Promote inbound work to production

Promoting inbound work to production is the moment a prepared inbound document — the structured record of a customer order and its line items (the individual parts or tasks to make) — becomes real, trackable work on the shop floor. When you promote, Bulk turns each ready item into a production job (one unit of schedulable work), groups those jobs under a production order (the order-level container that mirrors the inbound document), and moves the document to the In production status.

Use this as the final step of the Inbound flow: once an order's items are checked, complete, and approved, promotion releases them so operators can load, run, and record the work in the Production module.

Two ways to promote

Work reaches production by one of two paths, and you choose based on whether you are releasing a whole order or a single item:

• Promote a whole document (through approval). Prepare every item, mark them all ready, then submit the document. After approval, Bulk creates one job per ready item in the background, opens or reuses the linked production order, and flips the document to In production when the run finishes. This is the normal path for a complete order.
• Promote one item at a time (Scan & Process). On the shop floor, open Scan & Process, scan an item's label, answer any required questions, and create its job immediately — without waiting for the rest of the document. This suits partial releases and rush items.

Before you start

For a whole-document promotion to succeed, the document must be ready to submit. Bulk checks all of the following and blocks submission until they are met:

• The document is In progress (a draft must be started first).
• A customer and a currency are set on the document.
• The document has at least one item.
• Every item is marked ready — no items may still be pending.
• Every item resolves to a part, a process, and a valid quantity. Submission is all-or-nothing: if any single item is incomplete, the whole submission is rejected with a message naming what to fix.
• Any required forms on the document are complete.

You also need the right permissions. These map to roles, which your administrator can customise:

• Submit inbound documents — to submit a document for approval (Operators, Managers, Entity admins, and Owners have this by default).
• Approve inbound documents — to approve and therefore trigger job creation (Managers, Entity admins, and Owners; Operators cannot approve).
• Create production jobs — required for the single-item Scan & Process path.

Promote a whole document

1. Open the document from Inbound Documents and confirm every item shows the Ready status. The document header shows the ready and pending item counts, so you can see at a glance whether anything is still outstanding.
2. Select Submit in the document header and confirm in the Submit Document dialog.
3. The confirmation closes after Bulk safely queues the background submission. A band above the approval actions reports item checks, approval setup, item locking, publication, and notifications. The document is read-only while this runs, and the work continues if you close the page.
4. Depending on your approval routing, the document either moves to Pending approval for an approver, or is approved automatically. An approver accepts it from the approval band on the document (Approve), or sends it back with Request changes.
5. After approval, the Creating production jobs band reports how many jobs are saved. Bulk moves the document to In production only after it checks the completed result.

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The step-by-step of submitting, approving, requesting changes, or cancelling an approval request is covered in Submit or cancel inbound approval. This article focuses on what promotion produces and how to keep it clean.

What promotion produces

When the background promotion finishes, several results are linked together:

• One production job per ready item. Each ready item becomes a job, and the item's status changes to Job Created.
• A production order. Bulk creates a new production order for the document, or reuses the order already reserved for it, so re-submitting never creates a duplicate. The document header shows the linked production order number.
• The document moves to In production. The status badge changes to In production, and the work is now visible and schedulable in the Production module.

You can follow the resulting jobs and order in Review production orders and jobs.

Promote a single item with Scan & Process

When you need one item on the floor now, you do not have to promote the whole document:

1. Open Scan & Process from the Inbound sidebar.
2. Scan or type the item's label to load it.
3. Answer any required questions for the item.
4. Select Mark ready & create job. Bulk marks the item ready (if it was still pending) and creates its job in one step, then offers to print the job label.

Scan & Process can create a job while the document is Draft, In progress, Approved, or In production, so it works both before and after a whole-document promotion. It needs the Create production jobs permission, and the item must still resolve to a part, a process, and a valid quantity.

Example: an order at Granite Peak

At Granite Peak Manufacturing's Leeds Fabrication Plant, a coordinator has already imported purchase order PO-88231 from the customer Pennine Rail — a batch of laser-cut mounting brackets — as an inbound document. They check the extracted quantities and part numbers, resolve each bracket line to a part and process, and mark all items ready. With the document In progress, they select Submit.

