# Session management

Sessions are the backbone of your meet schedule. Each session is a block of time where a group of gymnasts competes together in your venue. You use sessions to organize who competes when, what apparatus they rotate through, and how the day flows from warmup to awards.

## What sessions do

A session serves two purposes:

1. **Gymnast organization.** You add gymnasts through their competition subdivisions and assign them to squads (their starting positions on each apparatus).
2. **Timeline management.** You define the competition schedule -- warmup times, rotation times, breaks, and awards.

{% hint style="info" %}
**Flexible scheduling.** You can combine multiple competition levels and age groups into a single session. Sessions can also overlap in time, which is useful for large meets with multiple gyms or areas running at once.
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="success" %}
**Auto-assignment available.** Gym Art Meets includes a squad generation tool that distributes gymnasts across rotations while respecting team affiliations and skill levels. It handles the hard part so you can focus on fine-tuning.

For details, see: [Squad Generation](https://docs.gymart.org/scheduling/squad-generation)
{% endhint %}

## Creating a session

1. Go to your meet dashboard and click **Sessions** in the sidebar.
2. Click the **New Session** button.
3. Fill in the session details:
   * **Session Name** -- something descriptive like "Session 2 - Saturday PM"
   * **Description** -- optional notes
   * **Date** -- pick a day within your meet's date range
   * **Start Time** -- sets the baseline for your timeline
   * **Timeline** -- choose from a template or build your own
4. **Add competitions.** Competitions are subdivisions of age groups from your configured levels. Each level and age group combination creates a competition subdivision. Select the ones that belong in this session, and the gymnasts from those competitions are pulled in automatically.

{% hint style="info" %}
**Where do competitions come from?** They are generated from the levels and age groups you set up in your meet configuration. For details, see: [Levels and Age Groups](https://github.com/Gym-Art-Inc/gym-art-nexus/blob/main/docs/levels-and-age-groups/README.md)
{% endhint %}

## The session list

The Sessions page shows all your sessions in a card-based grid. Each card displays the session name, date and time, rotations, timeline summary, participating clubs, and competition levels.

**What you can do from the list:**

* Click the green **Session Dashboard** button to open a session's full management view
* Click on any rotation, timeline, or club section on a card to jump to that specific view
* Use the three-dot menu to **delete** a session (removes it and all its assignments) or **duplicate** it (copies timeline and settings without gymnast assignments)

**Filtering options:** search by name, filter by status (upcoming or past), filter by level, or filter by day.

## The session dashboard

When you open a session, the dashboard gives you the full picture:

* **Total gymnasts** in the session, plus how many are assigned to squads vs. still unassigned
* **Levels** and **clubs** represented
* Quick-access buttons to the gymnast list, squad list, and timeline

From here, you can manage gymnast placements, create and adjust squads, and build out the competition timeline.

## What's next

* [Manage the gymnast list](https://docs.gymart.org/scheduling/session-gymnast-list) -- see who is in the session and manage competitions
* [Organize squads](https://docs.gymart.org/scheduling/squad-list) -- create rotation groups and assign apparatus starting positions
* [Build the timeline](https://docs.gymart.org/scheduling/session-timeline) -- set detailed competition schedules

## Related

* [Create a session](https://docs.gymart.org/scheduling/create-a-session)
* [Squad generation](https://docs.gymart.org/scheduling/squad-generation)
* [Scheduling overview](https://docs.gymart.org/scheduling/index)