Stage Automations

Every pipeline stage has settings that act on the cards in it: marking a contact as a client, asking for a meeting, flagging cards nobody has touched, generating follow-up tasks, and moving cards on to another stage. They all live in one window, Edit Stage & Stage Automation, split across the Basic, Task Cadence, Automation and AI tabs.

Opening the window

1. 1

   Open the pipeline

   Go to Workspace Settings → Pipelines & Stages and click the pipeline. A new pipeline shows its stages once you have clicked Create Pipeline.

2. 2

   Find the stage

   Under Pipeline Stages, each stage card shows a “Cadence · 2 weeks” badge when Task Cadence is on, plus Automation or AI badges, or “No automations”.

3. 3

   Click the pencil

   The pencil beside the stage name, at the top of the card (“Edit stage”), opens the Edit Stage & Stage Automation window.

4. 4

   Make your changes and click Save Changes

   The window has four tabs and opens on Task Cadence. Changes on every tab are saved together; Cancel discards them.

You can also open it straight from the pipeline board. The gear beside a stage's name opens the window on the Basic tab, and the stage's “New task every…” line opens it on the Task Cadence tab. The window has its own address, which names the stage and the tab, so you can bookmark it or send it to a teammate.

Only owners and managers can change a stage's settings. Anyone else can open the window from the board to see what a stage does: it is titled Stage Settings, every setting is locked, and it has Close in place of Save Changes.

Basic tab

Stage Name is required. Below it are three settings.

Automatically mark contact as client on entry

When a contact enters the stage, Booked55 marks it as a client and creates a deal from its card, so the contact shows up as a client in the Contacts list. Because a deal needs an amount, every card added to or moved into the stage needs a value. When you drag a card into the stage on the board, a New Deal window asks for Value and Description (both required) and an optional Product/Service Type before you click Confirm & Move. Anywhere else a contact is put into the stage (the Contacts list, a contact's page, a task's row) the same window asks first, also for a contact that was in no pipeline yet. Close it and the contact is not put in the stage.

Ask to log a meeting on entry

When you move a card into the stage on the board, by dragging it or by changing its stage in the card's edit window, Booked55 asks “When did this meeting happen?” so you can log the meeting. You can skip it. Nothing is logged unless you fill it in.

Highlight Inactive Contacts

Turn this on and set Trigger After (days). A card that hasn't been updated for that many days is shown in a red alert style on the Kanban board: a light red background with a red left border. The window shows a preview. There is no color to choose; inactive cards are always red.

Task Cadence tab

Switch on Enable Task Cadence to generate recurring follow-up tasks for the contacts in this stage.

• Generate a task every — Days, Weeks, Months or Years.
• Min and Max — Two sliders, from 1 up to 90 days, 52 weeks, 24 months or 10 years.
• Same Min and Max — A fixed interval. The window shows, for example, “Every 2 weeks”, and each task is scheduled that far after the last task completed with the contact.
• Max above Min — A range, for example “Between 1 – 3 weeks (randomized)”. Each contact's next task date is picked at random within the range, which spreads tasks out instead of landing them all on one day.

Each next task date counts from the last task completed with the contact, and completing a task generates the next one. See Daily Tasks → Pipeline task cadence for how the dates are worked out.

After one of these, follow up in

Under the cadence, four number boxes say how many days later the next task comes when something did not go as planned. The number takes the place of the stage's usual interval for that one task.

• They didn't show up — A meeting completed with “Didn't show up”. Starts at 1 day.
• The meeting was cancelled — A meeting deleted as cancelled, by you or by your calendar. Starts at 1 day.
• I didn't join — A meeting deleted because you did not join it, or declined it. Starts at 1 day.
• No reply (call, text or email) — A task completed with “No reply”. Starts empty.

Each box takes a whole number from 1 to 90. Leave a box empty for no follow-up: the cadence carries on as usual. The follow-up is the stage's own next task, so the contact still has one open cadence task at a time. If that task is already open and due later, it is brought up to the follow-up day; if it is due sooner, it stays. A contact in a stage with no cadence, or in no pipeline, gets a follow-up task after 1 day for the three meeting cases and none after “No reply”. See Daily Tasks → A meeting that did not happen.

Automation tab

Switch on Enable Automation to move cards on automatically. The rule then reads from left to right:

• When a contact is in — This pipeline and this stage, shown in the pipeline's colour with the stage underneath, the way they appear on Daily Tasks. There is nothing to choose here.
• Move contact after — How long a card waits in the stage: a number, and Days or Weeks. A stage you are setting up for the first time starts on 1 week. Tick Move immediately underneath to pass the card straight on instead.
• Move it to (required) — Click the pipeline to choose any pipeline, including this one, which is marked “(Current)”. Then click the stage under it to choose one of that pipeline's stages. Choosing another pipeline clears the stage, so pick the pipeline first.

A line under the three parts says what the rule does, for example “A contact moves to Proposal 1 week after it enters Discovery.” Until a stage is chosen it reads “Pick the stage contacts move to.”

The clock starts when a card enters the stage, whether it is added there or moved in from another stage. Editing a card's value or assignee doesn't restart it, and a card you move out of the stage before the time is up is not moved.

Best practices

• Highlight inactive cards on busy stages — Stale deals are easy to miss. A 5-7 day trigger catches them before they slip through.
• Mark clients on your winning stage — Put “Automatically mark contact as client on entry” on your final winning stage to keep client data and deals accurate.
• Ask for meetings at key stages — Turn on the meeting prompt at stages like “Demo” or “Negotiation” so meetings get logged.
• Set the cadence by stage priority — A “Proposal Sent” stage might need a task every 2 days, while a “Nurture” stage is fine with every 2 weeks.
• Use a range for large stages — A Min and Max range spreads tasks across the week instead of stacking them on one day.