Feature

A sales pipeline that lives on your WhatsApp chats

Most WhatsApp businesses track deals in their head, or in a spreadsheet that was accurate last Tuesday. The conversation is in one place, the stage of the deal is somewhere else, and the two drift apart the moment someone is busy.

The Spun pipeline puts the stage on the conversation. Every contact sits in exactly one stage of a board, you move it from the chat, from the contact panel or by dragging the card, and every move is recorded with who made it and when. The rest of this page is what that includes, as shipped, and where it stops.

What the pipeline is

The Pipeline tab in the sidebar shows a board: one column per stage, plus an Unstaged column for contacts that are not in the pipeline yet. A new workspace starts with the sales stages New, Contacted, Qualified, Proposal, Won and Lost, and every contact is a card you can drag between columns.

You do not have to open the board to work with it. Right-click a chat in the chat list, or long-press it on a phone, and choose "Set stage". The contact panel has a Pipeline section that shows the current stage and the last three stage changes, each with who made it and when. If the chat is from a number you have not saved yet, the same menu offers "Save & stage": one dialog that saves the contact with the name from WhatsApp and the number already filled in, and puts it straight into the stage you picked.

The chat list gets a row of stage chips above it, so you can narrow the list to one stage without leaving the inbox. Setting a stage needs the permission to move pipeline cards; "Save & stage" additionally needs the permission to create contacts.

  • One board per workspace to start, with a Manage pipeline screen for its stages.
  • Stage set from the chat menu, the contact panel or the board.
  • Every move recorded with the person and the time.
  • Stage chips filter the chat list to one stage.

Related: The WhatsApp kanban landing page

Moving cards, undoing, and not overwriting a teammate

Moving a card takes effect immediately and shows an Undo for a few seconds; Ctrl+Z works on the board too. If a teammate moved the same contact first, your card snaps back and Spun tells you who moved it, instead of silently overwriting their change. Tick several cards to move them together, and the result reports any that could not move.

A stage that means a lost deal asks for the reason before the move is recorded, so "Lost" in your history always says why. Managers add, rename, reorder and archive stages from Manage pipeline; a stage that still holds contacts cannot be archived until they are moved somewhere else, and stages are archived rather than deleted so past history keeps its labels.

Cards come in two densities. On a phone the board is a swipeable pager, one column at a time, with a Move-to menu on each card in place of dragging.

New leads can enter on their own

The first time you open the pipeline you are asked once whether new leads should be added to the board automatically. The switch is on by default, and your answer is remembered; you are not asked again.

With it on, a contact lands in your entry stage when they write to you in a one-to-one chat, when you save a number that has already written to you, or when a Facebook lead form arrives. A few cases are always skipped, on purpose: contacts that are already on the board, internal contacts, contacts marked do-not-send, group chats, and numbers your business wrote to first, which enter only once they reply.

Auto-enter only ever places a card in the entry stage. Moving it further is a decision a person makes, or a suggestion the assistant offers and a person approves.

What a card lets you do without leaving the board

Every card carries a small actions menu. From it you can peek at the last five messages of the conversation, a look only, so nothing is marked as read and nothing is sent, with a link to open the full chat. You can create a follow-up task or set a reminder already linked to that contact and chat, move the card to another stage, or open the contact panel. A card for a contact you have never exchanged messages with does not offer the peek or the chat entries, because there is nothing to look at yet.

Nothing in that menu sends a message from Spun. The board is for organising; sending stays in the conversation. The one outward step the menu offers is "Open in my WhatsApp": for a card with a real phone number it opens the chat in your own WhatsApp app, prefilled with a message template a manager can save per stage in Manage pipeline. The send happens from your personal WhatsApp, outside Spun. Afterwards you can press "Mark contacted", which records a clearly marked note on the conversation saying you contacted them outside Spun; it is a note in the contact panel, never a message bubble.

More than one board

You are not limited to a sales board. A manager can add another board from the board switcher, starting from a ready-made preset or from a blank board you name and build yourself. The stages of a new board are only a starting point: rename, reorder, add and archive them exactly as on the sales board, and a board does not need Won or Lost stages at all. A support board can simply run from Open to Resolved, and only a stage a manager has configured to need a reason asks for one.

PresetStages it starts with
SalesNew, Contacted, Qualified, Proposal, Won, Lost
SupportNew, Triaged, In progress, Waiting on customer, Resolved, Closed
PurchasingRequested, Quoted, Approved, Ordered, Received, Cancelled
HiringApplied, Screening, Interview, Offer, Hired, Rejected
BlankStage 1, Stage 2, Done, Dropped, to rename as you go

On a free or trial workspace the sales board is the only one; paid plans are not capped. When you are at the limit, the option to add a board says so up front.

Once a second board exists, the board you last used is remembered for you personally and follows you to another device without changing what your colleagues see. The stage chips above the chat list follow one board of your choosing, so looking at another board on the panel does not re-filter your chat list. Boards can be renamed and archived; archiving hides a board without deleting anything, your default board and your last remaining board cannot be archived, and restoring an archived board is not something the app can do yet.

