Task States
Overview
Your system has two types of tasks, and they handle progress tracking differently.
Production tasks follow a simple linear lifecycle: a step is either Not Started, In Progress (started), or Completed (finished). There is no customization — every production step moves through the same three stages.
Lab tasks offer fully customizable states. Instead of a fixed lifecycle, you define your own set of states that reflect how work actually moves through your lab. A billing dispute task might progress through completely different stages than an IT request or a customer complaint. States give you the flexibility to model each workflow precisely.
State Categories
Every state you create belongs to one of four categories. These categories determine how the system treats a task — whether SLA timers run or pause, whether a task counts as "done," and how it appears on the kanban board on My Work page.
Submitted
The starting point. When a task is first created, it lands in a Submitted state. This category represents work that has been logged but not yet picked up.
Examples:
Not Started — a freshly created task, not yet reviewed
Triage — logged and awaiting prioritization by a manager
Pending Review — submitted by a technician and waiting for someone to look at it
In Progress
Active work. A task in this category means someone is working on it. SLA timers continue running.
Examples:
In Progress — actively being worked on
Under Investigation — a quality issue being researched
Awaiting Parts — work started but paused for materials (still counts as active from the lab's perspective)
Escalated — handed off to a senior technician or manager
Waiting on Customer
The task is blocked on an external party. When an SLA policy has "Pause on Waiting on Customer" enabled, timers pause automatically while a task is in this category.
Examples:
Waiting on Doctor — need clarification on a prescription, shade, or bite
Waiting on Scans — digital impressions haven't been submitted yet
Waiting on Approval — a treatment plan or design approval is pending from the office
Waiting on Materials from Customer — physical impressions or models in transit
Resolved
The work is done. Moving a task into a Resolved state records the resolution time in analytics and can trigger SLA completion. A task can be closed from any state, but closing from a Resolved state is the clean path.
Examples:
Resolved — the issue has been addressed
Completed — work finished and verified
Resolved — No Action Needed — investigated and determined no work was required
Resolved — Duplicate — closed as a duplicate of another task
Credit Issued — a billing dispute resolved with a credit
Configuring States
Creating States
States are managed under Settings → Task States. When you create a state, you provide:
Internal Label — the name your team sees (e.g., "Waiting on Doctor")
External Label — the name visible to customers if the task is shared (e.g., "Awaiting Information")
Category — which of the four categories this state belongs to
Sort Order — controls the display order within its category on the kanban board and in dropdown menus
Tasks are not shared with customers yet. This feature is being developed
Assigning States to Task Templates
Each task template defines which states are available for tasks of that type. Not every task type needs every state — a simple internal request might only need three states, while a complex customer complaint workflow might use eight.
To configure this, go to Settings → Task Templates, select a template, and choose which states to include. You must also designate one state as the default — this is the state a task starts in when created from that template.
Minimum Requirements
A task template must have at least three states, and those states must span at least three different categories. At minimum, you need one Submitted state (for creation), one In Progress state (for active work), and one Resolved state (for completion). This ensures every task has a meaningful lifecycle with a beginning, middle, and end.
How States Appear
Kanban Board
When the kanban board is set to "Group by State," each state becomes a column. Columns are ordered by category (Submitted → In Progress → Waiting on Customer → Resolved), then by sort order within each category. Dragging a task between columns changes its state.
Note:
The "Group by State" view is only available when viewing lab tasks. Production tasks do not have customizable states and are not shown in this view.
Table View
In the table view, the state appears as a colored badge. The badge color corresponds to the category: gray for Submitted, blue for In Progress, yellow/orange for Waiting on Customer, and green for Resolved.
States and SLAs
Task states interact with SLA tracking in two ways:
Resolved states — when a task moves into a Resolved state for the first time, the "Time to Resolve" SLA target is evaluated. If the elapsed time is within the target, it's marked as Hit. If not, it's marked as Missed.
Waiting on Customer states — when the SLA policy has "Pause on Waiting on Customer" enabled, moving a task into a Waiting on Customer state pauses the SLA timer. Moving it out resumes the timer. The total paused duration is tracked and excluded from SLA calculations.