States, reasons and kinds

A form's submissions move through its states. A state is a name and two flags: whether it counts as closed, and whether entering it needs a reason; a closed state may also delete what reaches it after a number of minutes. Any state can be moved to any other; what noticebox enforces is not the path but the record: every move is an event with who, when and why, and a state that needs a reason cannot be entered without one.

The presets

A form's kind chooses its first states. They can be renamed, reordered, added to or removed on the form's Settings tab, as long as a state with submissions in it stays.

Report, a notice about content:

State	Closed	Needs a reason	Meaning
open			Arrived, nobody has looked yet
in_review			Someone is looking at it
acted_on	yes	yes	Something was done about the content
rejected	yes	yes	Nothing was done, on purpose

Message, a contact message:

State	Closed	Needs a reason	Meaning
new			Arrived, not answered
answered	yes		Answered, by whatever means

stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> open: a page posts
  open --> in_review: someone looks
  in_review --> acted_on: done something<br/>(with the reason)
  in_review --> rejected: done nothing<br/>(with the reason)
  acted_on --> [*]: retention removes<br/>the personal fields
  rejected --> [*]: retention removes<br/>the personal fields

A report's usual path, from left to right: the two closed states at the end need a reason and start the retention clock. The arrows are the usual moves, not the only ones: any state can be moved to any other, and moving a closed one back to in_review reopens it.

What the flags do

Closed means done: the submission leaves the Open list and the form's retention starts counting. Moving it to a state that is not closed reopens it, with the old history kept.

Needs a reason makes the reason the record of the decision: what was done, or why nothing was. The dialog refuses the move without one; the reason is shown large in the history.

Deleted after minutes (deleteAfterMinutes, closed states only) deletes a submission that reaches the state that many minutes later, with its history and files, whatever the form's retention says; 0 deletes it at the next sweep, within a minute. It is meant for states such as test or spam, whose submissions are worth nothing once looked at, and keeps them out of the nightly backups too. On the Settings tab it is the "deleted after … minutes" field of a closed state; the submission itself says that it will be deleted, in the inbox and in MCP's next, instead of a retention date it would never reach:

"states": ["new", { "name": "answered", "closed": true }, { "name": "test", "closed": true, "deleteAfterMinutes": 0 }]

Notes

Add a note records text without changing the state: what was found, who was asked, what the reporter said. Notes are part of the history and stay with the submission.

What cannot be changed

The history is append-only: a step, once recorded, is never edited or removed. The fields of a submission are never edited either; retention removes the personal ones, and that removal is recorded with its time.