Launching and Managing Screens

How screens move from candidate entry through invitation, interview, results, and completion, including credit mechanics, expiration, and cancellation.

Overview

A Screen is a single candidate’s screening session, bound to a specific Sage. It represents the full lifecycle of one person’s interaction with your configured interview agent: from the moment you enter their information through to the final results. Every Screen tracks its own status, invitation, expiration window, credit cost, and outcome independently.

Screens are created from a Sage’s detail page. You can enter multiple candidates at once; each one becomes its own Screen record with its own invitation and lifecycle.

Creating Screens

Candidate Entry

When creating screens, you provide candidate information through a grid interface that supports bulk entry. Each candidate requires:

• First Name: Required. Used in the invitation email and within the screening itself.
• Last Name: Required.
• Email: Required. Must be a valid email address. This is where the invitation is sent and how the system identifies the candidate. Duplicate emails for the same Sage are flagged during entry.
• Phone: Optional. Stored for reference; not used during the screening process.

Each valid candidate row in the grid generates a separate Screen record. Invalid entries (missing required fields, malformed email) are filtered out during creation.

Credits and Cost

Credits are deducted at the moment the Screen is created, not when the invitation is sent or when the candidate begins. This means draft screens that have never been sent still carry a credit charge.

The credit cost per Screen is determined by the Sage’s type (Lite, Core, or Advanced), plus any enabled add-ons. Language support is included on every level at no additional cost.

Send Now or Save as Draft

During creation, you choose whether to send invitations immediately or save the screens as drafts. If you send immediately, each Screen transitions from Draft to Invited and the candidate receives their invitation email. If you save as draft, the Screens are created and charged but no invitation goes out until you explicitly trigger it.

The Invitation

Invite Link Mechanics

Each invitation generates a unique, single-use link for the candidate. SageScreen stores only a hashed form of the key in the link, so invitation links cannot be guessed, reused, or shared between candidates.

If you resend an invitation (for example, if the candidate did not receive the original), the system generates a new key and invalidates the previous one. The old link stops working immediately.

Email Template

The invitation email uses dynamic variables that the system replaces at send time:

• Candidate name, populated from the first and last name entered during creation
• Invite link, the unique screening URL
• Expiration date, when the invitation expires
• Position, the role title from the Sage
• Organization, your council name

Email settings cascade: Screen-level settings take priority, then Sage-level, then council-level, then platform defaults. This lets you customize messaging at whatever granularity you need.

Expiration

Invitations expire seven days after they are sent by default. The expiration date can be adjusted during screen creation or when sending invitations.

Expiration is evaluated at the end of the day (23:59:59) on the expiration date, not at the exact time the invitation was sent. A candidate who receives an invitation on March 1st with a seven-day window has until the end of March 8th to begin.

Expired invitations cannot be accepted. If a candidate clicks an expired link, they are redirected to an expiration notice. Credits for expired screens are refunded to the council’s balance.

Screen Lifecycle

Every Screen moves through a defined sequence of statuses. Some transitions happen automatically; others require explicit action.

Status	Meaning	Triggered By
Draft	Screen created; invitation not yet sent.	Screen creation with “save as draft”
Invited	Invitation email sent; awaiting candidate action.	Sending the invitation (immediate or manual)
Accepted	Candidate clicked the invite link; identity and camera verification in progress.	Candidate accessing the invite URL
Started	Candidate passed verification and entered the live interview.	Candidate completing consent and camera check
Completed	Interview finished; results generated or pending.	Candidate submitting the post-interview survey
Closed	Administratively finalized. No further action possible.	Admin manual closure
Cancelled	Screen cancelled before the candidate began. Credits refunded.	Admin cancellation from Draft or Invited status

The normal path is linear: Draft, Invited, Accepted, Started, Completed. Cancelled is a terminal state only reachable from Draft or Invited. Closed is an administrative finalization applied after completion.

Completion States

When a Screen reaches Completed status, its outcome is further classified by a completion state that describes how the interview ended:

1. Finished: The candidate completed the full interview and submitted the post-screening survey. Full results are generated.
2. Ended: The candidate ended the interview early before completing all questions. No results are generated.
3. Timeout: The session timed out during the interview.
4. Expired: The invitation expired while the candidate was in the process of starting.
5. Abandoned: The candidate started the interview but never returned to finish.

Important

Only the Finished state produces full results with a summary, recommendation, and category breakdowns. All other completion states represent incomplete screenings.

Results

When a candidate finishes the interview and submits the post-screening survey, the system triggers result generation. Results are produced by the evaluation engine based on the full conversation transcript, evaluated against the rubric the Sage was built with.

A completed Screen with results includes:

• Summary: A written assessment of the candidate’s performance.
• Recommendation: A Strong, Moderate, or Weak alignment recommendation based on the evaluation.
• Category Results: An alignment rating for each evaluation category, each with an explanation of the rationale.
• Verification: A verification code and QR code for external validation of the screening’s authenticity.

Results are accessible from the Screen’s detail page and can be downloaded as a PDF. The full conversation transcript is also available for review.

Cancellation and Refunds

Screens can only be cancelled from Draft or Invited status. Once a candidate has accepted the invitation and entered the screening flow, cancellation is no longer available.

When a Screen is cancelled:

• The Screen’s status changes to Cancelled permanently.
• Credits charged at creation are refunded to the council’s balance.
• If the invitation had been sent, the candidate receives a cancellation notification email.
• The invitation link is immediately invalidated.

Credits are also refunded when an invited Screen expires without the candidate ever accepting it.

Caution

Once a candidate has been in the interview for 5 minutes or has given 3 responses, the screen’s credits are consumed and no refund applies, whatever the outcome. The credit charge covers the screening infrastructure, not just the completed result. Plan accordingly when creating screens in bulk. See Billing and Credits for the full refund rules.

Managing Screens

The Screens list provides a filterable, sortable grid of all screens associated with your Sages. Each row shows the candidate’s name, email, associated Sage, current status, and key dates (created, invited, started, completed).

From the list, you can:

• Send or resend invitations for screens in Draft or Invited status
• Cancel screens that have not yet been accepted
• View results for completed screens
• Open the detail page for any screen to see full status history, invitation details, and results

Cancelled screens are excluded from the default list view but remain in the system for audit purposes.

Important

Setting a Sage to Inactive automatically cancels all of its Draft and Invited screens and refunds their credits. Screens that are already Accepted or Started are allowed to complete normally.