Chat Lifecycle Stages

Give every conversation a state — and give your team a shared language for where it is and what happens next.

TL;DR

• What it is — a visual builder for the named stages your conversations move through: for example New → In Progress → Awaiting Guest → Resolved.
• Who it's for — account owners and admins design the stages; every team member picks and changes them on conversations as they work.
• Top outcome — instead of "what's happening with that chat?" in a group thread, your team member sees a colour-coded stage badge on every conversation and knows at a glance whether it's waiting on them, on the guest, or on someone else.

At a glance

How to find it

Breadcrumb: Settings → Workflow Lifecycle Stages.

Direct URL: https://app.lodgestory.com/crm/settings/states

[SCREENSHOT: states-nav.png — Settings sidebar with Workflow Lifecycle Stages highlighted]

What is Workflow Lifecycle Stages?

The problem it solves

Conversations age unpredictably. Some are quick — "What's the Wi-Fi password?" — open, answer, done. Others wait on a blocker: a supplier, housekeeping, a refund approval, a team member who's on a call. Without a shared state model, the only way to know where a conversation stands is to open it and read — and that doesn't scale past the first few dozen conversations a day.

Workflow Lifecycle Stages gives your conversations a named state your team member picks explicitly. "Moved to Awaiting Supplier — supplier ETA Tuesday." Everyone sees the stage on the conversation card. A manager filters the inbox by stage and sees every blocked conversation in one view. A weekly report breaks down how long conversations sat in each stage.

What you get

• A visual builder for designing your stages and the valid paths between them. Drag stages onto a canvas; draw arrows for the transitions you want to allow.
• Three kinds of stages. Starting (where every conversation begins), In-progress (the middle of the flow), and Final (a terminal stage like Resolved or Closed).
• Colour-coded badges on every conversation card in the inbox, filter panels, and the stage selector itself. Resolved looks green; Blocked looks amber; Escalated looks red.
• Explicit transitions. Your team members can only move a conversation between stages that you've connected — no accidental jumps, no half-defined flows.
• A stage history on every conversation. Every stage change is time-stamped, attributed to the team member who made it, and can carry a short note explaining why. Audit the history at any time.
• Notes on each transition. When a team member changes a stage, they can add a short remark — "Moved to Blocked — waiting on supplier ETA" — that travels with the conversation's history.
• Multiple workflows per workspace. Typical setup: one workflow for guest support, a second for internal maintenance work orders. Each applies where it makes sense.

How it's different

• Separate from tickets. Most tools conflate a conversation's lifecycle with a ticket's state. Lodgestory keeps them apart: workflow lifecycle stages track where the conversation is; Ticket Workflows track how tickets on a channel are categorised. A single conversation can move through multiple stages while accumulating tickets of its own.
• A visual canvas, not a configuration file. You design on a canvas, drag stages around, and draw arrows — the same approach used in the Bot Journey builder.
• Team-member driven. Every stage change is an explicit action by a team member, with an optional note. There's no silent automation — your history is always a record of what a person decided.

Customer scenarios

• A front-desk lifecycle. New Enquiry → Pre-booking Question → Booking Confirmed → Pre-stay Prep → During Stay → Post-stay Follow-up → Review Requested → Closed. Each stage has its own colour. Managers filter by Pre-stay Prep to see which bookings need last-mile attention this week.
• Blocked-conversation visibility. Blocked — Supplier, Blocked — Finance, Blocked — Legal. Team members flip conversations in and out as blockers resolve. A weekly report shows how long conversations sit blocked and by whom.
• Triage levels. Triage → Routine → Urgent → Critical. A bot journey's human-handover step prompts the team member to pick a triage level before replying, so every human-touched conversation lands with a priority attached.

How it fits with the rest of Lodgestory

• Home / Unified Inbox — conversations show the current stage as a coloured badge on the card. The right-hand details panel lets your team member change stages, add a note, and see the full history.
• Inbox filters — filter any view by workflow and specific stage, so "show me every conversation currently in Awaiting Guest" is two clicks.
• Reports — the stage column is available in conversation exports, including time-in-stage for each transition.
• Ticket Workflows — a different and complementary concept. Stages are per-conversation; ticket categories are per-channel. A conversation can be Awaiting Guest and simultaneously have an open Maintenance / HVAC ticket against it.

