Status Transitions
Public Preview: Asset Lifecycle is in public preview. The functionality and API surface may evolve in future releases.
Every BOM, purchase order, and shipment in the plugin has a status that indicates where it sits in its lifecycle. Status transition rules govern which changes of status are permitted for each of these object types - turning what would otherwise be a free-form field into a lightweight state machine that can be tailored to the organisation's process.
The default rules ship with sensible forward and reverse transitions for each model. Administrators can add or remove rules to make the workflow stricter (for example, disallowing a direct jump from draft to fulfilled) or more permissive (for example, allowing a cancelled shipment to be reopened).
How Rules Are Evaluated
When the status of a BOM, purchase order, or shipment is changed, the plugin looks for a status transition rule that matches:
- The object type being changed.
- The status the object is moving from.
- The status the object is moving to.
If no matching rule exists, the change is rejected with a validation error. If a rule exists with the Allow Reverse flag enabled, the rule also permits the inverse transition - so a single rule can cover both Draft → Approved and Approved → Draft.
Rules are scoped to a specific object type, so the BOM lifecycle, the purchase order lifecycle, and the shipment lifecycle can all be tuned independently.
Default Lifecycles
Out of the box, the plugin permits the following transitions for each object type. Arrows show each rule's forward direction; transitions marked (reversible) also permit the inverse change.
Bills of Materials
Every transition is reversible by default except cancellation, which is one-way. This lets an approved BOM be moved back to draft for amendment, or an ordered BOM be reverted to approved if procurement is delayed.
Purchase Orders
Purchase orders ship with the same default transitions as BOMs.
Shipments
Every transition is reversible by default except cancellation. A shipment that was originally marked lost can later be marked received if the consignment turns up; a received shipment can be marked returned if it is sent back to the vendor after delivery.
These defaults can be edited at any time from the Asset Lifecycle → Configuration → Status Transition Rules menu.
Customising the Workflow
Adjusting the workflow is just a matter of adding, editing, or removing rules. Some common customisations:
- Lock approved BOMs so that they cannot be moved back to draft by clearing Allow Reverse on the Draft → Approved rule.
- Allow draft BOMs to be cancelled outright by adding a Draft → Cancelled rule (the default ruleset only permits cancellation from approved or ordered).
- Disallow recovering a lost shipment by removing the Lost → Received rule, so a shipment marked lost stays that way.
Because rules are stored as ordinary records, they can be exported, imported in bulk, and changed through the API - which makes it straightforward to keep workflow configuration consistent across multiple NetBox environments.
Allow Reverse Behaviour
When Allow Reverse is enabled on a rule, the rule permits both directions of the transition. This is the default, since most useful transitions in a procurement workflow are reversible (an item returned to draft from approved, a shipment de-marked from received back to shipped after a discrepancy is found).
When Allow Reverse is disabled, the rule permits only the forward direction. Use this for genuinely terminal transitions or for transitions that should require an explicit, separately-defined reverse rule.