Pipeline & Workflow

Configure your workflow stages, set SLA targets, track stale entries, and manage quote lifecycles.

What Is a Pipeline?

A pipeline defines the workflow stages your jobs move through from start to finish. A typical manufacturing pipeline might look like:

Quote → Engineering → Production → QC → Shipping → Closed

Every entry in GlyphFex has a status that corresponds to a pipeline stage.
As work progresses, you advance entries through stages — either manually or from the Shop Floor kiosk.
GlyphFex records every stage transition with a timestamp, building a complete timeline of how each job moved through your workflow.
The pipeline drives features across the entire app: Dashboard cards show the current stage, the Calendar/Gantt draws stage bars, Analytics calculates SLA compliance, and the Shop Floor groups entries by stage.

Tip Think of a pipeline as a map of your shop floor process. The more accurately it reflects your real workflow, the more useful GlyphFex becomes for tracking and improving operations.

Creating & Editing Pipeline Stages

To set up or modify your pipeline stages:

Edit Pipeline Dialog Screenshot of the Edit Pipeline dialog showing stages list with SLA days, BD toggle, Completed checkbox, Stale days, and Q toggle columns

Open Settings (gear icon or Ctrl+K → "Open Settings") and click Edit Pipeline, or use the Pipeline button on the Entry page toolbar.
Add stages in the order that work flows through your shop. You can drag to reorder them at any time.
Configure each stage’s optional settings (see the table below).
Click Save to apply your changes.

Stage Settings

Setting	Description
Target SLA Days	How many days this stage should take. Used for SLA tracking on the Analytics page and Calendar/Gantt chart.
Use Business Days (BD)	When enabled, only working days count toward the SLA target. Weekends and company holidays (configured in your calendar settings) are excluded.
Is Completed Stage	Marks this as a final stage (e.g., Shipped, Closed). Suppresses due date alerts, stops SLA tracking, and excludes the entry from overdue counts.
Stale After Days	Entries idle in this stage for longer than this threshold are flagged as stale. See Stale Entry Detection below.
Quoting Stage (Q)	Marks stages involved in quoting. When an entry enters a quoting stage, GlyphFex automatically sets its quote expiry date. See Quote Lifecycle below.

Note Every pipeline must have at least one stage marked as Is Completed Stage. If you try to save a pipeline without one, GlyphFex will prompt you to add a completed stage or let it auto-create a "Closed" stage for you.

Tip When you create a brand new pipeline, GlyphFex automatically adds a "Closed" stage marked as completed — you can rename or reconfigure it as needed.

SLA Targets & Tracking

Service Level Agreement (SLA) targets let you define how long each stage should take, so you can spot delays before they become problems.

Set target days per stage — for example, "Engineering should take 5 business days" or "QC should take 2 calendar days."
Toggle Business Days to exclude weekends and your company’s configured holidays from the count. In the pipeline editor, stages using business days show a BD label.
Calendar/Gantt chart — stage bars are color-coded to show whether entries are on track, approaching their target, or overdue.
Analytics → SLA Compliance chart — shows the percentage of entries that are on-track vs. at-risk vs. overdue, broken down by stage.
Analytics → Stage Bottlenecks chart — compares average actual days per stage against the target, helping you identify process bottlenecks.

Tip Start with generous SLA targets based on your current average turnaround, then tighten them over time as your process improves. This way, you get useful alerts without drowning in false positives.

Stale Entry Detection

Entries that sit in a stage too long without progressing are automatically flagged as "stale," helping you catch jobs that have fallen through the cracks.

Stale Entry Badges Screenshot of Dashboard cards showing entries with STALE warning badges

How It Works

In the pipeline editor, set the Stale After Days threshold for each stage. For example, you might set "Quoted" to 14 days and "Engineering" to 10 days.
If an entry has been in a stage longer than its threshold without advancing, GlyphFex flags it as stale.
Stale entries display a ⚠ STALE badge on Dashboard cards and in the Calendar/Gantt view.
On the Calendar, stale bars appear with reduced opacity and are capped in width to prevent extremely old entries from stretching the chart.
The notification bell can alert you to newly stale entries (enable in Settings → Notifications).
Dashboard analytics cards show a count of currently stale entries.

Recommended Stale Thresholds

Stage Type	Suggested Threshold
Quoting / Estimating	14 days
Engineering / Design	10 days
Production / Fabrication	30 days
Quality Control	5 days
Shipping / Delivery	7 days

Note Stale detection only applies to stages that have a Stale After Days value configured. Stages with no value (or zero) will not trigger stale alerts. Completed stages never trigger stale detection.

Quote Lifecycle & Expiry Tracking

Shops often lose track of open quotes, missing follow-up windows and leaving revenue on the table. GlyphFex’s quote lifecycle features ensure no quote falls through the cracks.

Setting Up Quote Tracking

In the pipeline editor, toggle the Q (Quoting Stage) option on any stages involved in quoting (e.g., "Estimating", "Quote Sent", "Awaiting Approval").
In Settings, set the Default Quote Validity Days (e.g., 30 days). This controls how long quotes remain valid before expiring.
When an entry enters a quoting stage, GlyphFex automatically populates the quote_valid_until built-in field with the calculated expiry date.

