Pipelines (Basic): Create & set up
Our pipelines are not only an easy visual tool but also a fully customizable one, suited to your firm’s needs. Read on to find out more about creating and setting up pipelines.
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Create pipelines from scratch
A firm owner, admin or any team member with access rights to manage pipelines can create a pipeline. To do it, from Templates or Workflow, go to Pipelines, then click Create Pipeline.
Pipeline creation flow consists of two stages:
Pipeline stages
To set up pipeline stages, go to the Stages tab. See the instructions for each numbered field below:
1. Pipeline name: Enter a name for the pipeline; that's what you’ll see in the Workflow section.
2. Stage name: Enter the name for the first stage.
3. Add automations: Link as many automations to stages as needed. Once a job moves to a new stage containing automations, those actions are automatically triggered one by one, in a specific order. For example, a task is created, an organizer is generated, and an email is sent. Here is more on how automations work.
4. Automove: Switch the Automove toggle if you want to move a job automatically once linked actions are. Here is more on how automove works.
5. Add stage: Add as many stages as needed and link automations to them.
6. Save: Save the pipeline.
Pipeline settings
Then, go to the Settings tab and configure the pipeline settings. See the instructions for each numbered field below:
1. Available to: Select the team members who need access to it. If you leave this empty, only the person creating the pipeline, the firm owner and admins see it the Workflow section. For more, read about access to pipelines.
2. Sort jobs by: Decide how you want jobs to be sorted in the stages. By default, they’re sorted by account name, but you can also sort them by amount of time in a stage, start date, due date, date a job was created, or priority.
3. Default job template: Decide whether a template should be applied to jobs entering the pipeline and how (automatically or manually).
4. Job card fields: Decide what you want to see displayed on job cards. Here's more on customizing job cards.
5. Default recurrence setting: Schedule jobs that repeat to be automatically created inside the pipeline. Here's more about setting up a schedule for recurring jobs.
6. Save: Save the pipeline. Once you've done it, you can click on the Go to pipeline button and start adding jobs to it for your client accounts.
Tip! If you create a test client account, you can create a job for it, test how your pipeline works and check if everything looks fine from the client's perspective.
Edit pipelines (add, move and delete stages and automations)
A firm owner, admin or team member with access rights to manage pipelines can edit a pipeline.
Tip! When editing a pipeline, only the latest version is saved. To keep the original, duplicate the pipeline before making changes. This way, edits apply to the copy, leaving the original intact.
Here’s how:
- From the pipeline, click Edit on the top right of the page, then click the Add automation link.
- From the pipeline templates list – go to Templates > Pipelines, then click on the name of the pipeline.
- From the pipeline list – go to Workflow > Pipelines from the left menu bar, click three dots to the far right of the name of the pipeline, then select Edit.
Once you are in the edit window, you can change the pipeline settings (see above for details) from the Settings tab or make changes to the stages from the Stages tab (see above for details):
- To add a stage, click Add stage or the + button, then enter the name of the stage.
- To move a stage, point to the move icon to the left of the stage name, then drag-and-drop it.
- To delete a stage, click on the trash can icon to the right of the stage name.
- To add automation to a stage, select the stage, then click on the Add automations button or on any automation, if there is one already.
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If you want additional emails to be sent to clients when they don’t respond within a certain time frame, locate Reminders below the automation template, then select Enable in the drop-down. Here's more on reminders.
Attention! When you delete a stage in a pipeline, all jobs at this stage will be deleted. Make sure that all the necessary information is saved to prevent data loss.
When you're done, click Save. After that, you can click Go to pipeline to see your changes.
Use pipelines from the Marketplace
You can download ready-made email templates created using the best practices. They can be edited easily.
Tip: By installing a pipeline template, you’ll also get all the templates inside it, such as for tasks, chats, emails, and so on.
To add a pipeline from the Marketplace:
1. Go to Templates > Marketplace from the left menu bar and select the Pipelines tab.
2. Click Get free on the template you want to add or click on its price and proceed with the payment if it's a paid template.
3. Go to Templates > Pipelines and click on the name of the template to review and edit stages and automations.
Would you like to share some of your pipeline templates with other TaxDome users? If so, you can sell them on the Marketplace!
Duplicate pipelines
To create new pipelines based on existing ones, go to Templates > Pipelines from the left menu bar, click three dots to the far right of the name of the pipeline, then click Duplicate. A copy of the pipeline is saved with a suffix (e.g., 1040 Return (2)). Stages, automations and other template settings are copied as well. However, you’ll need to manually add jobs to a newly duplicated pipeline.
Delete pipelines
To delete a pipeline, go to Templates > Pipelines from the left menu bar, click three dots to the far right of the pipeline and select Delete.
Note: This deletes all jobs linked to the pipeline.