Managing experiment status in Sitecore Personalize

The status of an experiment determines whether the experiment can be edited, paused, set to production, and more. The experiment status also determines what appears in the QA tool and analytics.

You can see the status of the experiment at all times beneath the name of the experiment on the given screen. The experiment status can be any of the following:

Draft - When an experiment is initially created, Sitecore Personalize automatically assigns it a draft status. You can edit an experiment with this status. An experiment with a draft status can change to publishing or completed.
Publishing - An experiment has a publishing status only for a number of minutes. This occurs when you click the Start button on the status banner. Sitecore Personalize compiles the code and deploys it to the Content Development Network (CDN) to make it available in production. This is true whether you set the experiment to Run Now or Scheduled. The publishing status typically takes a number of minutes to complete. You can't manually move an experiment with a publishing status to another status. Sitecore Personalize automates the status change.

An experiment with a publishing status can automatically change to:
- Scheduled: If the experiment successfully deploys to the CDN and was set to Scheduled.
- Live: If the experiment successfully deploys to the CDN and it was set to Run Now .
- Draft: If the experiment fails to deploy to the CDN and the experiment had a previous status of draft.
- Paused: If the experiment fails to deploy to the CDN and the experiment had a previous status of paused.
Scheduled - An experiment has a scheduled status if during the publishing status, it successfully deployed to the CDN. An experiment with a scheduled status can automatically change to live if the current date/time is within the scheduled range of the experiment .

An experiment with a scheduled status can change to paused.
Live - When your experiment has a status of live, it means that personalization is now in effect and any variants can potentially be shown to guests.

An experiment has a live status if it successfully deployed to the CDN while in the publishing state, it was set to run now, or if it was in a scheduled state and the current date/time is within the scheduled range. An experiment with a live status can change to:
- Paused: If you click the Pause button.
- Completed: If the experiment was in a scheduled state and the current date/time is no longer within the scheduled range, or if a user clicked the Complete button.
Paused - An experiment has a paused status if you clicked the Pause button while the experiment was scheduled or live.

You can edit an experiment with the paused status, but it will invalidate your test results.

An experiment with a paused status can change to publishing if you click the Start button, or completed if you click Complete.

Note

To pause an experiment, from the respective Build summary screen, click the Pause button. The Pause Experiment confirmation window displays. Click the Pause button. The experiment is paused.
Completed - An experiment has a completed status if the experiment was in a scheduled state and the current date/time is no longer within the scheduled range or if a user clicked the Complete button when the experiment had a paused status.

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