Set up a pipeline

A pipeline is a board with a column for each stage. Drag a card along as things move; click one to open it. Setting one up takes about a minute, and it asks you one question worth thinking about for a moment.

What goes on the board?

Open Opportunities → New pipeline and pick one of two:

• Move the records I already have along the board. Each card is one of your contacts, or your clients, or whatever you call them. This is the simplest setup and it suits most follow-up — one person, one journey, one place they’ve got to.
• Start something new for them. Each card is something you create — a deal, a job, an application, a booking — joined to the record it’s for. Pick this when one person can have a few on the go at once, or when you want to add up what they’re worth.

You name the new thing yourself. Solstral doesn’t assume you sell deals to contacts — if you run programmes for athletes or matters for clients, use those words and every screen will follow them.

Choosing what to note down

If you’re creating something new, you’ll be offered three things to track on it: value (what it’s worth), close date (when you expect it to land) and owner (who’s looking after it). All three are ticked, because they’re right nearly every time — untick anything you don’t want, and add your own with Add something else.

You can also say who each one is for. Pick as many as you like — a deal that belongs to both a person and their company is normal. Their record then shows a list of these back, so everything open for one of them sits in one place.

None of this is final. Adding more later is a two-minute job.

Stages

Start from one of the ready-made sets — Sales, Onboarding, Support or Recruiting — and change it to match how you actually work. Each stage has four things:

• A colour, which is the column’s stripe on the board.
• A name. Drag the handle on the left to reorder them.
• Won, Lost or Open. Marking the stages that mean you’ve won or lost is how your win rate gets worked out, and almost nobody goes back and sets it later.
• Win % on the open stages — your rough chance of winning once something reaches that point. Your forecast is every card’s value multiplied by its stage’s percentage, so this is the number it’s built from.

Adding to the board

Every column has a +. Press the one on the stage you want and whatever you add starts there. It’s the same form you get everywhere else, so it asks for the name, anything that’s required, and the first handful of details — the rest is under More fields if you want it. Create takes you straight to what you just made, and the back link brings you to the board you came from.

Changing your stages later

Open … → Edit stages from the board. Renaming a stage moves everything in it across, along with its history, so your reports don’t suddenly show one stage as two. Colour, won/lost and Win % follow a rename too.

Removing a stage doesn’t delete anything. Anything still in it sits under None on the board until you move it, and you’re told before you save.

When one record needs more than one

The moment one contact has two things on the go at once, a board where each card is a contact has run out of room — they can only be at one stage.

Open … → Track more than one per…. It shows you exactly what it’s about to do before it does it: how many cards turn into records of their own, and how many aren’t at a stage yet and will be left alone. Each new one keeps its stage, its place in the column and everything you’ve tracked about how it got there, and is joined back to the record it came from.

Nothing gets deleted. Your original records keep everything they had, including the stage they were on — it just stops being a board and becomes an ordinary dropdown on their record. Tidy it away later if you like, or leave it. That’s why it’s safe to start simple.

Your stages aren’t stuck on this screen

The stage a card is at shows on the record itself, and you can use it everywhere else too: filter and save views by it, start a flow when something reaches Won, report on it, ask for it on a form, set it during an import, or read it through the API. There’s nothing to switch on — it’s the same stage either way.

It also means one set of records can have more than one board. A sales board and an onboarding board over the same things is a normal thing to want.