Working with multiple sales pipelines

Your Zendesk Sell account has one sales pipeline by default. To track multiple unique sales processes, you can create more pipelines. The amount of pipelines you can add depends on the type of Sell plan you are on. To find out how many pipelines you can use for your plan see Product limits in Sell. All pipelines are fully customizable.

You need admin rights to set up pipelines.

This article covers the following topics:

• Adding a pipeline
• Adding and deleting pipeline stages
• Adding users to a sales pipeline
• Setting up custom fields in a sales pipeline
• Customizing the layout of a deal card per pipeline
• Deleting a pipeline
• Frequently asked questions

Adding a pipeline

You can add a pipeline if you are on either of the two highest Sell plans.

To add a pipeline

1. On the Sell sidebar, click the Settings () icon, then click Customize > Sales Pipelines.
2. Click Add new pipeline.
3. Add a name for your pipeline and click Save.

   Your new pipeline is created. You can now customize your pipeline to edit the stages. You can also assign users and set up custom fields.

Adding and deleting pipeline stages

Start by working with the pipeline stages (see Aligning pipeline stages with your sales process).

To add, edit, or remove pipeline stages

1. Hover over a stage and click the Pencil () icon to edit the name and win likelihood.
2. Hover over any stage (except the first and last stages) and click the Trashcan () icon to delete the stage.
3. Click the Add (+) icon, visible between two stages, to add a new stage in your sales pipeline.

   You can add as many stages as you like to your sales pipeline.

Adding users to a sales pipeline

Only users that you add to a pipeline can create deals within that pipeline. Adding a user to a sales pipeline does not alter their existing permissions settings on visibility of other deals.

If a user is limited to seeing their own deals, for example, they’ll only be able to view and create deals they own within any pipelines they’re added to.

If a user’s permissions grant them access to all deals, they’ll be able to view all deals within all pipelines.

To add users to a pipeline

1. Click the User tab and select Assign users.
2. Select your users.

   You can search or select users from the drop down menu.

3. Click Save changes.

   The user or users are added to the pipeline.

4. Alternatively, you can add users to a pipeline from Manage > Users when you create or edit a user's permissions.

Setting up custom fields in a pipeline

To set up a custom field for a specific pipeline

• Go to Settings > Customize > Sales Pipelines > Custom Fields.

The drop-down field indicates which pipeline you are working with and displays the custom fields in this pipeline.

Global custom fields are marked with globe icons, meaning they are visible on all pipelines. These cannot be edited from this section.

To create or edit a Global custom field

• Go to Settings > Customize > Deals > Custom Fields.

When you add a custom field to your pipelines page, it will only be added and visible on the selected pipeline.

To change a field to be visible on a specific pipeline

• Click Edit on the custom field and change the pipeline to All Pipelines.

Note: You can't move custom fields from one pipeline to another within the Pipelines section. To do this, change the custom field pipeline to All Pipelines and select the new pipeline in your global custom fields settings.

Customizing the layout of a deal card per pipeline

If you have multiple pipelines, you can customize how the deal card looks like for each of the pipelines.

To customize the layout of the deals card for each pipeline

1. On the Sell sidebar, click the Settings () icon.
2. Click Customize > Layouts.
3. Click the Deals tab.
4. Under Select pipeline, click the Sales pipeline drop-down menu.
5. Click the pipeline you want to customize the layout of.

   

Deleting a pipeline

Just as you can create multiple pipelines to clarify your workflow, you can also tidy up your workspace by deleting pipelines when they have completed their usefulness.

Note: If you are on a plan that only allows one pipeline, you cannot delete it.

To delete a pipeline

1. On the Sell sidebar, click the Settings () icon.
2. Under Customize, click Sales pipelines.
3. Select the pipeline you want to delete.
4. Click the Trashcan () icon that appears to the right of the pipeline.

FAQs

Can I toggle between different pipelines and between pipeline/table view?

Yes, you can switch to another pipeline by going to Deals > Sales Pipeline, in the drop-down menu you can choose the pipeline you want to switch to. You can also toggle between the pipeline and Table view by clicking Stage View (>>) or Table View () to the right of Sales Pipeline.

Can I move a deal from one sales pipeline to another?

Yes, you can choose to move a deal from one pipeline to another by clicking edit on the pipeline or by selecting a stage from another pipeline to place it into.

Note: A deal’s history is lost when it is moved to a different pipeline. The reporting section of your Sell account will always display statistics for deals within their current pipelines only. For example, if you were to move a deal from the Won stage of Pipeline A to the Won stage of Pipeline B, Pipeline A’s reporting would lose that corresponding value, and Pipeline B would gain it.

Do I need to create a Smart List for each pipeline?

No, but you can configure Smart Lists to show all deals within all pipelines, and you can filter across them using any criteria you choose.

Do automated actions work on multiple pipelines?

Yes, you can configure which pipelines an action fires on from your Automated Action settings page.