Pipeline Boards
Connect a kanban board to your CRM contacts and companies so moving a card moves them through your pipeline - and changing a status anywhere moves the card.
A Pipeline Board is a regular Task Board that has each of its lists wired to a CRM contact status or company status. Once it's set up, the board behaves like a live pipeline view: dragging a CRM task across the board updates the linked contact's or company's status, and the moment that status changes anywhere else (the contact's detail page, MCP, another teammate's device) the card jumps to the matching list on its own.
You set this up once. After that, your kanban board, your contact list, and your company records all show the same pipeline state without you having to keep them in sync by hand.
PrimeCRM is a Pro feature
Pipeline Boards combine PrimeCRM with custom kanban boards. Both are part of the Pro tier. Upgrade from License Settings.
What you can do
Run a sales pipeline visually
Track a client lifecycle by company
Start from a built-in template
Build your own pipeline
any board can be turned into a Pipeline Board by mapping each list to a status of your choice.
See at a glance which statuses are wired to a board
every status that's mapped to a Pipeline Board shows a small indicator in the status dropdown so you don't accidentally pick a status nothing is listening to.
How to open Pipeline Boards
Pipeline Boards are managed from the regular Task Board view.
- Tasks → Board view → Group by Custom Lists - switch the board to Custom Lists grouping. The board selector and the board management button appear in the toolbar.
- Manage boards & templates - open this from the toolbar to create a new board, pick a template, edit list mappings, or save your own template.
- Settings search: type boards or kanban to jump to Board view.
- Command palette: ⌘+K (or Ctrl+K), then board view.
There is no separate "Pipeline Boards" page. Any custom kanban board can become a Pipeline Board the moment one of its lists has a contact or company status mapping.
Setting one up (step by step)
1. Switch the Task Board to Custom Lists
Open the Tasks page, switch to Board view, and set Group by to Custom Lists. The board selector and the Manage boards button appear in the toolbar.
2. Create a board, or pick a template
Open Manage boards & templates and either start a new board from scratch or pick a built-in template. Two templates are wired to the CRM out of the box:
- Sales Pipeline - lists for Lead, Contacted, Proposal Sent, Negotiation, Closed Won, Closed Lost, each mapped to the matching contact status.
- Client Lifecycle - lists for Inactive, Prospect, Active Client, Past Client, Lost, each mapped to the matching company status.
If you pick one of these, the board arrives ready to use - every list is already mapped, and any custom statuses the template needs are added to your Space automatically.
Use the templates if they fit
picking Sales Pipeline or Client Lifecycle is the fastest way in. Even if you only use them as a starting point, the lists, mappings, and seeded statuses save you several minutes of setup.
3. Map each list to a status
If you're building your own pipeline, open the board, edit each list, and pick a contact status or a company status (or both) for it. This is what makes the board a Pipeline Board - every list with a CRM mapping becomes part of the pipeline.
You can also do this when editing a template before creating the board, so the board is mapped from the moment it exists.
4. (Optional) Add custom statuses on the fly
If a status you want to map doesn't exist yet, create one without leaving the editor. The new status is added to your Space and immediately becomes selectable everywhere - the contact and company forms, the inline status pickers, the filters, and the rest of the CRM.
Statuses are per-Space
custom statuses you add belong to the Space the board lives in. If you work across multiple Spaces, set them up in each Space where you want the pipeline.
How it works
Drag a card and the linked record moves with it
When you drag a CRM task to a list that's mapped to a contact or company status, every contact or company linked to that task is updated to the mapped status. The card stays on the new list and the contact's or company's detail page reflects the new state instantly.
If the CRM task is linked to more than one contact or company, all of them are updated.
Multi-link drops update every linked record
if a CRM task is linked to three contacts and you drag it to Closed Won, all three contacts move to Closed Won. This is by design - that's what makes the board a true pipeline view - but it's worth knowing before you drag a multi-contact task across stages.
Change a status anywhere and the card jumps to the matching list
The other direction works the same way. Update a contact's or company's status from the detail page, the inline picker on the contacts or companies list, the filter dropdown, MCP, or a teammate's edit, and any CRM task linked to that record automatically moves to the list that now matches.
