Close and lock a tasting
What happens when you close a tasting: locked results, final status, and how to reopen it.
Goal
Close a tasting to lock its results (means, deviations, charts, and statistical tests) and leave it in Closed status.
Before you close
- Check each panelist's progress in Digital evaluation. You can close with evaluations still pending, but the panel will be partial: a closed tasting no longer accepts new answers.
- If someone still has to finish, send them a reminder from Digital evaluation → Send emails before closing.
- While the tasting is open, the Results block already shows a real-time preview with what has come in so far.
Steps
Open the tasting
Sidebar → My evaluations → open the tasting.
Click Close tasting and lock results
The button sits above the results block. It appears while the tasting is not closed, for any test type, training tests included.
Confirm
The "Close the tasting and lock results?" dialog opens. It explains that the results will be computed and locked with the answers received so far, that the tasting will stop accepting evaluations, and that you can reopen it later if you need to. It also reminds you that you can notify anyone still pending first. In discriminative tests (triangle, paired comparison, duo-trio) with fewer than 24 completed responses, it adds a low statistical power warning: with few respondents, a "not significant" result means a lack of power, not that the samples are the same.
Click Close and lock results (or Cancel). While it processes, the button shows Closing….
Review the result
The tasting moves to Closed status, the End field in the header is set to the closing time, and the Results block stops being a preview and shows the final panel analysis. Its content depends on the test type:
- Scale tests (descriptive, hedonic): mean ± standard deviation per attribute and sample, ANOVA (p-value) with Tukey groups when there are differences, and the sensory profile (spider chart).
- Discriminative tests (triangle, paired comparison, duo-trio): proportion of correct answers, binomial p-value, and verdict.
- Ranking: Friedman test with the rank sums and the sample groups.
- Time-intensity and aroma release: the curves and their parameters.
- Training (basic tastes and thresholds): the Calibration results table, which is only computed at closing; each panelist's ISO 8586 level is recalculated at that moment.
Expected result
The tasting appears as Closed in the list. The panel can no longer send answers or be changed, and the header shows the Generate dossier button (it opens the new dossier wizard) and the Reopen tasting button.
Reopening a closed tasting
A closed tasting can be reopened with the Reopen tasting button in the header, which asks for confirmation ("Reopen this tasting?"). Once reopened, it moves to Active status and you can keep collecting evaluations or adjust the panel (add or remove panelists, regenerate links). While it's reopened, the results are no longer locked and the block goes back to being a preview until you close it again with Close tasting and lock results. In training tastings, closing again recalculates each panelist's calibration results.
Every status change (close, reopen, close again) is recorded in the tasting's status audit, with who did it and when.