What happens when a card enters a stage

Stages can carry automations. When a card enters a stage, Spun can create a task, set a reminder, add a label, notify the person who owns the card, or send an email to an address you choose. Everything outbound is off until you switch it on, and undoing a card move never fires anything.

Outbound automations respect the same limits as a person: sends are held back inside your quiet hours, checked in both your time zone and the recipient's. A blocked send is dropped rather than queued, so nothing arrives in a burst afterwards, and each automation shows what it has been doing lately, including how many sends it skipped and why. Each automation also has an hourly limit, so a misconfigured one cannot empty a board into the send queue.

An automation can send a WhatsApp message, but only to someone who has written to you at least once. Spun will not start a WhatsApp conversation on its own, and if it cannot confirm that they wrote to you it does not send. Anything it wanted to send and could not appears in your AI sends queue with the reason; for a contact with no history, the answer is to message them once yourself, after which the automation works from then on. There is no send-them-all button.

  • Notify reaches the card owner in the app and as a push notification by default, at no cost and to nobody outside Spun, in the Spun language that teammate uses.
  • Spun Chat can be switched on as a second channel; it is delivered inside Spun with no sending limit beyond your quiet hours.
  • WhatsApp is the fallback for a teammate who is not on Spun Chat. It goes out from your own number, only ever to teammates, at most ten a day per person, and counts against your normal sending budget, so switching it on shows a warning saying so.
  • Any teammate can turn pipeline WhatsApp notifications off for themselves in Settings, and an automation cannot override that.
  • Each notify automation shows the exact sentence it will send before you switch it on. The wording is read only and says Won, Lost or "a new stage" rather than naming the stage.

Sharing a board, dragging chats, and suggested moves

A board can be shared with a teammate through Share Access. They open it with only the columns that were shared with them and only the cards their share covers, they can move cards only if their share lets them edit labels, and each move they make is recorded under their own name. Manage pipeline has a Sharing section that opens the same wizard with this board already chosen and lists who has access today, where a manager can take back a share that was made directly.

On a desktop screen with the board panel open, a conversation can be dragged straight out of the chat list onto a column, Spun Chat rows included. The row is matched to a card by contact, then by chat, then by number; a row with no saved contact behind it offers to save and stage it in one step, or says why it cannot.

The assistant can suggest a stage move, and only suggest one. Ask it in a chat to move someone to a stage and it writes a suggestion that waits with your other approvals until a person with permission accepts or dismisses it. A suggestion can only move a card forward, expires after a day if nobody answers, and one card never collects more than one waiting suggestion. This is off until you switch on Pipeline Stage Suggestions in Settings.

Related: Shared team inbox: roles, sharing and boundaries · Auto-assign new chats with round robin

What the pipeline deliberately does not do

The board organises conversations. Knowing where it stops is what makes it safe to build a process on.

  • It never messages a customer on its own. An automation can write only to someone who has already written to you, and the card menu's outward step opens your own WhatsApp app rather than sending from Spun.
  • It has no owner field. Who is handling a chat is a name label, applied by hand or by round robin, and a share never becomes ownership.
  • It does not restore an archived board. Archive hides; it does not delete, and it does not come back from the app yet.
  • It does not let the assistant move cards. The assistant suggests, forward only, and a person approves.
  • It does not replace the conversation. Peek is a look, "Mark contacted" is a note, and sending stays in the chat.

Frequently asked questions

How do I put a WhatsApp chat into a pipeline stage?

Right-click the chat in the chat list, or long-press it on a phone, and choose "Set stage". The contact panel's Pipeline section and the board itself do the same thing. For a number you have not saved yet, "Save & stage" saves the contact and stages it in one step.

Do new leads get added automatically?

If you answered yes the first time you opened the pipeline, a contact enters your entry stage when they write to you in a one-to-one chat, when you save a number that has already written to you, or when a Facebook lead form arrives. Contacts already on the board, internal contacts, do-not-send contacts and groups are skipped.

What happens if two people move the same card?

The first move wins. The second person's card snaps back and Spun tells them who moved it, so nobody overwrites a teammate's change without knowing.

Can I have more than one pipeline?

Yes, on a paid plan. A manager adds a board from the board switcher, starting from the Support, Purchasing or Hiring preset or from a blank board. Free and trial workspaces have the sales board only.

Can a stage change send a WhatsApp message?

Only to someone who has written to you at least once, and only after you switch that automation on. Sends respect quiet hours and an hourly limit, and anything that could not be sent shows up in your AI sends queue with the reason.

Can I send a message from the board?

No. The board is for organising. "Open in my WhatsApp" opens the chat in your own WhatsApp app with a template a manager saved for that stage, and "Mark contacted" records a note afterwards. Sending from Spun stays in the conversation.

Who can change the stages or the automations?

Managers, from Manage pipeline. Everyone else moves cards according to their permissions, and a teammate who has a board through Share Access sees only the columns and cards their share covers.

Every deal, on the conversation it belongs to

Connect the WhatsApp number you already have, open the Pipeline tab, and let new leads land on the board on their own. Stages, boards, automations and sharing are on every paid plan.

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