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Pipelines are Echelon’s CRM layer — the structured workspace where you track contacts, leads, and deals as they move through your business. Every contact in Echelon lives inside a pipeline, and every action your AI Employees take is anchored to pipeline data. When the AI Manager identifies a stale lead or triggers a sequence, it’s working from what’s happening in your pipelines.

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What pipelines contain

A pipeline in Echelon is organized around stages — the steps a contact or deal moves through on the way to a closed outcome. Within each stage, you can have any number of contacts or deals, each with their own history, activity log, and associated tasks.

Contacts

Individual people or organizations you’re tracking. Each contact record holds their communication history, pipeline stage, and any active sequences.

Deals

Opportunities associated with contacts. Track deal value, stage progression, and outcomes as your AI Employees work each opportunity.

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How pipelines connect to the AI Manager and AI Employees

Your pipelines are the source of truth that the AI Manager reads to decide what to do next. When a contact sits in the same stage too long, the AI Manager flags it. When a deal advances, the Manager can trigger the next step in a sequence automatically. AI Employees act within pipelines — the Sales AI reaches out to contacts, the Billing AI sends invoices tied to deals, and the Support AI updates records after resolving a customer issue. Every action an AI Employee takes is logged against the relevant pipeline record so you always have a complete history.
1

A contact enters your pipeline

Whether added manually, imported, or captured from an inbound channel, contacts land in a defined stage of your pipeline.
2

The AI Manager monitors pipeline activity

It tracks how long contacts stay in each stage, watches for stale deals, and identifies where action is needed.
3

An AI Employee takes action

The Manager assigns the appropriate AI Employee — Sales AI to send outreach, Billing AI to follow up on a payment, or Support AI to respond to a message.
4

The pipeline updates automatically

As actions are completed and contacts respond, their stage and activity log update in real time, keeping your pipeline current without manual data entry.

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Sequences within pipelines

Sequences are multi-step outreach campaigns that run within a pipeline context. When the AI Manager assigns your Sales AI Employee to re-engage a set of contacts, it launches a sequence — a series of messages sent over time, personalized to each contact, across your configured channels.
Sequences respect contact context. Your Sales AI draws on each contact’s pipeline history and prior interactions to personalize messages, rather than sending the same content to everyone.
Sequences continue running automatically. You can review their progress at any time in the pipeline view and step in on any contact if you want to handle a response directly.

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Contact and pipeline limits by plan

The number of contacts and pipelines available to you depends on your plan.
PlanContactsPipelines
StarterUp to 1,000Limited
GrowthUnlimitedUnlimited
ScaleUnlimitedUnlimited
On the Starter plan, once you reach 1,000 contacts, you won’t be able to add new ones until you upgrade or remove existing records. Plan your pipeline capacity accordingly if you’re growing quickly.

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Channels available in pipelines

The channels your AI Employees can use within pipelines depend on your plan:
  • Email — available on all plans
  • WhatsApp — available on Growth and Scale plans
  • SMS — available on Growth and Scale plans
Adding channels expands what your AI Employees can do within each pipeline, reaching contacts through the medium most likely to get a response.

AI Manager

See how the AI Manager reads your pipelines to assign tasks and trigger sequences.

AI Employees

Learn which AI Employees act within pipelines and what they can do.