Workorders have a lifecycle, that is, they have a state , and that state may change over their lifetime. The Basic Workflow Tutorial illustrates this lifecycle.
Workorder States
Active
An active workorder is one which is "currently of interest", ie it contains parts to be nested, or cut, or that have been recently cut, and may be awaiting dispatch or invoicing. A workorder remains active until we explicitly change its state, usually by closing it. PrimeCut's default filter for selecting workorders is to show Active Workorders, and it is important to close workorders when we are done with them to keep this view uncluttered, and make it responsive.
Within the Active State, we can also distinguish two sub-states: Active Incomplete and Active Complete. Active Complete workorders are workorders whose parts have all been cut, and thus all plates those parts have been nested on have been Reconciled.
On-Hold
An On-Hold workorder is one which contains parts that we should not yet be cutting; perhaps we are awaiting confirmation of quantities, part grades or updated drawings from the customer. Part Approval Status can also be used in a similar way.
Cancelled
A workorder cannot be deleted as such, but it can be cancelled. We don't delete the workorders as there may be useful information held in them, and they may be partially cut at the time they are deleted.
Closed
When we have finished with a workorder, we can close it. The parts in a workorder should all be cut (and dispatched, if dispatch is active).
NOTE It is important to close workorders when you are finished with them, to keep PrimeCut running efficiently, and to make the Active Workorders view meaningful. A closed workorder is still in the system and can still be accessed, it is just at a lower visibilty level.
The workorder does not close automatically, we close it by opening the workorder and changing its state to Closed, or from the workorder selector by selecting a range of workorders, right clicking and choosing Close Completed Jobs.
If Close Completed Jobs is applied to a job that is not yet complete, then you will be warned that it is not complete, and be prompted as to whether you really want to close it. Only users in the Administrators group can Force Close an incomplete workorder in this way, and a Force Close dialog similar to the below will be displayed:
Force Close can be used like this to cleanup a database, where users have not been closing workorders for a long time. However, if there are too many to close, then it may be best to contact Kinetic to run a SQL query to Force Close a range of workorders.
See also Good Housekeeping.