Mapademics DocsHow a package flows
The end-to-end lifecycle of a transfer package — the five stages on the kanban board and what triggers each transition.
How a package flows
Every transfer package in Transfers moves through the same lifecycle: a small set of named stages, each of which corresponds to the work that needs to happen next and to a specific tab inside the package.
The kanban board on the Home page is your live view of that lifecycle. Each column is a stage. Each card is one package, sitting in the stage it's currently in.
This page walks the lifecycle left to right. For a per-stage reference, see Package stages.
The five stages
| Stage | What it means | Who's doing the work |
|---|---|---|
| Not Started | The package exists but nothing has been done yet. | You. |
| Transcript Research | Mapademics is fetching one or more institution catalogs in the background. | Mapademics. |
| Transcript Review | Transcript lines have been extracted and are waiting for you to confirm each one. | You. |
| Course Matching | Source courses are confirmed. Time to approve home-institution equivalents. | You. |
| Completed | Every course is resolved — approved or marked No Equivalent. The report is ready to download. | You're done. |
Packages flow left to right. They don't skip stages, but the entry point depends on how the package was created:
- A package created from a transcript enters at Transcript Research (or, if Mapademics already has the catalogs of every institution you confirmed at import, jumps straight to Transcript Review).
- A package created manually enters at Not Started, skips Transcript Review entirely, and lives in Course Matching until you complete it.
The package page reinforces the order of stages visually. The tab strip at the top of any package — Transcript Review → Course Equivalencies → Report — is numbered (1, 2, 3) until you complete a step, then the number flips to a green checkmark. The tab you're currently on is highlighted in purple regardless. It's a quick at-a-glance signal of where you are in the workflow.
Walking the lifecycle
Transcript Research — Mapademics fetches the institution catalogs
The moment a package is waiting on Mapademics to fetch a catalog, it lands in Transcript Research. You'll see a Researching X% progress bar on the card, climbing as research resolves.
A package sits here at creation, if any institution you confirmed at import doesn't have its catalog in Mapademics's library yet. Transcript-based packages with multiple institutions can have several fetched in parallel; the progress bar reflects overall progress across the whole set.
The work is fully automated. You don't have to do anything except wait — and most teams don't wait at all, because there's usually a queue of other packages to work on. When research is done, the package advances on its own: to Transcript Review if it was started from a transcript, or to Course Matching if it's a manual package whose only blocker was the catalog.
{% hint style="info" %} You'll see this stage less and less over time. Once Mapademics has fetched an institution's catalog, future packages involving that same institution skip Transcript Research and land directly in the next stage. {% endhint %}
Transcript Review — you confirm the transcript
This stage only applies to packages created from a transcript. Manual packages skip it entirely.
Mapademics has extracted every line of the transcript and identified a real course in the relevant institution's catalog for each one (each line uses the catalog of its own institution, as resolved at import). The package sits in Transcript Review while you go through the Transcript Review tab and confirm those identifications one by one — or Accept all identified courses in a single click when they look right.
If Mapademics couldn't identify a row, it shows up with a No match status. You can manually pick the right course from the catalog, or exclude the row from consideration. The package stays in Transcript Review until every row is either accepted, manually identified, or excluded.
Course Matching — you approve the equivalents
Once every source course is confirmed, the package moves to Course Matching. This is where the actual articulation work happens.
On the Course Equivalencies tab, each transferring course is shown alongside a ranked list of suggested equivalents from your own catalog — each with a percentage score, three quick check signals (Credit Match, Level Match, Year Proximity), and a written justification.
You approve the right one. That's the act of articulation. Use Approve All Best Matches when you trust the top suggestion across the board and want to apply it in bulk, then audit and override anywhere you disagree. Per-candidate Reject and In Verification states are available too, for ruling out a candidate or parking it for further research without locking in any approval.
See Matching course equivalencies.
Completed — the report is ready
The package moves to Completed once every course has been resolved — either approved or marked No Equivalent. On the Report tab you'll see the full equivalence table, a summary you can edit (or have Mapademics generate), and a Download PDF button that produces the finished articulation document.
A note on automated research
"Research" in Transfers refers to catalog research — Mapademics pulling the entire catalog of an institution it doesn't yet have on file. It happens once per institution, not once per package, and only the first time you bring a transcript from that school.
It's fully automated. The package's stage badge and the kanban board update in real time as research progresses, and the package moves itself forward when research finishes — no refresh needed.
If, during review, Mapademics can't find a specific course on the transcript inside the catalog we already have, you have direct control: you can manually pick the right course from the catalog yourself, request the missing course from the catalog dialog, or exclude the row. The package doesn't bounce back to Transcript Research for individual courses.