Set up a pipeline and its stages

A pipeline is a board of columns, called stages. Each contact card sits in one stage, and you move cards from left to right as relationships progress. This article shows how to create a pipeline, shape its stages and mark the stages that close a deal.

Create a pipeline

1. Open Pipelines in the main navigation.
2. If you have no pipeline yet, click Create your first pipeline. Otherwise, in the sidebar under Manage, click Create a pipeline.
3. In Create pipeline, click the smiley button if you want an emoji for the pipeline, then type its name.
4. Click Create Pipeline.

A new pipeline comes with four stages: Cold, Connected, Engaged and Closed. Closed is already marked as a Done column. Rename, reorder or delete them to fit the way you sell.

You can also create a pipeline from a contact record: in Quick actions, open the pipeline picker and choose Create a new pipeline.

Add and arrange stages

• Add a stage: click Add stage at the top right of the board, type a Name in New stage and click Create. Then drag the column where you want it.
• Reorder stages: drag a column by its header. On a touch screen, press and hold before dragging.
• Rename a stage: click … in the column header, choose Rename, type the name and click Save.
• Change its colour: … → Color, then pick a colour.
• Delete a stage: … → Delete, then confirm. Contacts in that stage are unassigned: they leave the pipeline but stay in your workspace.

The same … menu holds Send connection request and Send message, which act on every contact of the column (see Invite or message a whole pipeline column).

Mark a stage as Done or Abandoned

1. Click … in the column header.
2. Open Column type and choose Regular, Done or Abandoned.

A Done or Abandoned column shows an icon next to its name. Hover it to read what it means.

What it changes: contacts sitting in a Done or Abandoned column are no longer suggested in the dashboard's People to interact with list, so won and lost deals stop resurfacing there.

What it doesn't change: the contacts aren't archived, they stay in their lists and in the Inbox, and any campaign they are enrolled in keeps running. To take someone out of automation, archive them.

Rename or delete a pipeline

In the Pipelines sidebar, hover the pipeline and click …:

• Rename opens Rename pipeline. Change the Name and click Save.
• Delete asks for confirmation and can't be undone. The pipeline and its stages are removed; the contacts stay in your workspace.

Good to know

• Pipelines are personal. A pipeline you create is visible only to you. Each teammate builds their own boards, and the same contact can sit in your pipeline and in a teammate's.
• One of your pipelines at a time. A contact occupies one stage in one of your pipelines. Adding them to another of your pipelines takes them out of the previous one.
• You can create as many pipelines as you need. The emoji is chosen when you create the pipeline.
• Each pipeline also appears in the Inbox sidebar under Pipelines, as a table of its contacts with bulk actions and Export CSV. The icon next to its name opens the board.
• The Campaigns group of the Pipelines sidebar shows a read-only board for each launched campaign, with one column per campaign step. You can't drag cards there.
• Pipelines never move cards by themselves. See Move contacts through a pipeline and Best practices: design pipeline stages for LinkedIn sales.