Marking a lifecycle state as Transitory

If you have a lifecycle state where a document should never remain, mark it as Transient or Temporary.

For example, if you define a state 'Send to SAP' where automations are set up for sending an invoice to SAP, the document should not remain in this state. Instead, it should either move to the next state 'Posted', or - in case of failure in the configured automation task - remain in the previous state 'Approved'.

In this case, during the creation of the lifecycle state, mark it as Transitory.

By marking the state as Transitory, you will see that its shape in the diagram changes, and it is displayed as a diamond so that you can distinguish it from a normal state.

IMPORTANT ⚠️⚠️⚠️

As a general rule, Athento does not recommend using Transitory states. In the case of the example, the state "Send to SAP" should not exist, and the automation tasks should be executed before entering the state "Posted". "Send to SAP" should be a transition and not a state.

Keep in mind that:

• By default, operations or automation tasks are executed before marking the document with the lifecycle state in which you configured them.
• If you set up an operation to update the lifecycle state to "State B" when reaching "State A," you will never see the transition through State A reflected in the document history, as the operation will be executed before the lifecycle state update occurs.

Good practices 👍

• Use operations marked as Transitory if you need to stop the flow of execution of operations in case of a failure and ensure that the lifecycle does not advance.
• If the name you want to give to a state is a verb, it is not a state; use a transition instead.