My understanding is that you can decide if you do outland or inland. The border agent confirmed that we can apply to extend her vistor visa regardless if it's outland or inland. IRCC also confirmed this. We were outland when we decided we would move to Canada so it seemed to make sense to apply that way as it gets the application going sooner.
I think this is mostly a problem for us because outlands are still paper based and not entered into the system and COVID has slowed that. In the absense of COVID we would have our AOR1 and would just provide them that letter.
everybody who applied inland application with open work permit is a paper based application...people from March do not have AOR’s yet and cannot link accounts or see any information.