👤 For managers and analysts in post-activation accounts, with processes maturing
🔐 Available on all plans
🎯 For those who want to ensure nothing is lost when a card changes phase and that anyone can understand what happened in a demand without needing to ask
Traceability is the ability to answer, at any moment, what happened with a demand: who touched it, what changed, why it advanced or stalled. It is what turns a process into something that defends itself when someone asks 'what happened here?'
The good news is that Pipefy already offers the infrastructure for this. The activity history exists, the fields exist, the comments exist. What makes the difference is how the team uses these resources day to day.
📖 What you will learn here:
What 'traceability' means in practice
Traceability is not bureaucracy. It is the difference between a process that works when the assignee is on vacation and one that grinds to a halt because no one knows what was agreed.
In practice, a traceable process has three characteristics:
Context available: any team member can open a card and understand the current state of the demand without needing to ask anyone. The fields are filled, the comments record the decisions, the history shows what changed.
Documented transitions: when a card changes phase, it is clear what was done to make that happen. Information collected, approvals recorded, blockers resolved.
Clear responsibility: each card has an identified assignee. Each action has an author. No one needs to guess whose the next step is.
A traceable process is not slower. It is faster, because people spend less time wondering what happened and more time solving what needs to be done.
How to standardize filling with required fields
The biggest enemy of traceability is the incomplete card. When fields are left blank, the information that should be in the process stays in someone's head, in an email or in a WhatsApp message.
Pipefy lets you configure fields as required within each phase of the pipe. When a required field is not filled in, the system blocks the card's movement to the next phase. The process does not advance without the necessary information.
How to configure:
- Access the pipe settings.
- Select the phase where the field should be required.
- Locate the field and check the required option.
- Save the settings.
The configuration is done per phase, not per whole pipe. This means you can require different information at different moments of the process. An approval field only becomes required in the approval phase. An invoice field only becomes required in the financial phase.
Start with the fields that cause the most rework when they are blank. If every week someone needs to go back to find a specific piece of information, that is the first field to make required.
How to avoid duplicates and orphan cards
Two common problems in operations that grow: duplicate cards for the same demand and cards that sit idle with no assignee, no deadline and no activity. Both erode traceability because they create noise in the process.
Duplicate cards
They usually arise when there is no standardized entry point for the process. If anyone can create a card any way they want, the same demand can enter twice with different titles.
To reduce duplicates:
- Use the start form as a single door. Configure a process start form and guide the team to always use that channel to open new demands. This standardizes how the information arrives and makes it easier to identify duplicates.
- Standardize the card title. Define a convention for naming cards. For example: '[Requester name] + [Demand type] + [Date]'. A clear pattern reduces the chance of two cards for the same demand having completely different titles and going unnoticed.
- Before creating, check whether it already exists. For lower-volume processes, a moment of verification before creation solves a good part of the duplicates.
Orphan cards
These are cards with no assignee, no recent activity and no defined deadline. They live in the pipe as open demands that no one knows are still relevant.
- Assign an assignee at the moment of creation. If the card has no owner from the start, the chance of it becoming orphaned is high. Configure the assignee field as required in the entry phase.
- Use the List view with a filter to identify stalled cards. Filter for cards with no recent activity or no assignee. A weekly 10-minute review eliminates the buildup of orphan cards before it becomes a bigger problem.
A clean process is a reliable process. When the team knows the pipe reflects reality, people consult the pipe before asking someone. When the pipe has noise, people ignore the pipe and ask anyway.
How to use comments and history as an audit trail
The card's activity history automatically records phase movements, creation, completion and emails sent and received. But complete traceability also depends on what the team records intentionally in the comments.
Three situations that always deserve a comment:
- Decisions that do not stay in a field. If there was an exception to the standard process, a negotiated deadline, a verbal approval, record it in a comment. The automatic history does not capture intentions, only actions.
- Blockers and external dependencies. If the card is stalled waiting for a supplier's response, an approval from someone outside the pipe or information from another system, record the reason and the date. When the deadline passes, anyone can understand why the card did not advance.
- Transfer of responsibility. When a card changes hands, a comment with @ to the new assignee provides context on the current state and makes clear who is taking over from that point.
For more complete audits of pipe configuration, changes to automations and member permissions, access Manage > Audit Logs inside the pipe. This view gathers the structural history of the process in a single place.
Traceability checklist by process type
Not every process needs the same level of traceability. Below is a practical guide by type of operation.
Approval processes
Essential required fields: requester, value or object of the approval, deadline, decision made (approved, rejected, approved with a caveat).
Mandatory comment on: any rejection or approval with a caveat. The reason needs to be recorded.
Assignee required on: all phases. An approval with no identified assignee is not traceable.
Service and ticket processes
Essential required fields: entry channel, priority, ticket category, service assignee, resolution date.
Mandatory comment on: closing the ticket. A line describing what was done to resolve it turns the history into a knowledge base.
Attention to: reopened cards. If a ticket was closed and came back, the reason for the reopening needs to be recorded.
Onboarding and hiring processes
Essential required fields: start date, documents received by phase, assignee for each step, status of each deliverable.
Mandatory comment on: any delay. If a step did not happen on the expected date, the reason needs to be in the card.
Attention to: cards that stay in the documentation phase longer than expected. They usually indicate communication outside the pipe.
The golden question for any process: if I open this card three months from now, can I understand what happened without talking to anyone? If the answer is no, there is room to improve traceability.
Before moving on, confirm that you have applied:
☐ I identified the fields that cause the most rework when they are blank
☐ I configured those fields as required in the correct phases of the pipe
☐ I defined a title convention for the process cards
☐ I assign an assignee at the moment each card is created
☐ The team knows when to record a comment: decisions, blockers and transfers
☐ I do a periodic review of cards with no activity to eliminate orphans
