Restrict Change Stage Action to Previous Stages Only and Prevent Skipping Future Stages

User Experience Knowledge Share
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Hi Team,

While working on a case workflow, I noticed a behavior with the Change Stage action.

Scenario

Consider a case with the following stages:

  1. Intake
  2. Review
  3. Approval
  4. Resolution

If the case is currently in Review, the standard Change Stage option displays:

  • Previous stages (e.g., Intake)
  • Future stages (e.g., Approval)
  • Resolved stage

This allows users to directly move the case to a future stage, potentially bypassing mandatory processing steps and business validations.

Challenge

Users can inadvertently or intentionally skip intermediate stages by selecting a future stage from the Change Stage list, which may lead to:

  • Incomplete processing
  • Missed validations
  • Data inconsistencies
  • Workflow governance issues

Solution

To prevent stage skipping, I customized the stage selection logic to display only:

:white_check_mark: Current and previous stages

:cross_mark: Future stages are filtered out and hidden from the Change Stage menu

As a result, users can move the case back to an earlier stage when needed, but cannot jump ahead and bypass the workflow.

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@Vinod_Kuncham thanks for the knowledge share! I updated this post to be UX and Knowledge Share to reflect the type of post.

Change Stage “changes”

A very common request to enhance or modify this screen. In my opinion, the moment changes are asked for, you’re better creating your own optional case action. That way you have full control over it.

  • Maybe I want to add more fields to this screen
  • I want to show different stages for different case types or personas

I do recall following your approach in the past. However we found, that this logic is used elsewhere (e.g. Reopen) and as a result, modifying this shared rule impacted us negatively there.

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So something to consider, sometimes its quicker and easier to create your “own version” of OOTB actions to avoid impacting other features.

Thanks again for contributing to the ecosystem!

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