The Stage Node

What a stage is, how a patient is assigned when they enter it, and how its due time drives the board

A stage is one step of human work: a call to make, a form to fill, a decision to record. It is the only node that puts a patient on the Care Manager board. Everything your agents see about a patient in a stage comes from this dialog: who works it, how long they have, what the tasks say, which call outcomes exist and which form they fill.

The dialog has four parts, each on its own page:

Part	What it controls	Page
Stage name, Assign to, Stage Due Time	Who gets the patient and the stage clock	This page
Tasks	The to-dos the agent sees on the patient	Stage Tasks
Manual Call Actions	The three call outcomes and their retries	Manual Call Actions
Attach Form	The form the agent fills and the conditions that move the patient	Forms and Conditions

How a Patient Enters a Stage

The patient's stage conversation is created and assigned by the Assign to rule. The assignment is written to the patient's Logs as an agent assignment.
The stage clock starts: the patient's stage due moment becomes now plus Stage Due Time.
Every task under Tasks is created for the patient. With Manual Call Actions on, a call task is created too.
The patient appears on the board under this stage's tab. Their bucket, Today, Upcoming or Overdue, comes from the earliest open task's due time, or from the stage due moment when no task is open.
The patient waits here until a call outcome, a matching form condition or a manual Select Stage moves them along an output.

Stage Name

The name your agents see everywhere: the tab on the board, the stage chip on the card, the Previous stages list and the AI summary's Care Manager Stage line. It is required and limited to 75 characters. Choose the name of the step, not its status: "First call", "Report follow-up", "Post-visit check".

Assign To

Assignment decides whose board the patient lands on. The choice is required.

Assign to	Meaning
Agent	One named person works this stage
Sticky Agent	The same choices as Agent
Team	A team works this stage; the team's own assignment rule picks the member

With Agent or Sticky Agent, Assign Availability decides what happens when the person is away:

Assign Availability	What the platform does on entry
Always	Assigns Assign Agent, whether or not they are online. The patient waits on their board
When Available	Assigns Assign Agent if that person is active, online and logged in at that moment; otherwise assigns Assign Default Agent

Assign Agent and Assign Default Agent list your human agents by first and last name; bots are not offered.
With Team, pick the team under Assign Team.
The rule runs once, on entry. Reassigning the patient by hand later (see Moving and Assigning) holds until the next stage, where that stage's rule runs again.

Example: a night-shift counsellor is the Assign Agent with When Available, and the day-shift lead is the Assign Default Agent. Patients who enter the stage during the day go to the lead; patients who enter at night go to the counsellor.

Stage Due Time

The time the team has for this stage, from 1 to 9999 Hours or Days. The form starts at 1 Hours. It sets the patient's stage due moment when they enter.

What it changes on the board:

The card's Due in chip counts down to it, and turns into Late by once it passes.
When the patient has no open task, this moment decides the bucket: Overdue once it has passed, Today when it falls later today, Upcoming when it falls after today.
When the patient has an open task, the task's due time decides the bucket instead, so the stage due moment only matters between tasks.

Example: a stage with Stage Due Time 2 Days entered on Monday morning puts the patient in Upcoming, moves them to Today on Wednesday morning, and to Overdue on Wednesday after the entry hour if nothing has happened.

Outputs of a Stage

A stage has no single "next" output. It leaves along a call outcome output, present when Manual Call Actions is on, or along a form condition output, one per condition of the attached form. An output with no connection means "stay here". The two pages on call actions and forms list them.

What You Configure — Stage

Setting	Your options	Default
Stage name	Up to 75 characters, required	Empty
Assign to	Agent, Sticky Agent, Team	None, required
Assign Availability	Always, When Available	None
Assign Agent	Any human agent; required for Always and When Available	None
Assign Default Agent	Any human agent; the fallback for When Available	None
Assign Team	Any team; required for Team	None
Stage Due Time	1 to 9999, in Hours or Days	1 Hours

The dialog's Save stays disabled until the stage name, the assignment and the due time are valid. Numbers above 9999 show "Time value should be less than 10,000"; an empty or zero number shows "Time value is required and must be greater than 0".