What Happens When Quotes Expire

Expired quotes display an ⏰ EXPIRED QUOTE badge on Dashboard cards.
Dashboard analytics cards show the total count of expired quotes.
The notification bell alerts you to expiring and expired quotes (configurable in Settings → Notifications).

Tip Set your Default Quote Validity Days to match your standard terms. Most shops use 30 days, but adjust based on your industry — some materials or services may warrant shorter windows (14 days) or longer ones (60 days).

Multiple Pipelines

Not every job follows the same workflow. GlyphFex lets you create multiple named pipelines for different job types, so each one can have its own set of stages and SLA configurations.

Multiple Pipelines Screenshot showing the pipeline selector on the Entry page with multiple named pipelines

Common Examples

Standard Orders — Quote → Engineering → Fabrication → QC → Shipping → Closed
Rush Orders — Approved → Priority Production → QC → Express Ship → Closed
Repairs / Warranty — Received → Inspection → Repair → Testing → Return → Closed
Internal Projects — Proposed → In Progress → Review → Done

How to Create Multiple Pipelines

Open Settings → Edit Pipeline.
Click Add Pipeline to create a new named pipeline.
Give it a descriptive name and add stages specific to that workflow.
Each pipeline gets its own SLA targets, stale thresholds, and quoting stage configuration.

When you have two or more pipelines, a pipeline selector appears on the Entry form, letting you choose which pipeline each entry belongs to. Entry templates can also be associated with a specific pipeline, so creating an entry from a template automatically assigns the correct pipeline.

Note If you only have one pipeline, the pipeline selector does not appear on the Entry form — GlyphFex keeps the interface clean by hiding it until you need it.

Pipeline Visibility (Multi-User)

In multi-user mode, you may want to restrict who can see certain pipelines. For example, an internal R&D pipeline or HR workflow shouldn’t be visible to every user.

Admins always see all pipelines regardless of visibility settings.
Editors and Viewers only see pipelines they have been granted access to.
Configure visibility per pipeline in the pipeline editor — toggle which roles can access each pipeline.
Entries in hidden pipelines are also hidden from the Dashboard, Calendar, Shop Floor, and all other views for restricted users.

Tip Use pipeline visibility to separate concerns — production staff see production pipelines, office staff see quoting and admin pipelines. This reduces clutter and keeps sensitive data private.

Status Transitions & Stage Timeline

Every time an entry’s status changes, GlyphFex records a timestamped transition. This builds a complete history of how each job moved through your workflow.

Ways to Change Status

Method	Where	Best For
Status ComboBox	Entry page	Updating one entry while editing it
Right-click → Change Status	Dashboard	Quick status change without opening the entry
Advance button	Shop Floor kiosk	One-tap advancement on the shop floor (touch-friendly)
Bulk status change	Dashboard table view	Changing multiple entries at once (e.g., batch shipment)

Stage Timeline

Open any entry in the Entry Detail Window (double-click a card or row) to see a visual stage timeline. The timeline shows:

Each stage the entry has passed through
The duration spent in each stage
Color-coded bars matching your pipeline stage colors
The entry’s current stage highlighted

Audit Trail Integration

The audit trail records who changed the status and when.
If ISO compliance mode is enabled in Settings, users must provide a change reason for every status transition — useful for regulated industries and quality management.

Important Status changes are permanent audit trail entries. While you can move an entry backward to a previous stage (e.g., sending it back from QC to Production for rework), the forward transition is still recorded in the history. This ensures a complete and honest record of the job’s lifecycle.

Completed Stages

Marking a stage as "completed" tells GlyphFex that entries reaching this stage are done. This has several important effects throughout the application:

Due date notifications are suppressed — no more alerts for a job that’s already shipped.
SLA tracking stops — the clock no longer counts against completed entries.
Overdue counts exclude completed entries, keeping your Dashboard analytics accurate.
Calendar "Active Only" filter hides completed entries, showing only work in progress.
Calendar "Active + Recent 30d" filter shows completed entries from the last 30 days alongside active ones, useful for reviewing recent deliveries.
Auto-archive (if configured in Settings) applies to completed entries, automatically archiving them after a set number of days to keep your active workspace clean.
Stale detection is disabled for completed stages — a finished job can’t be stale.

Note Every pipeline must have at least one completed stage. If you attempt to remove the last completed stage from a pipeline, GlyphFex will block the change and prompt you to designate another stage as completed first.

Tip Common completed stage names include Shipped, Closed, Delivered, Completed, and Cancelled. You can have multiple completed stages — for example, both "Shipped" and "Cancelled" can be marked as completed, since neither should continue tracking SLA.

Next Steps

Now that your pipeline is configured, explore these related topics:

Entries & Forms — learn how to create entries and work with custom fields, tags, and templates.
Dashboard — see your pipeline in action with card, table, and timeline views.
Analytics — dive into SLA compliance, stage bottleneck analysis, and KPI tracking.
Calendar & Gantt — visualize your entire pipeline on a timeline with stage bars and capacity load.
Shop Floor & Display — advance jobs through stages with one tap on the kiosk interface.
Configuration — set up holidays, business calendars, notifications, and more.