Manage Entity Lifecycle Using Initiatives

Use this topic to understand how you can manage the publishing and the lifecycle status of catalog entities using initiatives.

All the catalog entities are associated with an initiative and whenever an initiative lifecycle status changes, the status change trickles down to the entities that belong to initiative. Pre-determined rules drive the lifecycle status transition in Launch Experience. However, roles with Change Lifecycle Status privilege can override the lifecycle status of an entity to any desired status.

An initiative goes through these lifecycle statuses for two instances – test and production

Scenario 1 – Release a new product offer in the market

Test Instance

1. In design : Your entities are being designed. You must confirm an initiative to move it to the next status.
2. Ready to publish: This is an interim status. After you publish and receive confirmation from the spoke system, the status moves to the next one.
3. In test: If you have successfully tested, you can move the initiative to Active, otherwise, you can move it back to In design status. Once you have QA approval, move the initiative to Active status.

4. Active: You can export the initiative from a test environment and import it to a production instance.

Production Instance

1. In design : Import the above initiative from the test environment to the In design status.
2. Active: Manually change the status to Active. Publish the initiative to production instance.
3. Launched: Initiative status changes to Launched. The entities of that initiative are now available in the external selling channels. In the test instance, you can manually change the initiative to Launched as well.

Scenario 2 – Revise a product offer to release in the market

Test Instance

1. In design : Your entities are being designed. You must confirm an initiative to move it to the next status.
2. Ready to publish: This is an interim status. After you publish and receive confirmation from the spoke system, the status moves to the next one.
3. In test: If you have successfully tested, you can move the initiative to Active, otherwise, you can move it back to In design status. Once you have QA approval, move the initiative to Active status.

4. Active: You can export it from a test environment and import it to a production instance.

Production Instance

1. In design : Import the above initiative from the test environment and the initiative moves to the In design status.
2. Active: Manually change the status to Active. Publish the initiative to production instance.
3. Launched: Initiative status changes to Launched. The entities of that initiative are now available in the external selling channels. In the test instance, you can manually change the initiative to Launched as well.

You can handle similar scenarios involving bug fixes and major releases in parallel, multiple test instances, and, or retiring or obsoleting an entity, and so on in the same manner as described above.

Note:

All content changes to be made in the test instance only, and not the production instance.

You can associate entities with an initiative only in the In Design status. You can design your product offer, add, or remove entities. After your design is complete, you can confirm your initiative to move it to the Ready for publish status. Now you can't update your entities. After all the entities in an initiative are ready to be published you can publish the initiative.

Optionally, you can also mandate approvals for your initiatives. For example, you can mandate that an initiative must go through an approval process before it moves to Ready to publish.

Lifecycle Stage and User Actions

The following table lists the actions that you can perform on catalog entities depending on the lifecycle of an entity. Additionally, you can also transition within these life cycle statuses by associating the entities with an initiative.

Actions	Status	Description
View	In design Ready to publish In test Launched Active Retired Rejected	You can view the offer details in a read-only mode. This serves as a snapshot of the catalog entity.
Edit	In design	You can open the catalog entity in an edit mode. This takes you through the guided UI flow.
Confirm	In design In test	You can confirm your product catalog entity to move it to the Ready to test or Ready to publish statuses.
Clone	In design Ready to publish In test Launched Active Retired Rejected	Opens the Clone catalog entity dialog box. Eventually takes you to the guided UI flow.
Revise	Launched	You can create a revision of the launched catalog entity.
Retire	Launched	You can associate your product catalog entity with an initiative and the initiative can be retired.
Obsolete	Retired	You can obsolete a product catalog entity after it has been retired.
Publish	Ready to publish	You can publish your product catalog entity to a spoke system for testing.