State determines the set of actions that a user can perform on a specimen. As actions are performed on a specimen in accordance with configured workflow, it's state may change.
In SEDRI-LIMS, both state and workflow are configurable and can be set-up to mirror real world practices.
A secondary function of state is to govern where a specimen appears on the system. By default, specimens in a working or approval state will appear on the Specimens screen, while those that have been finalised or rejected will appear in the Archive.
Archived specimens may be moved back to the Specimens screen by changing their state to make them active again - for a guide on how to do this, see: Re-activating an Archived Specimen.