Projects and Pending state
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2 hours ago
Hi all,
I’m working on an instance where the project lifecycle was customized so that all states depend on one of the phases: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Delivering, and Closing. In other words, each state is only available within its corresponding phase.
At the same time, the customer requested the removal of the Pending (-5) state from the options. To achieve this, the team inactivated the choice -5 and applied a dictionary override on pm_project and pm_project_task attributes like this:
work_in_progress_states=2;-6,
default_work_state=2,
default_open_state=1,
open_states=1
Problem
Despite this setup, in some scenarios the platform still forces the Pending (-5) state due to native automations.
Example:
If a completed project still has an agile phase opened after completion, both the project and its tasks are automatically pushed back into state -5 (Pending). Or, if a closed project has it's active field changed to true, the same happens. All understandable actions taken by the automation in those circunstances.
To mitigate this, we tried adjusting the attributes like this:
work_in_progress_states=2;-6,
default_work_state=2,
default_pending_state=-6,
pending_states=-6,
default_open_state=1,
open_states=1
But the system continues to push -5 in those scenarios.
Additional Observation
When creating a project task directly from the platform (within a project), it is correctly created in Open ( 1 ) — as defined in the table defaults and attributes.
However, when creating tasks through the Planning Console → Add Child Tasks, the new auto created tasks are always born in Pending (-5).
This difference suggests that the Planning Console may be bypassing the dictionary attributes and directly using internal logic tied to the legacy state -5.
Questions to the community
Why does the Planning Console always create tasks in -5 (Pending), even if the default open state is 1?
Is there any compliant way to prevent native automations from forcing projects and tasks back to -5? Or is the only realistic recommendation to the customer that they embrace Pending (-5) in their processes?
Does any official documentation describe all contexts where the platform forces state -5 on projects and tasks? I could not find this level of detail in the docs, and this is very important if we are to recommend usage of Pending state.
My current thought
My inclination is to recommend the customer to keep using Pending (-5), since this state is deeply wired into several native automations (e.g., Planning Console, Agile phases, etc.). Overriding it seems fragile and likely to cause side effects.
Still, if there’s a known workaround or best practice to safely eliminate -5 from the lifecycle without breaking core behaviors, I’d be very interested to learn more.
