The Inquiry Lifecycle Model

Overview

The Lifecycle model articulates the various stages and statues that an inquiry can move through across it’s creation to conclusion. The model include four states, some of which include multiple statuses. Inquiry Lifecycle Model 2025

Events change Statues

Inquiries have formal events, like inquiry.created and inquiry.approved that drive changes to the statues. The events are useful to know when building logic on persona as these events can also be used as triggers in post-inquiry processes like workflows. Inquiry events and related statuses can change when:

  1. Your end user proceeds through their inquiry: starting a verification or completing the flow.
  2. Post-inquiry workflows apply business logic to automatically decision the inquiry or mark for manual review.
  3. Your organization’s members manually change the status of an inquiry.
  4. The inquiry expires.
State Status Event Name Description
Created Created inquiry.created Set when the inquiry is first created.
Pending Pending inquiry.started Set when the end user submits a document or begins a verification.
Done Completed inquiry.completed Set when end user reaches the Completed screen.
Done Failed inquiry.failed Set when end user reaches to Failed screen.
Done Expired inquiry.expired Set when inquiry exceeds 24hrs, or configured duration, after inquiry created.
Post-Inquiry Approved inquiry.approved Set via post-inquiry processes or manual update.
Post-Inquiry Needs Review inquiry.needs_review Set via post-inquiry processes or manual update.
Post-Inquiry Declined inquiry.declined Set via post-inquiry processes or manual update.

What’s the difference between Done & Post-Inquiry?

Inquiry Lifecycle Model 2025 While all inquiry runs will end up at some point in the Done state, via the Completed, Failed, or Expired statuses, it only describes the inquiry from the end user perspective as they are “done” with it. But you have additional optional statuses you can use as part of deciding what to do with the inquiry, allowing to you move it to Approved, Needs Review, & Declined. These statuses can then be used by post-inquiry processes to drive additional logic and outcomes.

“Opened” vs Pending or Started

Some customers assume that when an end user opens an inquiry that a status or event triggers, but that is not the case. The inquiry will stay in the Created statues even after an end user has opened the inquiry. If the end user submits a document or begins a verification, then it will move to Pending. If they take no action, it will stay in Created until the inquiry expires and is then moved to the Expired status.

What does happen when the end user opens the inquiry link is that their session starts.

Inquiry Session: A collection of data, including location and device info, related to a single and sustained network connection between the end user’s device and the Persona platform.

A single inquiry can include multiple sessions as the end user might switch devices or even resume an inquiry after it expires.

Expired windows

An Inquiry can be configured to expire after a certain duration window based on different starting reference points. Expired Windows 2025 It can expire from the point of Creation, Pending/Started, or after being Resumed. One Time Link Window 2025 Additionally, the one-time-link used for device handoffs within an inquiry can also be configured from the default of 1hr. All four expiry windows can be configured at the template level.

Expire starting point Default time
Creation 24hrs
Pending Same as Creation Expired’s duration
Resume 24hrs
One-Time-Link 1hr
In the off chance you want to change those windows for an individual inquiry that is being created via the API, you can pass those setting as meta parameters in the API call.

Resuming an inquiry

End users can become delayed from completing the inquiry for numerous reason. You have the option to allow them to resume their inquiry, which resets the clock and given them more time to finish. Resuming Inquiry from Expired 2025