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Running a session

A session has three states. Knowing what each one means - and when a transition is irreversible — will save you from awkward mid-night fixes.

Draft

When you create a new session, it starts in Draft. Draft is your prep mode. Use it to:

  • Add every team playing tonight.
  • Rename teams on the fly (typos are easy on trivia night).
  • Set the date and optional session name.

Nothing in Draft is visible on the public standings, players see only the season leaderboard until you go live.

Returning teams are carried over automatically. When you create a new session, every active team that played the previous session is pre-populated, so week-to-week you usually don't need to re-add teams. Just remove any no-shows and add walk-ins.

Delete a draft if you changed your mind. On the league page, each draft session has a red Delete button. Deleting a draft is only allowed before it goes live, and it clears all of its placeholder team rows. Live and finalized sessions can't be deleted.

Live

Click Go Live when trivia starts. TotalUp confirms before transitioning because going live publishes the session to the public URL. In Live:

  • The Live Scoring table shows every team as a row and every round as a column. Type the score for each team in each round, entries save automatically as you tab between cells.
  • Add Round creates a new column whenever you need one. There's no upper limit; add rounds as the night unfolds.
  • Standings reorder automatically as scores change, with dynamic ranking (including ties).
  • The public session page auto-refreshes every 15 seconds, so players at other tables can watch the leaderboard shift without refreshing.

Live is the safe state for editing, you can keep entering, correcting, and re-entering scores all night.

Finalized

When scoring is complete, click Finalize. TotalUp confirms again, because finalizing adds the session's totals to the season leaderboard and marks the session closed. You're redirected straight back to the league's Season Standings page so you can verify the new totals immediately.

You can still edit a finalized session (see editing scores), but "Finalize" is the signal that you're done for the night. The public session page stops showing the "LIVE" pulse indicator, and the season standings incorporate the new totals.

A typical trivia night flow: create Draft ~30 minutes before doors, go Live when the first round starts, finalize when the winner is called out.