A Status in Dapple is the high-level state of a submission: New, In Progress, Rejected, or Completed. There are only ever four. Stages are your project-level workflow steps, and every stage maps to one of the four statuses. The four statuses are fixed and identical across every project — that's what gives you consistent reporting even when individual projects have wildly different workflows.
What are the four core Statuses?
Status | What it means |
New | The submission has just been received. Every submission starts here. |
In Progress | The submission is being worked on — reviewed, scored, advanced through your pipeline. |
Rejected | The submission was reviewed and declined. It won't progress further. |
Completed | The submission has reached the end of its journey — accepted, published, or otherwise finalised. |
Can I edit or add Statuses?
No — the four core Statuses are fixed and can't be edited, renamed, or added to. This is intentional: it's how Dapple keeps reporting and analytics consistent across every project. What you can customise is how and when those statuses apply, by configuring your Stages.
How are Stages different from Statuses?
| Stages | Statuses |
What they are | Workflow steps you define per project | Four fixed states every submission has |
Number | As many as you need (typical: 4–8 per project) | Always 4 |
Customisable | Name, order, visibility, creator-facing label | No — they're fixed |
Mapped to | One of the four Statuses | — |
Where you see them | Your Kanban board, project pipeline | Analytics, dashboard summaries, the creator's view |
Why two layers?
Stages give you flexibility — a literary magazine and a film festival can have completely different pipelines. Statuses give you consistency — both projects report progress against the same four states. This means you can run a workspace-level dashboard showing 'How many submissions are In Progress this month?' regardless of how unique each project's workflow is.
What does the creator see?
Creators see the creator-facing label of their current Stage, not the underlying Status. You can also customise the status copy that appears on their dashboard. See How to Customise the Status a Creator Sees
Where to go next