it. From the empty state, one click adds a set of worked examples covering common opportunity types (migration to AWS, GenAI on Bedrock, SAP on AWS, cost optimisation, and others) that you can use as-is or change.
  • Create and edit freely. Add your own templates at any time, and rename or rewrite any existing one — including the worked examples once they’re in your list.
  • Archiving retires a template without deleting it. If a template no longer fits how your team qualifies opportunities, archive it (you’ll be asked to confirm first). Archived templates drop out of the list you pick from day to day, but the template itself is not deleted, so anything that already refers to it keeps working. Turn on “Show archived” to see them again.
  • Auto-submit when ready. Toggle a template’s “Auto-submit when ready” switch and, while it is your team’s default template, a deal with no business problem yet gets one generated, approved, and submitted to AWS automatically — no click, no review. This skips the approval step described below, so turn it on only once you trust what FlowState will write on your behalf without a person reading it first.

Templates do not add any properties to your HubSpot deals — this is a FlowState-only content library, kept separate from the deal sync described above.

Generating a business problem

Rather than writing a deal’s business problem from a blank page, you can generate one from a template — right from the deal record in HubSpot. Open any deal and the FlowState card shows the current status: no template picked yet, generating, a draft waiting for you to review, or AWS’s own response once it’s been submitted. From there, Refine opens a workspace with a form for whatever the draft is still missing (every question is optional — skip what you don’t have) and a free-text box for anything a form can’t capture (“make it shorter”, “emphasise the deadline”). FlowState fills in the template using what it knows about the deal, plus any details you supply, and scores the result against the same things AWS itself looks for.

  • The score tells you how AWS is likely to see it. A draft comes back scored High, Medium, or Low — the same scale AWS’s own reviewers use — based on whether it covers what AWS looks for: how the client handles this today, what’s forcing a decision now, what they’re evaluating against, who else is in the running, who can approve, whether budget is committed, what’s being built, and what result is expected. Anything missing is listed as a gap so you know what to add.
  • A generated draft never changes your deal by itself. Generating stages a proposal alongside the business problem already on the deal — the Refine workspace shows them side by side — and nothing is overwritten until you act on it.
  • Keep it or discard it. Keep makes the proposal the deal’s business problem — the text it replaces is saved, not lost. Discard drops the proposal and leaves the deal exactly as it was.
  • Approval is required before the deal can be submitted to AWS. Once you submit an opportunity, AWS locks its business problem — a generated draft nobody reviewed can’t be fixed afterwards, so FlowState requires an explicit approval first. This only applies to a draft that came from generation; a business problem you write yourself is never blocked from submitting. If your team’s default template has “Auto-submit when ready” turned on, this approval happens automatically for a deal generated from it — see Business-problem templates above.
  • You can restore an earlier version. Every business problem a keep or a restore replaces is kept — the card’s version list shows the last ten — so you can bring back an older one if a newer one turns out worse.
  • Generating has a cost, shown before it’s charged. The first 5 generations on a deal are free; after that, each one is 3 cents. The card always shows how many free generations are left, and the price of the next one, before you click.
  • Generation adds no properties to your HubSpot deals. The draft, its score, and its history live in FlowState; only the deal’s existing business-problem field changes, and only when you keep or restore a version.
  • Anyone on your team with access to the deal can use the card. There’s no separate FlowState login for it — the same way anyone with deal access could already edit the business-problem field by hand, anyone can generate, refine, and approve through the card. If you need to restrict who approves a business problem before submission, do it through your team’s own process, since FlowState does not gate this by user.

Sandbox vs Production

When you first enable APN sync, FlowState defaults to Sandbox mode (Catalog = Sandbox). Sandbox is a fully functional test environment in Partner Central. Opportunities created in Sandbox do not affect your partner tier, co-sell pipeline, or AWS relationships. Use Sandbox to validate the integration before going live.

See Sandbox vs production for the validation checklist and how to flip to Production.

Prerequisites

Before enabling APN sync, you need:

  1. The HubSpot integration connected (APN sync depends on the HubSpot connection for bidirectional writes).
  2. An AWS Partner Network account with Partner Central access.
  3. An AWS account linked to your Partner Central account, in which you will create a cross-account IAM role for FlowState.

See Prerequisites for details.

How your data is protected

The IAM role your team creates in the Connector Setup wizard grants FlowState least-privilege, ExternalId-protected access to your Partner Central account. FlowState never stores your AWS credentials — it assumes the role on demand, and only for the specific actions the role’s policy allows.

TroubleshootingPrerequisites