Core concepts

Quick Start — build your first workflow in five minutes

Step 1 — Open Workflow Lifecycle Stages

Settings → Workflow Lifecycle Stages.

[SCREENSHOT: states-qs-1-list.png]

Step 2 — Create a new workflow

Click + Create Workflow. Give it a name (for example Hospitality Front Desk), a short description, and any tags that help you find it later. The builder canvas opens.

Step 3 — Add your starting stage

On the canvas, click + Stage. Pick Starting as the type, name it New, and choose a blue colour. Place it on the canvas.

[SCREENSHOT: states-qs-3-first-stage.png]

Step 4 — Add the middle and final stages

Repeat with In Progress (in-progress, amber), Awaiting Guest (in-progress, purple), and Resolved (final, green).

Step 5 — Draw transitions

Drag an arrow from New to In Progress and label it Start work. From In Progress to Awaiting Guest (Need more info). From Awaiting Guest back to In Progress (Guest replied). From In Progress to Resolved (Close).

[SCREENSHOT: states-qs-5-canvas.png]

Step 6 — Save

Saving runs a quick validation — at least one starting stage, every arrow connected to real stages. On success your workflow is ready to use.

Step 7 — Apply it to a conversation

Open Home / Unified Inbox, pick a conversation, and open the right-hand details panel. Choose your new workflow. The conversation starts in New and only the transitions you drew are available. Add a note when you move it to the next stage — that note becomes part of the conversation's history.

[SCREENSHOT: states-qs-7-apply.png]

What's next

• Filter the inbox by stage to build saved views per workflow — see Home filters.
• Run the conversation report broken down by stage — see Reports.

How it works

You design workflows on a visual canvas. Each stage is a node with a name, a colour, and a type. Each transition is a labelled arrow between two stages.

1. An admin or account owner creates a workflow and lays out its stages and transitions.
2. Saving the workflow runs a validation — at least one starting stage, every transition connected to real stages, no orphan arrows. On success, the workflow is live.
3. A team member opens a conversation and attaches the workflow. The conversation starts in the workflow's starting stage.
4. As work progresses, your team member changes the stage. The UI only offers transitions you defined, so it's impossible to move a conversation somewhere unreachable.
5. Each stage change can carry an optional note. The change is time-stamped and attributed to the team member who made it.
6. The current stage shows as a coloured badge on the conversation card. The full history is one click away in the details panel.

Stage changes appear in every team member's inbox within a few seconds, so filters and dashboards stay in sync as work happens.

Features in depth

The workflow list

Each workflow shows up as a card with its name, description, number of stages, whether it's active, and any tags you've added. From the card you can edit, duplicate, toggle active, or delete. Use tags to group workflows by use case (for example guest-ops, maintenance).

The canvas builder

The canvas uses drag-and-drop for layout. Every stage has a property panel on the right where you set:

• Name — what your team members see on the badge and in the picker.
• Type — Starting, In-progress, or Final.
• Colour — pick from a palette or enter a hex value.
• Position — where it sits on the canvas, purely visual.

Every transition has:

• From and To stages.
• Label — a short phrase like Start work or Close.

Saving triggers a validation. If anything's off — missing starting stage, orphan arrow, duplicate stage name — the builder highlights the problem and explains what to fix.

Attaching a workflow to a conversation

In the right-hand details panel of any conversation, a Stage section lets your team member:

• Attach a workflow — pick from the active workflows in your workspace. The conversation starts in the workflow's starting stage.
• Change the stage — only valid next stages (based on the arrows you drew) are offered.
• Add a note — a short remark explaining why they're moving the conversation.
• Open the history — a modal listing every past stage change, who made it, when, and any notes.

Only valid next stages show up

When a team member goes to change a stage, Lodgestory offers only the stages reachable from the current one through your defined transitions. This keeps the workflow honest — no surprise jumps, no half-built paths.

