State Transitions Are Audited

Most Maintenance Objects that support soft lifecycle definition also have a log to hold significant events throughout a business entity's lifecycle. For example, log entries are created to record:

When the business entity is created (and who created it)
When its status changes (and who changed it)
If a transition error occurred (and the error message)
References to other objects created throughout the entity's lifecycle. For example, if a To Do entry is created as part of processing the entity, the To Do Entry is referenced in the log.
Manual entries added by a user (think of these as "diary" entries)

When a business entity is first created and when it transitions into a new state the system calls Transition algorithm(s) plugged in on the Maintenance Object to record these events. If the maintenance object supports a log these events can be captures as log entries.

Note: Most base package maintenance objects supporting a log may already provide state transition logging as part of their core logic. In this case you only need to provide a Transition plug-in if you wish to override base logging logic with your own.