# Capture a requirement and prepare a complete working plan

Record intended behaviour, missing-information handling, source contexts and unresolved capability gaps.

Source: https://help.smartfact.ai/manuals/automation/requirements-and-plans

Review edition: 25 October 2026

Roles: author, reviewer, supervisor, viewer

Start with the complete decision the organisation needs, not a single sentence designed to obtain a convenient rule. Explain the information it uses, intended outcome and what should happen when facts are absent or contradictory. Preserve uncertainty until the responsible people resolve it.

## Save the requirement

An Author chooses New requirement and enters Title and What should happen? Save requirement records that intention. Later Save new revision retains another attributable version. Neither action changes live production.

Use explicit business references and process scope. If a requirement spans several products, state each expected decision and operational prerequisite. Do not imply that a central statement itself certifies inspection, creates stock or completes a downstream task.

## Prepare and review the plan

Open Review the working plan. Choose the product contexts to consider and obtain their exact authorised source views. Where assisted planning is available, prepare its proposal and inspect every change, question and capability gap before Save working plan.

Keep the complete original requirement visible. Check that a proposed sequence does not omit one department, invent an unsupported native action or treat an unanswered engineering question as an approved value. Product-owned capabilities define what can be prepared.

## Preserve a reviewable sequence

Retain the selected product, site, source subject, revision and context with the planned step. A bounded product configuration action can be reviewed and created through its explicit step workflow. Creating that configuration remains different from completing any later physical work it describes.

If a source changes, capture a current context and review the affected plan step again. Do not silently combine facts from incompatible revisions. Pass the exact planned change, source basis and expected complete outcomes to the native authoring workflow.

Continue with [Read original product context](/manuals/automation/product-context) and [Edit a complete native revision](/manuals/automation/native-drafts). Use coordinated policy sets only when the complete reviewed relationship requires their supported member lifecycle, rather than assuming every cross-product plan is a distributed transaction.

## Finish an offered configuration step explicitly

Where Review saved product changes offers a supported step, follow [Plan-step configuration actions](/manuals/automation/plan-step-actions). Read the current action against its saved plan revision and original source, confirm the bounded action once and establish its original outcome. The plan itself is not a release or a record that the later physical work occurred.