It's just an invite like the IRCC ITA. Once a province invites a candidate, they need to submit a complete application (everything except PCC and Medicals) after which a nomination will be granted with 600 points in EE profile. OINP takes 2-3 months to process, other provinces have similar timelines and the EE profile remains active in the federal pool during all this time and has a chance to receive ITA directly from IRCC. Not all provinces sends NOI directly to EE profiles, Saskatchewan has their own EOI pool and ITA system, Ontario and Alberta sends NOI's directly to EE profiles, don't know about other provinces.Yeah that's what I thought, but it was never clear if the provincial 'draws' were NOIs or profiles that had completed the provincial process, gotten the 600 points, and were waiting in the pool with 600+ scores for the next draw. "Manitoba invites 1000 candidates" could mean 1000 people managed to clear everything and got invited with the 600 points. I was never clear on what these draws actually meant
Also, provinces have a ton of paper based PNP applications which are not aligned with express entry, OINP nominated only 2.5K people under their express entry streams last year out of 8K+ nominations.