Restart a conversation's workflow

If a conversation that's Resolved re-opens (for example a guest replies weeks later), you can reset the workflow to the starting stage cleanly. The previous history is preserved; a new starting-stage entry is added to the log.

Colour-coded badges everywhere

The colour you pick on each stage surfaces on:

• The conversation card in the inbox.
• The stage selector in the details panel.
• Inbox filter chips.
• The stage column in conversation reports.

Pick colours that mean something at a glance — green for resolved, amber for in-progress, red for escalated — and your team reads the inbox like a traffic map.

Roles and permissions

Connections

• Home / Unified Inbox — conversations show the current stage on the card; the details panel is where stage changes happen.
• Inbox filters — filter by workflow and specific stage to build saved views.
• Reports — stage and time-in-stage are available as columns.
• Ticket Workflows — a separate system for ticket categories. Conversations can have both a lifecycle stage and tickets with categories.
• Bot Journeys — bots hand off to humans at configurable points; your team member then picks a stage manually based on your workflow.

Limits a user will run into

Errors and FAQ

You might see

• "Workflow needs a starting stage" — add at least one stage marked Starting before saving.
• "Transition references a stage that doesn't exist" — one of your arrows points to a stage you removed. Delete the orphan arrow or re-add the stage.
• "Invalid transition" — you tried to move a conversation to a stage that isn't reachable from its current stage. Pick a valid target, or edit the workflow to allow the direct jump.
• "Conversation already has a workflow attached" — change the stage on the existing workflow instead of re-attaching.

FAQ

Can I edit a workflow while conversations are using it?
Yes, with a caveat. Adding new stages or transitions is always safe. Removing a stage that conversations are currently sitting on leaves those conversations stranded on the removed stage — the badge keeps showing the old name, but no new transitions out of it will work. Either migrate those conversations first, or accept the old name as a retired stage.

Can a conversation be on two workflows at once?
No — one active workflow per conversation. If you need two parallel dimensions (for example lifecycle and urgency), either make a single workflow with combined stages, or use inbox tags as a light-weight second dimension.

Are stage changes time-stamped for reporting?
Yes. Every stage change records when it happened and who made it, so time-in-stage is always available in reports.

Can a bot automatically change a stage?
Today, stage changes are explicit team-member actions. When a bot hands off a conversation to a human, the human picks the stage as part of their first action on it.

Can I build a workflow with no final stage?
Yes — not every flow has a clean ending. Conversations just keep accumulating stage changes indefinitely. The Final type is informational; it's not required for a workflow to be valid.

Why is a stage I expect to see not available on a conversation?
The list of next stages is driven by transitions out of the current stage, not all stages in the workflow. If the stage you want isn't reachable, either pick a reachable one as an intermediate step, or edit the workflow to allow the direct jump you want.

Can I rename a stage without breaking existing conversations?
Renaming the label is safe — conversations stay where they are and the new label shows up immediately. Changing the stage's type (for example from In-progress to Final) is also safe but may affect how your team thinks about the stage.

How do I retire a workflow I no longer use?
Toggle it to inactive. Inactive workflows disappear from the "attach workflow" picker, but conversations already on them keep their state and history. When you're ready, you can delete the workflow entirely — conversations on it will lose the attached workflow but keep their full history.

API

Workflow Lifecycle Stages is available via the Lodgestory partner API for organisations that want to manage workflows and stage transitions programmatically. Ask your Lodgestory point of contact for API credentials and the current reference; endpoints cover workflow creation and updates, attaching a workflow to a conversation, transitioning between stages, and reading the full history.

Changelog

• April 2026 — General availability. Visual canvas builder, three stage types, per-transition notes, time-stamped history on every conversation, inbox filter and report integration.

Related modules and next steps

• Home / Unified Inbox — where stages live on every conversation card.
• Ticket Workflows — the sibling concept for ticket categorisation, not a substitute.
• Reports — stage and time-in-stage as reporting columns.
• Bot Journeys — automate the handling of conversations up to the point a human picks them up and sets a stage.