Operation types and statuses

Every Operation in NearbySpy belongs to a Case and carries two attributes that tell your team what the work is and where it stands: a type and a status. Together they let you filter work, plan capacity, and keep Clients informed without exposing internal detail they should not see.

Operation types

The type describes the nature of the work, not the outcome. NearbySpy ships with eight types so that almost every PI workflow has a sensible bucket without forcing custom taxonomies on small teams.

• Surveillance — physical or vehicle observation, mobile or static.
• Research — open-source intelligence, public records pulls, social profile work.
• Field work — boots-on-the-ground tasks that are not strict surveillance, such as canvassing or document service.
• Interview — structured or informal conversations with witnesses, neighbors, or your Subject.
• Document review — sifting court records, vendor exports, deposition transcripts.
• Travel — billable transit, mileage, or lodging tied to a Case.
• Admin — invoicing prep, scheduling, internal coordination that still belongs on the Case timeline.
• Other — anything that does not fit cleanly into the seven specific types.

Pick the most specific type that fits. If you split a single day's work into two distinct activities — for example, four hours of surveillance followed by a witness interview — log them as two Operations rather than one mixed entry. That keeps your time accurate and the audit trail readable.

Operation statuses

Status is the lifecycle position of the Operation. There are five states, in roughly the order an Operation moves through them:

• Upcoming — scheduled for a future date and not yet started.
• In progress — happening now, or already past its scheduled date but not yet finished.
• Completed — the work is done and any Evidence is uploaded.
• Pending — waiting on something outside your control (a subpoena response, a Client approval, a weather window).
• Cancelled — the work will not happen and should be excluded from billing or progress reporting.

How status defaults work

When you create an Operation, NearbySpy picks an initial status from the scheduled date so you do not have to think about it.

• A future date defaults to Upcoming.
• Today or any past date defaults to In progress.

You can override the default at any time. Marking an Operation Completed does not delete or lock the underlying Evidence — Evidence is always immutable. See Why Evidence is immutable and how archive works for the full retention model.

Where type and status appear

Type and status badges appear in the Operations tab on each Case, in the global views described in Using the global Cases calendar and Kanban, and on the in-case calendar covered in Using the in-case Calendar. They are also part of the activity stream so reviewers can reconstruct the timeline — see Comments and activity on an Operation.

What Clients see

Clients only see Operations you have explicitly shared with them, controlled per-Operation. When an Operation is visible, the Client sees its title, type, status, scheduled date, and any Evidence you have shared — but never internal comments. Visibility is independent of status: a Cancelled Operation can still be visible if you want the Client to see why the work was dropped. To review or change visibility, see Controlling what Clients see on Operations.