Disclaimer: Feel like I should add that the following isn’t intended to be authorative, just my take and understanding of the situation:
I feel like your issues (in section 1 at least) stem from this statement:
As far as I’m aware this isn’t a gotcha/lag/gap: verification (IDV) and appoinment verification are two separate processes and the former is never going to propogate to the latter. appointment_verification_start will always be null up until the relevant form is submitted (mostly CS01, but also incorporation, appointments and the PSC specific forms). It’s the submission of this form, with a valid personal code that dictates this value.
So not lag, the value just doesn’t exist yet. It’s not something you’ll be able to force to refresh. Your option A and B above just don’t make sense to me in this context. Yes there will be a gap between the time someone is verified and they become appointment verified, but this is a “by design” gap as the two statuses represent two different things. One does not inform the other.
FWIW our handling of IDV in general follows from this. The system we have in place for managing IDV either on behalf of clients or collating personal codes if they are doing themselves, is mostly divorced from our general compliance systems, which only cares whether or not they have supplied us with a code by a particular date.
More information from CH here: Officer appointment verified but identify is not verified This clarified some confusion I had regarding the contents of the three fields above.
Of course this is all further confused by the current issues with the filing of some forms, which I can imagine is a right pain (on a code level I’m only dealing with incorporations which were thankfully working day 1!).