Why am I seeing a "Status is too low to change status" error when I try to change the status of an object?

Symptom

A "Status is too low to change status" error appears when you click Change Status and attempt to select a higher status for the object. For example, you try to change the status of a topic from Review to Done.

Problem

The DITA CMS workflow dictates that the parent object must be in an equal or lower state than its children. Therefore, if an object such as a topic contains child objects such as an image or conref which are at a lower state than the parent object, the parent cannot be changed to a higher state.

You will also see this in situations when you have a "conref loop" or circular reference between topics; for example, topic A has a conref of a paragraph from topic B and topic B has a conref of a note from topic A. Although this is a valid situation in DITA, it is not supported in DITA CMS because the workflow cannot identify which is the parent since each topic is both parent and child of the other topic.

Solution

To resolve the issue, move all the child objects to a higher state before changing the state of the parent. For example, the image must be in a Done state before its parent topic can move to a Done state.

In the case of the "conref loop", use referable-content topic type to hold the reusable content so the topics are no longer dependant on each other.