Best way to manage additional order statuses

Hi everybody, I need to customize a store for a company that has a very complex order status pipeline. They move the order through a number of statuses i.e. the order get in the status [to be printed] then change to status [printed] then depending on the product type can be moved to [fulfillment] or [production] etc etc They have some 30-40 different statuses that the product can change to.

In addition I need to perform a series of action when the order change from one status to the other (i.e. sending an email, alerting the production team etc.)

My question is: what is the most efficient way to achieve this goal. Do I build a plugin (which I am sure is very complex)

OR

do I make changes like:

- adding more status to Nop.Core\Domain\Orders\OrderStatus.cs

- subscribe to EntityUpdated(order) and write custom code that send email, etc

Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Follow the 2nd way. It will be more easier.

Hi,
changing the core is not recommended:
1- it may cause bugs in other section of store and order processing.
2- you cant use any more nopcommerce standard plugins.

the best way is to write a plugin, and my suggestion is to add new tab(section) to order detail page.
by the way developing a plugin is not too much complex and has its own benefits like easy upgrade.

best regards