Those messages in issue_patch are defined on the Issue class itself (`def self.foo` rather than `def foo` means that `Issue.foo` will work, but `Issue.new.foo` or `Issue.find(1).foo` won't). They're meant to act as scopes, to limit sets of results from active record queries, rather than to get information about a single issue. [This](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_querying.html#scopes) might help you understand what's going on.

> Ideally, can we have this as a function in the issue patch? something like `@issue.release_note_status`?

That's a much better idea, yes.