Because the brackets' routing requires sign-off, the document moves to Pending approval. A production manager opens it, confirms the details, and selects Approve. Bulk queues job creation and shows its saved count while the work runs. When the run finishes, the document moves to In production, each line reads Job Created, and the linked order and jobs are schedulable on the floor — all traceable back to Pennine Rail's original PO.

Later that day a rush add-on bracket arrives for the same customer. Rather than resubmit the whole order, a floor lead opens Scan & Process, scans the new item, answers its questions, and selects Mark ready & create job to release that single bracket on its own.

After work is in production

Promotion is a threshold, not a pause. Once jobs exist for a document:

• The document and its items are locked and can no longer be edited.
• The document cannot be cancelled while it has created jobs — cancel or manage the resulting jobs in Production instead.
• Reopening or changing an approval is blocked after even one job has been created. Once work is running, manage it through the resulting production jobs and order.
• The linked order cannot be cancelled while job creation is running or failed. Finish or retry the source document's run first.

Troubleshooting

Most failed promotions come from an item that cannot yet form a job. Each has a clear recovery path:

• Submission failed in the confirmation dialog. The background handoff was not queued. Read the error, correct it if needed, then select Try again in that dialog.

• Submission needs attention. The document was not submitted and no jobs started. Correct the item, form, routing, or access error shown in the band, then select Retry submission. A retry resumes unfinished rollback first and does not publish a partial approval set.

• Approver notifications need attention. Submission is already published; only notifications stopped. Select Retry submission to finish notifying approvers without duplicating the approval requests.

• Approval update needs attention. The approval decision is already saved. Select Retry approval update to finish applying its locks and document status; do not repeat the decision.

• Job creation failed. The displayed created count is durable. Fix the named permission, access, document-state, or data problem, then select Retry job creation. Bulk continues the same order from its checkpoint and does not duplicate jobs already linked to items.

• Some items did not become jobs. The run completed, so there is no retry button. Read the reasons in the band. Restore any missing master data or site rule, then use Scan & Process for an affected item if it is valid; otherwise ask an administrator to review the source document.

• "… item(s) are still pending." Submission requires every item to be ready. Open each pending item, complete it, and mark it ready, then submit again.

• An item is missing a part, process, or quantity. Job creation needs all three. Resolve the item's part, choose a process, and enter a quantity greater than zero. Because submission is all-or-nothing, one incomplete item blocks the whole document.

• The selected process is not approved. An item whose process is in draft, awaiting approval, expired, or disabled cannot be marked ready or turned into a job. Select an approved process revision (or get the current one approved), then continue.

• The customer is blocked from job creation. If a customer's status blocks new work, Scan & Process and job creation are stopped. Clear the customer's block, or use a customer that is not blocked, before promoting.

Feature state and limitations

Promoting inbound work to production is generally available. A few things are worth knowing:

• Approval is the trigger. A document does not create jobs on its own; it needs to reach Approved, either automatically on submit or through an approver. If work is stuck, check whether it is waiting at Pending approval.
• Jobs are created in the background. Job creation runs immediately after approval but as a background step. The document stays Approved while the run is queued or active and may not show a linked order until its first job is created. It changes to In production only after reconciliation finishes.
• Partial progress is kept. A stopped run can show some jobs already created. Retry keeps those jobs and the same order. A completed run with skips lists the skip reasons instead of silently claiming every item became a job.
• An item needs a routing to become a job. Beyond a part, process, and quantity, the item's part must have a routing (its sequence of production steps). Items that cannot form a job are left for review rather than silently producing an empty job.
• Promotion cannot be undone by editing. Once jobs exist, the document is locked and cannot be cancelled; manage the outcome through the resulting production jobs and order.

Related guidance

• Submit or cancel inbound approval
• Review an inbound document
• Manage inbound services and items
• Scan and process an inbound item
• Put inbound work on hold
• Review production orders and jobs
• Inbound overview