From Upcoming to Results Posted: The Four Stages of a Session
The last match finishes, somebody switches off half the hall lights, and the organiser closes the scoring screen. Ten minutes later, a player remembers a result that was never entered. Another player has already spotted a reversed score. Meanwhile, everyone assumes the ratings are final because the play night is over.
That is what happens when one vague word, “closed,” is asked to mean too many things.
ServeLeague gives every session four clear stages: Upcoming, Live, Under Review, and Results Posted. Each stage answers a practical question: are organisers preparing, are players entering results, is the club checking the record, or have ratings and standings become official?
What makes this different from one open-or-closed switch is the review stage. Play can finish without pretending every score has already been checked.
Draft is prepared, not active
A Draft session exists, but play has not begun. An administrator may have chosen the date, venue, round, teams, grades, or bracket inputs. None of that means results should be accepted yet.
This boundary prevents an early-arriving player, an old browser tab, or a shared PIN from writing scores into next week’s session. The standard action available to an authorised club administrator is Open Session. Ordinary result entry is not available, and protests are not available because there is no recorded live competition to dispute.
Draft also gives organisers room to prepare several weeks ahead. A scheduled session is an operational plan, not a claim that the hall is currently open for scoring. The Running Your First Session tutorial walks through that preparation and opening flow.
A session with no recorded matches is not automatically Upcoming. It may already be open for play. ServeLeague uses the session stage, not a guess based on match count, to decide what people may do.
Open means results can change
Open is the live scoring window. The user-facing badge is Live, and this is the only core state in which normal player result entry is allowed.
That exclusivity matters. If result entry remained possible during review, an administrator could inspect one set of matches while players added another set underneath them. A finalization preview could be obsolete before the organiser reached the confirm button.
Open sessions also permit protests on matches that have already been recorded. A protest is not limited to the later review window. If a player sees an incorrect score while the night is still running, the system accepts the report then, provided the person is an authenticated club member linked to a player profile.
Opening is an administrator action. For most leagues, the league itself must already be open before a session can go Live. Some formats use one continuing PIN and therefore allow only one live session at a time. Formats with session-specific entry can support concurrent sessions, such as separate tournament divisions.
Once play is done, the administrator chooses Lock for Review. That transition closes ordinary score submission and moves the session into its checking phase.
Locked is a review state, not a softer final state
Locked appears to players as Under Review. New player-submitted results stop, but the record is deliberately not final.
This is where administrators inspect match cards, correct or delete bad records, review incomplete team matchups, and handle result protests. Players can still report a recorded match while the session is Locked. The detailed workflow is covered in Session Review and Finalization and Protests and Dispute Resolution.
Locked has two valid exits:
- Reopen Session returns it to Open if more player score entry is needed.
- Finalize Session commits the reviewed result set and moves it to Finalized.
That backward step is intentionally narrow. Upcoming cannot jump straight to Under Review. Live cannot jump straight to Results Posted. Under Review can return to Live, but posted results do not return to ordinary PIN-based scoring.
The result is one controlled correction loop, not a collection of buttons whose meaning changes from screen to screen.
Finalized means the result ledger has moved
Finalized appears as Results Posted. At this point, the rating pipeline has run, rating history has been written where applicable, and the session has been marked complete.
Normal result entry stops. New protests stop. Existing protests cannot be resolved through the ordinary protest workflow after finalization. The session PIN is cleared. Public results, player history, standings, records and other views can now treat the session as completed evidence rather than work in progress.
The platform does have an administrator correction process for posted results, but it is not the same as reopening a live night. It returns the session to a restricted review state, records a reason, and leaves PIN entry inactive. Posting the corrected results recalculates that session, and later sessions may also need recalculation because their starting ratings were affected.
That is why Finalized must remain a serious boundary. A correction to Week 1 can change the input ratings for Week 2. The next article in this series, How a Session Finalizes Without Half-Updating Ratings, examines how that boundary is implemented.
The permissions are the real state machine
The four labels are useful, but the permission matrix is the actual product:
| State | Player result entry | Submit protest | Admin result correction | Finalization |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Draft | No | No | No normal match editing | No |
| Open | Yes | Yes, for recorded matches | Yes | No |
| Locked | No | Yes, for recorded matches | Yes | Yes |
| Finalized | No | No | No normal editing | Already complete |
This matrix removes ambiguous moments. Players know whether a score is still provisional. Administrators know whether they are preparing, running, reviewing or publishing. The platform rejects invalid jumps rather than hoping every screen hid the wrong action.
It also explains why a result challenge belongs before ratings move. The platform controls who may act and when, but the club still owns the quality of its review process. Pending protests currently produce a warning rather than a hard block, so clearing the queue before posting results remains a recommended club practice.
Four plain labels prevent large disputes.
Upcoming means prepare. Live means record. Under Review means inspect and challenge. Results Posted means the result ledger has moved.
The safest workflow is not the one with the fewest steps. It is the one where every person can tell what may still change.