Pipelines

A pipeline is a series of stages that records move through, such as your sales process from first meeting to closed won. Your workspace starts with a pipeline for opportunities, and you can add more: separate pipelines for new business and renewals, an onboarding pipeline on accounts, or a pipeline on a custom object.

Who can use it

Pipelines are on every plan, including more than one pipeline per object. Only owners and admins see the Pipelines tab and can create or change pipelines, in the app or by asking the agent. Everyone except Viewers can move a record between stages.

How pipelines work

• Each pipeline belongs to one object (opportunities, accounts, contacts or a custom object) and has its own stages.
• A record is in at most one pipeline at a time, decided by its stage. Moving it to a stage in another pipeline moves it to that pipeline, and a record with no stage isn’t in any pipeline.
• Different pipelines can use the same stage names. “Closed won” in new business and “Closed won” in renewals are different stages.

Create a pipeline

You can’t change a pipeline’s object type after you create it, so pick the object whose records move through it.

1. Go to Settings → Pipelines and click Create new.
2. Enter a Pipeline name and, optionally, a Description.
3. Choose the Object type the pipeline tracks.
4. Click Create, then open the pipeline to add its stages.

The pipeline appears in the list on Settings → Pipelines.

You can also ask the agent, for example “Create a renewals pipeline on opportunities with stages Upcoming, In negotiation, Renewed and Churned.” It shows the pipeline in a card, and nothing changes until you click Create pipeline (or Update pipeline for a change).

Set up stages

A pipeline’s stages are grouped in two sections:

• In progress: records still being worked. Lightfield tracks activity on these to keep their status current.
• Done: records that are complete, such as won, lost or churned deals. Activity tracking ends here.

To manage stages, open the pipeline:

• Add a stage. Click Add stage to In progress or Add stage to Done, enter a Stage name, choose an icon and color, and add a Description.
• Edit a stage. Open the stage’s menu and choose Edit to change its name, description, icon or forecast %.
• Reorder stages. Drag a stage by its handle. Board views follow this order.
• Remove a stage. Open its menu and choose Remove. Lightfield first tells you how many records are in the stage. Their stage is cleared; they aren’t deleted or moved to another stage.

Lightfield uses each stage’s description to decide when a record has moved, so describe what has to be true for a record to be in the stage. For a Trial stage: “The customer has agreed to a trial and has access to a trial workspace.” Keep the list short: five or six stages that each mean something specific work better than ten that people guess between.

Choose how records move between stages

Stage updates, under General on the pipeline’s page, decides what Lightfield does when a customer signals movement, such as “we’re ready for a trial”:

Stage updates	Menu description	What happens
Off	Only updated manually	Stages change only when someone updates them.
Suggest	Suggests updates based on new activity	Lightfield suggests the change for you to accept or dismiss.
Auto	Automatically update based on new activity	Lightfield changes the stage itself.

Stage updates belongs to the object’s stage field, so every pipeline on the same object shares one setting: changing it on one opportunity pipeline changes it for all of them. In Data model, the stage field shows the same setting as its AI fill.

Start on Suggest, then switch opportunity stages to Auto once the suggestions look right, often within the first week. Stage movement shows up clearly in what customers say, everyone who opens the deal sees the stage, and a wrong change takes one click to fix.

Forecast by stage

Turn on Stage forecasting in a pipeline to give each stage a Forecast % between 0 and 100: the likelihood that a record in that stage closes. Forecast percentages weight your pipeline value by stage. Turning forecasting off clears all of the pipeline’s forecast percentages.

Rename or delete a pipeline

Deleting a pipeline can’t be undone. It removes the pipeline’s stages and clears the stage on every record in it; the records themselves stay. The default opportunity pipeline can’t be deleted.

1. Open the pipeline’s menu on Settings → Pipelines.
2. Choose Edit to rename it or change its description, or Delete to remove it. Before deleting, Lightfield shows how many records are in the pipeline.

To read or write stages through the Lightfield API, see Pipelines and stages in the API guide.

Troubleshooting

I can’t change a deal’s stage

Check the message shown when you try to edit. Your role can’t edit records points to your workspace role; see Viewer seats. You don’t have permission to edit this record points to the object’s or record’s permissions; see Groups and permissions.

Changing Stage updates changed my other pipelines

Pipelines on the same object share one Stage updates setting. To review changes separately, keep the setting on Suggest and accept the changes you want. Changing one pipeline’s setting also changes the others on that object.

Common questions

Can I have separate pipelines for new business and renewals? Yes. Create a second opportunity pipeline with its own stages. Each opportunity is in one pipeline at a time, based on its stage.

What happens to records when I remove a stage? Their stage is cleared, which also takes them out of the pipeline. They aren’t deleted or moved to a different stage.

Who can change pipelines and stages? Owners and admins. Members can still change a record’s stage.

How do I see one pipeline’s deals? In a table or board view, click Filter → Pipeline and pick the pipeline. See Opportunities.