The card always reflects the linked record's current status, no matter where the change came from.
What kinds of tasks the board moves
The auto-move applies only to CRM tasks - tasks that are directly linked to a contact or company. Regular tasks aren't moved by status changes, even if they happen to mention a contact in their description or assignee field. See CRM Tasks for how to create one.
What kinds of lists trigger the move
Lists trigger the auto-move only when they have a contact or company status mapping. A list mapped only by task status, priority, or tags (the regular Task Board behaviour) is left alone - your kanban can mix CRM lists and non-CRM lists on the same board if that's what your workflow needs.
Task status and priority stay separate
Pipeline stages are about the linked contact or company. A CRM task still has its own task status and priority, and those remain visible on the card. Dragging a CRM task across a contact or company pipeline changes the linked record's stage; it does not change the task's own status or priority unless you also map the list to those task fields.
The mapped-status indicator
Once you've wired up at least one list, every status that's mapped to a board shows a small indicator beside it. You'll see this:
- In the status dropdown when editing a contact or company (in the modal and inline on the contacts or companies list).
- In the filter dropdowns on the contacts list, the companies list, and the project CRM table when filtering by status.
Hovering the indicator reveals which board and which list the status is wired to. This makes it easy to see, at a glance, which statuses are part of an active pipeline and which ones are decorative.
Use the indicator to avoid dead-end statuses
if you're picking a status from a long list (especially after seeding template statuses), the indicator tells you which choices will move the card on your board and which won't. Pick the wired one if you want the kanban to stay in sync.
Things worth knowing
One mapping per list
Each list maps to a single contact status, a single company status, or both. You can't map a single list to two contact statuses - that's what the second list is for.
Statuses without a mapping still work
You can have statuses in your Space that aren't wired to any board. They behave like regular statuses - you can assign them, filter by them, see them on detail pages - they just don't move any cards. That's normal: not every status needs to be a kanban stage.
Multiple boards can listen to the same status
Two different boards can both have a Lead list mapped to the contact status Lead. Updating a contact to Lead moves the linked CRM task on both boards. This is useful when one team works on the Sales Pipeline board and another on a Onboarding board that share the early stages.
Pipeline Boards is part of PrimeCRM
You need a Pro license with CRM enabled to create CRM tasks, manage contact and company statuses, and use Pipeline Boards. See CRM Settings and License Settings.
The board only auto-moves when grouped by Custom Lists
Pipeline Boards live in the Custom Lists grouping mode of the Task Board. If you switch the board to Group by Status or Group by Project, the live mapping doesn't apply to that view - switch back to Custom Lists to see the pipeline in motion.
Common questions
How do I unmap a list?
Edit the list and clear its contact and company status mappings. The list stays on the board, but it no longer auto-moves cards based on CRM status.
Can I delete a status that a board is mapped to?
You can - the mapping just stops working for that list. The cards previously moved by that status stay where they are, and you can re-map the list to a different status afterwards. Renaming a custom status is the safer option if you want to keep the pipeline working.
Why didn't my card move when I changed a contact's status?
Three things to check:
Can two boards in the same Space have different mappings for the same status?
Yes. Each board's lists have their own mappings. The same status can be wired to Lead on one board, Demo Booked on another, and unmapped on a third. The auto-move just looks at the list's mapping and the linked record's status - they don't conflict.
Does this work for projects with isolated CRM?
Pipeline Boards work the same way in shared and isolated CRM modes. The status updates apply to whichever CRM the linked contact or company belongs to. See Shared vs Isolated CRM for the difference.
Where to go next
| If you want to… | Read this |
|---|---|
| Learn how CRM tasks work | CRM Tasks |
| Set up the underlying kanban board | Board view |
| Manage your contact and company statuses | Custom Statuses and Priorities |
| Track sales activity beyond the pipeline | Deal Pipeline |
| Understand shared vs isolated CRM modes | Shared vs Isolated CRM |