School of Specs Inside one plenary: TSG SA#112Overview

How the paperwork is organised · chapter 4 of 7 · 5 minutes

4 The document types and the status words, and what each really decides

A document says what it is asking for; a status word says what it got. Ten status words covered all 346 documents of this meeting, and they do not mean the same thing.

4.1 Two vocabularies, and they are not the same

Every document at a plenary carries two labels. One says what kind of paper it is — what it is asking the meeting to do. The other says what it got.

The first is fixed when the document is written. SA#112 saw 20 different kinds [1], of which four cover most of what a plenary is asked for:

  • A change request, or a pack of them, asks to alter the text of an existing specification. 120 packs [2] and 14 standalone change requests [3]

  • A work item or study item description asks to start something new. 53 new work item descriptions [4] and 10 new study item descriptions [5]

  • A report or a draft technical report is brought to be approved, or to be read. 29 reports [6] and 28 draft technical reports [7]

  • A discussion paper and an incoming liaison statement ask for nothing concrete at all — they put a case, or deliver post. 20 discussion papers [8] and 18 incoming letters [9]

The second label is written at the meeting, and it is the one that matters.

4.2 Ten words covered the whole meeting

Every one of the 346 documents ended with exactly one of these ten words, and the counts add up to 346 [10].

Word Documents What it means
approved 199 [11] agreed, and it takes effect
noted 68 [12] read and filed; no decision taken
revised 60 [13] superseded by a new document number
postponed 5 [14] held over to a later meeting
endorsed 4 [15] supported, but it is not specification text
partially approved 4 [16] part of the pack went through
merged 2 [17] folded into another document
withdrawn 2 [18] pulled before a decision
agreed 1 [19] agreed in the joint session
replied to 1 [20] answered by an outgoing letter

Approved, noted and revised carry almost all of the 346 documents. The long tail is where the interesting cases live.

4.3 One example of each

The words are easiest to learn against real documents from this meeting.

  • approved — the new work item description on post-quantum cryptography migration SP-260663

  • noted — the paper from ten public bodies asking that 6G be secure by design SP-260584

  • revised — the first version of the ultra low bitrate speech codec work item SP-260417, replaced by SP-260696

  • postponed — the change to the change-request process for 3GPP Forge SP-260411

  • endorsed — the chair's guidance on the specification-modernisation study SP-260679

  • partially approved — a change-request pack of which some changes went through and some did not SP-260387

  • merged — a draft reply that was folded into another document SP-260613

  • withdrawn — the revision of the secure-by-design paper, pulled during the meeting SP-260643

  • agreed — the Release 21 timeline, agreed in the joint session SP-260595

  • replied to — the incoming letter from ETSI TC EMTEL on accessibility in emergency communications SP-260363

4.4 The four words that mean "not this time"

Four of the ten words say that a document did not finish at this meeting: revised, postponed, merged and withdrawn. The table above gives the count for each of the four.

They are not four flavours of failure. They are four different fates:

  • Revised — the work continues under a different number; here SP-260417 became SP-260696 inside the same meeting SP-260696

  • Postponed — the document is held over to a later meeting SP-260411

  • Merged — the work continues inside somebody else's document SP-260613

  • Withdrawn — the paper was pulled before a decision was taken on it SP-260643

Only the last of the four leaves nothing behind at this meeting, and even then the earlier version of the same paper may have been handled separately.

4.5 The three that are most often misread

Noted is the polite end of the road. 68 documents ended there, including both papers the specification-modernisation study brought to the meeting SP-260406, SP-260407. The plenary read them and filed them.

Endorsed was used four times. It means the meeting is behind the thing but the thing is not specification text — guidance, a direction of travel, a summary.

Revised means a new number exists. It says nothing about whether that new number was approved: SP-260417 was revised and SP-260696 was approved, and only the second of those two facts is a decision SP-260417, SP-260696.

4.6 What "approved" does not mean

Two limits sit behind that word, and both hold for every one of the 199 documents that got it.

The first is about publication. Each of the 26 specifications and reports approved here [21] still has to be produced and put on the server, and nothing in this meeting's data says when that happened.

The second is about the record itself. These statuses are read out of the meeting's document list [22] and its draft report, and the report is a draft: its cover says "Status: Draft - for comment" [23].

A word that changes between draft version five and the final version changes what the meeting decided, as far as anybody reading afterwards can tell. That is the reason this course keeps saying "draft".

Where the numbers in this chapter come from

  1. 20 different kinds of document distinct values of tdoctype over the same 346 rows, read 2026-08-04
  2. 120 documents of type 'CR pack' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and tdoctype='CR pack';", read 2026-08-04
  3. 14 documents of type 'CR' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and tdoctype='CR';", read 2026-08-04
  4. 53 documents of type 'WID new' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and tdoctype='WID new';", read 2026-08-04
  5. 10 documents of type 'SID new' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and tdoctype='SID new';", read 2026-08-04
  6. 29 documents of type 'report' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and tdoctype='report';", read 2026-08-04
  7. 28 documents of type 'draft TR' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and tdoctype='draft TR';", read 2026-08-04
  8. 20 documents of type 'discussion' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and tdoctype='discussion';", read 2026-08-04
  9. 18 documents of type 'LS in' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and tdoctype='LS in';", read 2026-08-04
  10. 346 documents at SA#112 sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112';", read 2026-08-04
  11. 199 documents ended the meeting 'approved' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='approved';", read 2026-08-04
  12. 68 documents ended the meeting 'noted' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='noted';", read 2026-08-04
  13. 60 documents ended the meeting 'revised' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='revised';", read 2026-08-04
  14. 5 documents ended the meeting 'postponed' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='postponed';", read 2026-08-04
  15. 4 documents ended the meeting 'endorsed' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='endorsed';", read 2026-08-04
  16. 4 documents ended the meeting 'partially approved' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='partially approved';", read 2026-08-04
  17. 2 documents ended the meeting 'merged' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='merged';", read 2026-08-04
  18. 2 documents ended the meeting 'withdrawn' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='withdrawn';", read 2026-08-04
  19. 1 document ended the meeting 'agreed' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='agreed';", read 2026-08-04
  20. 1 document ended the meeting 'replied to' sqlite3 /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite "select count(*) from tdoc where meeting='SP-112' and status='replied to';", read 2026-08-04
  21. 26 specifications and reports were approved the '26 Entries' line closing the matching annex table of SP-112_Draft_Report_v005.md, read 2026-08-04
  22. TdocsByAgenda, the SA#112 document list
  23. SP-112 draft meeting report, version 0.0.5

Every source this course is built on

Check yourself

Answers appear when you pick one, with where they come from.

Q4.1 What does the status "noted" mean?

Q4.2 A document ends the meeting "revised". What happened to it?

Q4.3 SP-260417 was revised and SP-260696 was approved. What are they?

Q4.4 Which status did the chair's guidance on the specification-modernisation study receive?

Q4.5 What does "approved" at a plenary tell you about publication?

This chapter was built from a source register generated 2026-08-04. A fresher build of the register may hold different numbers.