Task Status Lifecycle

The Lifecycle

Open, Waiting for someone else and Deferred all represent unfinished work. Completed and Cancelled close ordinary editing. Deleted is an explanatory absence state rather than a stored status.

Transitions Explained

The structured rows cover all directed moves among the three unfinished statuses, closing from each, reopening from either closed status, and deletion from every persisted status. Reopening always chooses Open rather than restoring the preceding status. Closing retains the holder and queue.

What Cannot Happen

A patch cannot substitute for a closing action. Work must be reopened before changing its closed outcome or editing its fields. The workflow service’s already-satisfied requests have a repeat contract that differs from the public console actions.

Concurrency and Timing

A locked read decides the lifecycle change. Public version checks detect stale requests; workflow requests use serialization and current-state repeat handling. Enabled attention participates in the same transaction and can therefore prevent the task write from committing.