About Lifecycles

A lifecycle is made up of one or more states that the object can be in as defined by the policy that governs the object. An object's state lets people know its status within the business process and determines who can access the object and what actions they can perform. Your business administrator can configure lifecycles for your company; this guide describes the default lifecycles.

Lifecycle states can be associated with business process automation, so specific events and checks automatically occur when an object is promoted to a state. For example, when a part is promoted to Release in Engineering BOM Management, the system checks to make sure all component parts are in the Release state or beyond.

You can often see the current state for an object from a summary page that lists the object or from the object's Properties page. For more information about an object's lifecycle, look at the Lifecycle page to see:

  • All states in the object's lifecycle and the sequence the object passes through the states, including any state branching that can occur
  • The current state of the object
  • Any signature requirements for promotion from each state and any signature that has been applied for each requirement
  • Any routes that could block the promotion from each state, including the item's name, status, and description and a link to view details for the route

An object may have different lifecycles depending on which combination of apps is installed.