Manual Draw (Live or Early)

Manual draws give you full control over when the winner is picked. From your raffle admin, the “Draw winner” button on a competition’s detail page picks a random paid ticket, records the winner, and (when notifications are enabled) emails + SMSes the customer. Today this is how every draw fires on the platform — see Auto Draw for the upcoming cron-based variant.

Where the button lives

Raffle admin → Competitions→ click any competition. The detail page header shows Draw winner once the competition is active or ended. Click once and the draw fires server-side. No undo — the random ticket is committed to the draw_results table the moment you click.

What the server actually does

1. Loads all tickets rows for the competition (paid + free entries together — equal-chance pool).
2. Picks a random row via JavaScript’s Math.random() (server-side — never the client).
3. Inserts a draw_results row with draw_method = 'manual', the winning ticket number, and the total tickets in the draw.
4. Inserts a winners row tied to the winning user, with win_type = 'draw'.
5. Marks the competition status = 'drawn' so the storefront stops accepting purchases and the public page renders the winner banner.

Live-draw workflow

A common pattern for Instagram or TikTok Live draws:

1. Pre-stream: confirm the competition is still active and has reached its end date.
2. Open the admin in one browser tab; open the public competition page in a second tab — this is the one your camera shows.
3. Build hype on stream. Click Draw winner in the admin tab. The page reloads showing the winner.
4. Switch to the public tab and refresh — the winner’s display name + ticket number appear in the page’s drawn banner.

Notifying the winner

If you have Resend + Twilio configured under /admin/integrations, the winner gets an email + SMS within seconds. The templates use your brand name and your resend_from_emailaddress. If integrations aren’t configured, no notification fires — drop the customer an email manually from the winner detail page in the admin.

Re-drawing after a no-show

If the original winner doesn’t respond within your T&Cs grace period (typically 14 days), open the winner detail page, mark the payout status refused, then re-click Draw winner on the competition page — it picks a new random ticket excluding any already drawn.

Related: Managing Payouts.