Tell me about the work flow of events

Every event travels through a set of stages from when it is set up to when it is ancient history. As an event administrator you are responsible for overseeing, and often managing, this work flow. The key stages are as follows:

1. Pending - a recently created event (using the New tab in Manage events) goes here and is available  for an event organiser to work on. A pending event is never visible to members or other users of ManageMyMatch (except for its organisers in Manage events)
2. Open - This stage ensures that people can sign up to the event. Most events have a period where you want to give people the opportunity to enter. Only those eligible for the event (as defined on the series) will see it.
3. In preparation - This stage is useful as it hides the event from users and stops further sign-ups. You can then prepare the draws as part of the preparation of the event.
4. In play - means the event is in progress and participants are free to play their matches. If the event is a social or other specifically timed activity (e.g. an exhibition match) then there is not much meaning to having it in this stage as it is so short lived. Events of this nature are normally moved straight from open through to completed.
5. Completed - The event is complete and no longer supports further match play
6. Archived - Typically an event that was completed over a month ago would be archived. The purpose of having a completed stage is so that recent events are more readily available to users to review (for example the results etc).

You can move an event backward or forward through these stages with the Progress and Backup buttons in Manage events. But take care as these are mostly actions that will effect the accessibility of the event to other users. You will not be able to have events of the same series reside more than once in the open, in play and completed stages.