Lifecycles

The states things move through, who moves them, and what cannot be undone.

A conversation

One email conversation and everything hanging off it.

                       new mail arrives
                              │
                              ▼
   Needs processing ──────► Read ──────► Closed
        ▲    ▲                 │            │
        │    └── new mail that │            │
        │        changes the   │            │
        │        requirement ──┘            │
        └───────── new mail on a closed conversation ┘

State	What it means	Who moves it
Needs processing	Never processed, or the last run did not finish, or mail has arrived that changes the requirement, or documents remain unread	The system, at sync; a person, by processing it
Read	A complete reading — line items, parameters, suggested products — and nothing outstanding	The system, on a successful run
Closed	Finished for now. Off the open inbox	A person, by closing it

A closed conversation is not processed.
New mail on a closed conversation reopens it automatically — closing is “done for now”, not “done forever” (R3).
Re-processing replaces the previous reading; it does not patch it (R13).

An opportunity

The commercial job. Several conversations can belong to one opportunity. “Lead” and “opportunity” are stages on the same record — there is no conversion that migrates rows.

Matched, in this order: the customer’s project reference, then the project name, then our quotation number.

Stage history is kept as it happens. Time-through-the-funnel cannot be reconstructed later from a current-stage column.

A document’s commercial type

Separate from open/closed — this says what the mail is.

Type	What it means
Enquiry	A request for a quotation
Purchase order	An order the customer is placing
Order acknowledgement	Amendments, revised dates, cancellations on something already ordered
Revision request	A change to a requirement already quoted
Other	Service, finance, or unrecognised — unrecognised becomes a review item

Once a person corrects the type by hand, later mail never changes it again (R6).

A document attached to a conversation

   Waiting ──► Read
       │
       └────► Failed ──(person retries)──► Waiting

Failed is final unless someone explicitly retries that one document (R49). Nothing retries it automatically.

A quotation

Versions are kept. Sending records that it was issued — unlike a download-only draft, send is a real state. A later PO is compared to the quotation it accepts.

An option choice made against a line that has since changed identity is withheld, and the person must confirm or discard it (R36). Discarding cannot be undone.

Raised after PO-vs-quote verification, or manually when there is no inbound PO (a separate permission). Amendments are revisions. ERP handoff is the step after a confirmed order; retries are against the row, not against a message that already forgot the state.

See Enquiry to quotation.