Introduction
Products can be given an Internal and a Public Status. Example status values are, “Pending”, “No Go”, “Confirmed”, and “Cancelled”. The values are customizable via Lists. Your Customers can Search your Product Catalog via the Public Status, and the Product List page and the Product Details page display the Public Status as a label. The background color of the label is configurable. The Internal Status can be seen by viewing the Product in the Cart as an Admin.
Getting Started
There is a System Configuration to turn ON or OFF the feature.Login to the Administrative side of your database, navigate to Settings --> Setup --> Configuration, and search for "Product Status". There is a config titled "Use custom Product Statuses". Turn it ON to use the feature, and click the SAVE button.
Enabling Shopping Cart Search
To allow your Customers to Search for Public Product Statuses, you must use Drop Down Search Tags.. See the "Adding Tags to a Search Control Group" section of the Search Tags article for instructions.
Creating the Status Values
Internal Product Statuses and Public Product Statuses are System Lists that are made available once Product Statuses have been turned-on in your database. You can populate the Lists with Items like with any other List, and these List Items will be the status values that are available in your database. Navigate to Settings --> Assignment --> Lists, and search for "Product Status". Click on the Edit List Items button for whichever list you would like to populate with items.
Databases are not seeded with Items for these Lists, so you can start from scratch. Click to Add a New Item.
Input a Title (used in the catalog), a Value (used in some internal views), a Color (used as the background color of the status label in the cart), and click the SAVE button.
Once you have some List Items created, you can modify them, such as sorting them, and editing them individually. Also, as an alternative to adding List Items one-by-one, you can upload them via the UPLOAD ITEMS button.
Assigning Statuses to Products
Navigate to the Products section of the administrative side of your database, find the Product, click the Advanced tab, set the Internal Status and/or Public Status, and click the SAVE button.
The Public Status in the Shopping Cart
Go to the Publicly facing part of your Shopping Cart. You will notice a "Public Product Statuses" Search Control Item. Open the drop-down menu, choose a Status, and click the SEARCH button. Only Products with chosen Status will be returned. Also, notice that there is a Status Label displaying the Title and the Color of the Status. This label is also on the Product Details page.
The Internal Status in the Shopping Cart
Return to the Products section of the administrative side of your database, find the Product,and click the "View In Cart As Admin" button, 
You will see the Details page with Administrative Only data, The Internal Status is listed there.