Move contacts through a pipeline

Swimlane never moves a card for you: you decide when a relationship moves forward. This article lists every way to put a contact in a stage, from drag and drop to the stage suggested by the Swimlane Analysis.

Drag and drop on the board

1. Open Pipelines and pick a pipeline in the sidebar.
2. Drag a card to another column. It lands at the top of that column.
3. Drag a card up or down inside a column to change its order.

On a touch screen, press and hold a card before dragging, so a quick swipe still scrolls the board. Click a card to open the contact record.

Add a contact from a column

1. At the bottom of a column, click Add a contact.
2. Type a name or an email in Search contacts.... The five most recently updated matches are shown.
3. Click the contact. If they were in another stage of your pipelines, they move here.

From the contact record

1. Open the contact and go to Info → Quick actions.
2. Click Add to pipeline and pick a pipeline. The contact is placed in its first stage.
3. Pick another stage in the second selector if needed.

The selectors also offer Create a new pipeline and Create a new stage. To take the contact out, open the pipeline selector and choose Remove from pipeline.

In Inbox tables, the Pipeline column of each row holds the same two selectors, so you can change a stage without opening the contact.

Many contacts at once

1. Tick the contacts in a list or an Inbox view.
2. Open Bulk Actions and choose Assign to pipeline stage.
3. Choose the Pipeline, then the Stage, and click Assign.

To move a whole group that shares a tag, open the tag in the Inbox sidebar, tick the header checkbox, then assign them in one go.

Accept the stage suggested by Swimlane

The Swimlane Analysis section of the Info tab can suggest a stage.

1. Open the contact.
2. Under Suggested pipeline, read the pipeline and stage proposed ("Pipeline → Stage").
3. Click Move to apply it. If the contact is already there, you see Already here instead.

How the suggestion works:

• Swimlane reads your conversation and your interactions with the person, and picks among the stages of your pipelines.
• It only proposes a stage when the conversation clearly supports it, and prefers the earliest stage that fits. A one-sided or early exchange maps to an early stage.
• An analysis needs more than two messages or more than two interactions. Until then, the section says the analysis isn't available yet.
• The analysis is generated when you first open a contact without one, and refreshed automatically after new interactions once it is more than 7 days old. The refresh icon next to the section title runs it again right away.
• Nothing moves until you click Move.

What never moves a card

• A reply, an accepted invitation or a link click doesn't change a stage.
• Campaigns have no "move to stage" step. A practical workaround: in your campaign, use a Replied to message condition followed by an Add tag step, then assign everyone carrying that tag to the right stage in bulk, as described above.

Good to know

• A contact sits in one stage of one of your pipelines at a time. Moving them to another of your pipelines removes them from the previous one.
• Pipelines are personal: moving a card doesn't affect a teammate's board.
• The Inbox sidebar lists your pipelines under Pipelines. Each opens a table of that pipeline's contacts, where the Pipeline column shows their current stage.