Program portfolio and lifecycle

What the portfolio is for

The portfolio is the institution-wide registry of program initiatives. While the Programs page lists programs that already exist, the portfolio captures what comes before and around them: ideas under evaluation, proposals in study, programs being launched, and phase-out decisions. Each portfolio entry carries an owner, a phase, and a record of the decisions taken.

The lifecycle: idea to active

A program initiative typically moves through a sequence of phases. Each phase change is recorded, so committees can always answer where an initiative stands and why.

• Idea — an early concept captured with its rationale and expected demand.
• Study — a feasibility or design study, often run as a workflow case with its own template and committee reviews.
• Approval — the formal decision path through councils, ending with an approved program specification.
• Active — the program is running, has an approved version, and can be published to the public catalog.

Portfolio stages and what changes them

The stage label shows where an initiative is in the institution's planning record. An idea is a separate pre-program record; the other labels describe a program or a proposal still in progress. ProgramsFlow uses the working version, approvals, publication history, and planning decisions to determine the status, so changing a date alone cannot change it.

Ideas are entered manually by institution, college, or department managers within their scope. An institution administrator can manually turn an accepted idea into a draft program. A workflow case can instead create a draft automatically when its final approval completes, carrying over the submitted details and mapped courses. Publication and planning decisions are always explicit actions by authorized users.

Planned launch year, launch term, last intake year, and teach-out end year are planning details. They communicate intent and timing, but do not launch a program, publish a version, or change its status automatically. A program becomes Active only when a version is actually published; an approved program that is not published remains Awaiting launch.

Keep three actions separate: archiving a workflow case affects the case history, shelving an idea postpones a pre-program idea, and archiving a program preserves its institutional record. None of these actions is a substitute for another.

• Idea — a concept in the Ideas funnel before a program exists. It can be under study, accepted for development, shelved, or rejected. A shelved idea is postponed, not an archived program.
• Planned — an institution administrator has recorded a plan for a program that is not yet approved or published. Converting an accepted idea can carry its planned launch details, but the plan is intent, not an automatic launch.
• In development — the default status while a program is being prepared and has not yet reached approval or publication. A program proposal still under review also appears here unless it has been rejected.
• Awaiting launch — the program is approved, but no version is currently published. Approval makes it ready; an authorized user must still publish it separately.
• Active — a version is currently published. If an amendment leaves a newer draft unpublished while an older version remains live, the program is still Active.
• Phasing out — an institution administrator has recorded a phase-out decision for a program that has launched at least once. Teach-out and last-intake dates describe the plan; they do not create this status by themselves.
• Discontinued — an institution administrator has recorded a final decision to stop a program that launched at least once. Before doing so, every publicly visible version must be unpublished or hidden from the catalog. This is different from archiving a workflow case.
• Archived — on the Programs page, approved or published programs show Archive program. This keeps the institutional record and removes it from publication. A draft that never reached approval instead shows Delete draft and can be permanently removed; it does not become Archived.
• Rejected draft — a program proposal whose workflow case was finally rejected before a program was created. It remains visible as a rejected proposal; it is not an archived program or a shelved idea.

Working versions and approved snapshots

Every program has one working version that admins edit, and a history of approved snapshots created each time an approval completes. Snapshots are immutable copies — they preserve exactly what was approved, while day-to-day editing continues on the working version. The public catalog always shows the latest published snapshot, never the draft in progress.

How a case becomes a program

When a workflow case of a program-producing process type reaches final approval, the platform creates the program record automatically from the case's submitted data — including its mapped courses — so nothing is retyped. The new program arrives clearly marked for review rather than silently final, and appears in the portfolio and programs list at once.