Pipefy has its own terminology you will naturally assimilate as you interact with the platform. To better understand Pipefy's terms, we've listed here some of the most common and essential ones that you'll always come across when creating or managing your processes.

📣Check Complete Pipefy Glossary.

To help you quickly understand Pipefy's terminology, we have separated this mini glossary into three categories:

A company in Pipefy includes all of your pipes, databases, reports, automations, members, and much more. It’s the digital representation of your company inside Pipefy (at least some elements of it), with processes that can include entire departments or specific teams.

This is your Pipefy, as some call it. Understand more about companies.

There are five company-level user permission in Pipefy: administrator, super admin, member, company guest, and external guest. You can manage these permissions on the company members page (available only for Business and Enterprise plans only).

Company members are part of the company's general account, while pipe members have access to specific processes. Learn more about company members.

A pipe is how a process is called inside Pipefy. Different processes can be turned into a pipe, regardless of their size or business field. The standard pipe visualization is the kanban view, but you can change it to list view too.

Pipes are divided into phases represented by columns, standing for the execution steps of the workflow. Lastly, each phase has its own fields, the rules and conditions to the process progression. Check more info about pipes.

A phase is any step to be carried out in the process for its completion from beginning to end, represented by columns in the kanban view or lines in the list view.

Users can set phases in the process that cards go through or not according to the card’s information and the pipe’s structure. All phases have their peculiarities, adding or confirming information throughout the workflow of requests, demands or tasks. They organize the process into stages and provide greater control and visibility over the status of each card. Learn more about phases.

The start form is usually the first input of your pipe; the beginning of the process and a card creator. It is possible to customize the fields according to the needs of the process, and the form collects the data to create various requests, such as purchase orders, vacations, and much more.

After the start form is completed and sent to the pipe, it creates a card that is added to the beginning of the workflow. Check all details of start forms.

The public form is identical to the start form. The difference is that you’re making the form available to people that don’t have access to your process or don’t have access to Pipefy at all; it’s an external form.

People will access it through a link and won’t need to be registered in Pipefy to send their requests to your pipes. Learn more about public forms.

Fields are bricks of information that build the pieces of the process; essential steps or requirements that users need to input to make a process flow.

It’s possible to customize process phases and start forms in Pipefy with different fields, such as text fields, radio buttons, checklists, instructions and much more. This way, you can establish execution standards and guarantee that the process follows specific patterns. Discover more about fields.

A card is one of the main elements of Pipefy and it represents different types of information according to your process. Cards stand for requests, leads, orders, products, tickets, tasks and whatever makes sense for your process. They gather the pieces of information to guide the process, moving through the phases until the end of the activity. Check all about cards.

Pipes provide five levels of permission. These are: administrator, member, start form only, read-only and restricted view. Based on the permission type, users may or may not perform different actions on the pipe.

The members' page can be accessed by clicking the members icon in the upper right corner of the pipe header. See more about pipe members.

Automations allow users to set rules and events that trigger specific actions in the processes, eliminating manual work. This way, it’s possible to establish faster and error-proof workflows.

All actions performed by automations will be registered in the card history with the pipebot’s name next to it (our personal robot at Pipefy). Learn all about automations.

A connection is an association between two pipes or a pipe and a database. Creating connections makes it easier to gather and access information within pipes and keep the same information in different places updated.

This is an excellent feature for process integration without having to manually share information outside your pipes. Learn more about connections.

A database is an information storage system inside Pipefy you can use to retrieve relevant data across your company’s processes. It can contain data from customers, suppliers, products and much more.

You can access it through the database icon located on the left side menu on almost any page in Pipefy. Check out all possibilities of databases.

Dashboards are a native BI tool that enables you to collect, track and combine different data from your processes to view them dynamically so that you can create your own charts and metrics within Pipefy.

It is possible to create graphics of various types, such as lines, areas, bars, tables, calendars and much more, customizing them according to your process. Learn more abour dashboards.

Portals gather different public forms in the same page to make them accessible to internal or external requesters in a centralized place. This way, users, clients or suppliers won’t need to look for several links when opening requests for your team.

Portals can be customized and can represent a specific department in the company, for example. You can also embed portals on social media channels and websites if you prefer. See all possibilities of portals.

We have two types of reports in Pipefy: company reports and pipe reports. Be careful not to confuse them. The company reports show general aspects common to all pipes, while the pipe reports allow users to visualize all the information extracted from the pipe cards in an organized and customizable way.

Learn more about company reports.

Learn more about pipe reports.

Join the Community to solve your questions and share various ways to use Pipefy with different people. Upskill yourself to grow core Process Management skills with Pipefy Academy's quick online courses.

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