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Tags, internal notes and conversation stages are three separate ways to organise the VGraple CRM inbox, and none of them are ever visible to the customer. Tags label a contact permanently, notes leave private context on one conversation, and stages track where a conversation sits in a workflow you define.
Tags, notes and stages: first 5 of 12 steps
- 1Open a conversation
- 2Click the tag picker
- 3Select a tag to apply it
- 4Remove a tag
- 5Create a new tag from Contacts, then
Before you start
- Applying or removing a tag needs the "Edit contacts" permission; adding an internal note needs the "Send messages" permission (
inbox:send); creating or changing stages needs the settings pipeline permission. Owners, Admins and Supervisors have all three by default. - Tags must already exist before you can apply them to a contact; create new tags from the Contacts page rather than from inside a conversation.
- Conversation stages are seeded with four defaults (New, In Progress, Waiting Reply, Escalated) the first time your organisation opens Settings, then Chat Stages, and can be fully customised from there.
- All three features ship on every plan, including Free, with no cap tied to plan tier.
Steps
Apply and remove tags
Open a conversation and find the contact detail panel, which lists any tags already assigned under a "Tags" heading.
Click the tag picker to see every tag not yet applied to this contact.
Select a tag to apply it. It appears instantly next to the contact's name, and since tags belong to the contact rather than the conversation, it now shows on every other conversation that same contact has, past or future.
Remove a tag by clicking the small close icon on an applied tag chip. This only removes it from that contact; it does not delete the tag from your organisation's tag list.
Create a new tag from Contacts, then Manage Tags if the one you need does not exist yet. New tags become available to apply from the inbox immediately.
Add an internal note
Open a conversation and switch to its Internal Notes tab, separate from the message thread.
Type your note. Type @ to open a picker of active teammates and select someone to mention them directly in the note.
Send the note. It appears in the conversation's note history with your name and timestamp, visible to any teammate who opens this conversation, but never to the customer.
Mentioned teammates get an email, which includes your note text and the contact's name, so they can act on it even if they are not looking at the inbox right now.
Set or change a conversation stage
- Open a conversation and find the stage picker in the header, showing the current stage's colour and name, or "No stage" if none is set.
- Click it and pick a stage from the dropdown, or "No stage" to clear it. The change is instant and visible to every teammate viewing the inbox.
- Customise your stages from Settings, then Chat Stages, under the heading "Conversation Pipeline." Add a new stage with a name and colour, reorder existing stages with the up and down controls, rename or recolour one, or delete one (conversations using a deleted stage simply lose that stage, they are not affected otherwise).
Why three separate tools instead of one
Tags, notes and stages solve different problems, and collapsing them into one system is exactly what makes an inbox hard to use at scale. A tag answers "what kind of contact is this," permanently, like "VIP" or "Warranty claim," and it should follow the person across every conversation they ever have, including ones that have not happened yet. A stage answers "where is this specific conversation right now," like "Waiting Reply," and it resets to nothing on a brand-new conversation even with a returning, already-tagged customer, because the old conversation's progress says nothing about the new one. A note answers "what does the next agent who opens this need to know," which is inherently tied to one conversation's context, not the whole relationship.
Example
A real-estate agency tags a contact "Hot lead" once, from any conversation, and it now shows on every future WhatsApp thread with them. Each new enquiry conversation still starts at the "New" stage regardless of that tag, and an agent who has to step away mid-negotiation leaves an internal note ("Asked for a 2BHK under Rs 60 lakh near the station, waiting on floor plans") mentioning the colleague picking up the next shift, so nothing gets re-asked.
What you will see
A tag applied to a contact shows as a small coloured chip in the conversation panel and as a small dot next to the contact's name in the inbox list, for every conversation that contact is part of. A stage shows as a coloured dot in the inbox list and a named picker in the conversation header; changing it updates instantly for every teammate looking at the inbox, including anyone with the stage filter active who may see the conversation move in or out of their filtered view. Internal notes appear in their own tab, kept entirely separate from the customer-visible message thread, with mentioned teammates additionally notified by email outside the app.
Settings and options
| Feature | Belongs to | Where to manage it |
|---|---|---|
| Tags | The contact (persists across all their conversations) | Contacts page, Manage Tags, applied from the inbox |
| Internal notes | The individual conversation | Internal Notes tab inside each conversation |
| @ mentions in notes | The individual note | Type @ while writing a note |
| Conversation stages | The individual conversation | Settings, then Chat Stages (Conversation Pipeline) |
| Default stages | Organisation-wide, seeded once | New, In Progress, Waiting Reply, Escalated |
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The tag I need is not in the picker | It has not been created yet for your organisation | Go to Contacts, then Manage Tags to create it, then return to the conversation |
| A mentioned teammate says they never got an email | Their org account email may be wrong, or the email landed in spam | Confirm their email in Settings, then Team, and check spam folders |
| The stage filter pill is missing from the inbox sidebar | Your organisation has zero stages configured | Visit Settings, then Chat Stages once; the four defaults seed automatically on first visit |
| A conversation's stage reset to "No stage" unexpectedly | The stage it was using was deleted from Settings, then Chat Stages | Recreate the stage if needed, or assign a different one to the affected conversations |
| Tags applied to a contact do not show on an older conversation | This should not happen since tags follow the contact, not the conversation; check you are viewing the same contact | Confirm the conversation's contact matches the one you tagged, especially if two contact records exist for the same person |
Related reading
If a contact seems to have two separate records with different tag histories, see merging duplicate contacts. Once conversations are tagged and staged, pair this with quick replies to answer common questions faster inside whichever stage a conversation is in.