The stages a record moves through

Stages are how a record shows where it has got to, and each Object sets its own. An Object is a kind of record your team defines, and an admin sets its stages up in Settings › Objects, on that Object's own page. If Objects are new to you, read What is an Object? first.

A sample request at Fairgreen Golf Co. might run Requested, With the mill, Shipped, Received, Approved. Once you have defined those, everyone working the record picks from that list, and you can group a list of records by stage to see what is stuck.

Stages are one of the parts of an Object you can keep changing forever. Rename them, add one, reorder them. Nothing you set here is locked in.

Before you start

You need to be an admin, because Settings › Objects only appears for admins. How to work out who can do what in your workspace explains how a person's role decides what they see. The rest of the workspace never needs to come here; they just pick a stage on the record.

Where do you set up stages?

On the Object's own page. Go to Settings › Objects, click the Object, and scroll past the fields to the Statuses section. The records Tideswell ships with keep their stages in Settings › Stages instead, where purchase orders have the same editor.

An Object with no stages defined has no Status control on its records at all, which is the right answer for something that is simply a list, like a fabric library. Add the first stage and the control appears on every record.

If you have not created the Object yet, start with Create an Object and come back.

Add your stages in the order the work happens

Work top to bottom in the order a record actually travels, because that order is what people read on the record and in a grouped list.

1. Press Add status and type the stage name in your own words. "With the mill" is better than "Stage 2" if that is what your team says out loud.
2. Pick a Means for it from the six on the menu, described in the next section.
3. Repeat for each stage.
4. Use the up and down arrows on a row to move a stage, and the × to take one off.
5. Press Save statuses to save the whole set at once.

Nothing is saved until you press Save statuses, so you can lay out five stages, change your mind about two of them, and save once.

What does the Means column do?

Every stage carries one of six fixed meanings underneath the name you gave it: Not started, Waiting for approval, Approved, In progress, Done, Cancelled. The meaning is what Tideswell itself reads, so you can call a stage anything you like and approvals, automations and counts keep working.

This is the reason a rename is safe. Fairgreen can rename "In progress" to "On the water" next season and every automation that fires when a record starts moving carries on untouched, because it was watching the meaning, not the word.

Where two of your stages describe the same phase of work, give them the same meaning. "With the mill" and "In finishing" can both mean In progress: your team needs the difference, Tideswell does not. Save is refused until every row has both a name and a meaning, and the screen tells you which row is short.

How do you stop a record skipping ahead?

Use Can be entered from on the stage that is being skipped. Tick the stages a record is allowed to arrive from, and every other route into that stage is refused on the record itself. Leave the boxes empty and the stage can be reached from anywhere, which is the default.

At Fairgreen, Received is only ticked for Shipped. Someone who opens a sample request that is still sitting in Requested cannot mark it Received; the stage is not offered. That one tick is what stops a record arriving at the end of the process with the middle of it never recorded.

A stage you have only just added cannot be picked as a source until the set has been saved once. Save your stages, come back into the editor, and it is there to tick.

How do you require a field before a stage?

Use Can only be picked once… on the stage and choose the field. The row then reads back as a sentence, for example "Tracking number is filled in", and a record cannot reach that stage until the field has a value.

Two things are worth knowing before you set one:

• The requirement reaches every stage after it as well, so a record cannot jump past the stage to dodge it. Requiring a tracking number at Shipped means Received and Approved need one too.
• Any field can be the requirement, including a checkbox. An unticked checkbox counts as not filled in, which makes a checkbox called "Quality checked" a workable sign-off.

The field has to exist before you can require it. Add a field and pick the right type covers adding one and picking its type, and Plan your fields before you add them is worth four minutes first if the Object is new.

How do you change stages later?

Freely, and at any time. Rename a stage, add one, or move it, then press Save statuses again. Renaming is safe because of the meaning underneath it.

Two things to handle before you remove a stage:

• Move the records out of it first. A record already sitting in a stage you remove keeps showing the old name until somebody moves it on, which reads as a mystery to whoever opens it next.
• Check your automations. A stage that a published automation sets cannot be removed until that automation is edited. The screen lists each one as a link, so you can go straight to it and come back. Adding and reordering are never blocked this way.

Once your stages are saved, the people doing the work take over. How to move a record through its stages and set an owner covers moving a record along and setting who is accountable for it.

How to search, filter and save a view covers saving a view of everything sitting in one stage. Who is allowed to move a record at all comes from the Update dial on Who can see and edit an Object.