Ticket Lifecycle

A ticket moves through a predictable sequence of states from creation to completion, with every transition logged.

The lifecycle

1. Open — the ticket has just been created; its first stage instance activates immediately.
2. Stage activates — a stage instance becomes live, starting the process of finding an assignee.
3. Assignment — the assignment engine (see How Assignment Works) resolves an eligible assignee, human or AI Agent.
4. SLA starts — the stage's deadline clock begins the moment the assignee is notified, not when the stage activated.
5. Work submitted — the assignee completes the stage's form and submits.
6. Approve or reject — if the stage is an Approval type, the outcome determines the next step; other stage types move straight to routing.
7. Next stage, or rework — on_approve/on_submit sends the ticket to the next connected stage; on_reject sends it back for rework (see Branching & Approvals).
8. Completed — once the ticket reaches the End node with no further stages, it's marked Completed and closed out.

Timeline event types

Every ticket keeps a full timeline, built from discrete event types logged as they happen:

• ticket_created
• stage_activated
• assigned (and reassigned, when applicable)
• sla_warning (pre-breach)
• sla_breached
• submitted
• approved / rejected
• completed

Anyone opening a ticket can read this timeline top to bottom and reconstruct exactly what happened, when, and who was responsible at each point — no separate report or chat scrollback required.

For how individual field values are preserved across rework cycles rather than overwritten, see Revisions & History.