Build vs Live states

Overview

You do not want a participant seeing a half-built deal room: documents loaded but not reviewed, access tiers not yet audited. RealNex Vault prevents that by separating the configuration phase from the participant-facing phase. 

Every deal room exists in one of two states: Build or Live. Build mode is private to the deal team. The room exists, the folder structure is in place, documents can be loaded, and participants can be queued, but no participant can access or see the deal room. Live mode is what every participant sees once you publish the room. The action that moves the room from Build to Live is Publish: open the actions menu in the deal room header, then click Publish Deal Room.

This article covers the Publish stage of the RealNex Vault deal room workflow. Publishing is the third stage in the Create / Build / Publish sequence: it takes the deal room from Build (deal team only) to Live (participant-facing) and is the gate every participant comes through.

The two states differ in what happens behind the scenes:

• Build mode: deal room exists, configurable, invisible to participants. Invitations queued but not sent.
• Live mode: deal room is participant-facing. Queued invitations dispatch automatically. Share link (Instant Access or Request Access) is functional.

Prerequisites

• A deal room created through the 3-step wizard. See Creating a deal room: the 3-step wizard.
• L7 admin access on the deal room. Only L7 admins can publish.
• A clear picture of which broker and client team members will contribute during Build, plus the initial documents you plan to upload to the Internal Workspace.

What Build mode does

When the 3-step wizard finishes, RealNex Vault creates the deal room in Build mode and lands you on the Overview tab with a Build status badge. In Build mode you can:

• Upload documents to the Internal Workspace to review and approve them.
• Set destination folder, access level, watermark, and document type per document.
• Invite broker team and client team members. Their invitations dispatch immediately in Build mode.
• Queue participant invitations. Participant invitations stay queued and do not dispatch until Publish.
• Edit any field configured in the wizard (deal type, property details, NDA settings, folder structure).

Note: Participants cannot see a Build-mode deal room even if they have an account in RealNex Vault and even if they have been invited. Build mode is fully private to the deal team.

What Live mode does

When you publish the deal room, RealNex Vault performs four actions in sequence:

1. Status badge flips from Build to Live on the Overview tab.
2. Every queued invitation is sent by email.
3. The share link becomes functional. Instant Access links route prospects through the NDA wall and into the room. Request Access links route prospects through the NDA wall to the Pending Access Requests queue.
4. Engagement analytics begin recording. Every member sign-in, document view, and download is captured from this moment on.

From this point, every action is visible to participants at their access level. Documents you publish from the Internal Workspace appear in their folders. Documents you remove from the participant-facing folders disappear. Access tier changes apply immediately.

Move from Build to Live

Step 1: Open the Overview tab

From inside the deal room, click the Overview tab. The Build status badge is overlayed on top of the deal room image.

Step 2: Confirm the deal room is ready

Before publishing, walk through this checklist:

• Every offering document uploaded and approved from the admin review queue, including the Offering Memorandum.
• Every participant invited at the right access tier (L0 to L4).
• NDA workflow configured, with the Investor NDA uploaded if NDA acceptance is required.
• Watermarking enabled across documents that need it.
• Require Access Request decision matches the deal: off for marketed listings, on for off-market or confidential deals.

Step 3: Publish Deal Room

In the deal room header, click the actions menu (the three vertical dots). From the dropdown, click Publish Deal Room. That is the entire publish action, two clicks. The status badge flips to Live, queued participant invitations dispatch, and the share link becomes functional.

What participants see in each state

Participants (L0 through L4)

• Build mode: nothing. The deal room does not appear in their account. The share link returns a not-yet-available message.
• Live mode: the deal room appears in their account. The share link routes them through the NDA wall to the document index at their access tier.

Client team (L5)

• Build mode: the deal room appears in their account. Per their role (Contributor Internal, Contributor External, or Viewer Read Only), they can upload documents to the Internal Workspace and see any documents the L7 admin has approved at L5 and lower.
• Live mode: same role-based access continues. The room is now also visible to invited L0 to L4 external participants.

Broker team (L6) and admins (L7)

• Build mode: full access to the deal room with the Build status badge visible.
• Live mode: full access to the deal room with the Live status badge visible.

Additional Options

Editing a Live deal room

You can upload and publish new documents, edit and re-organize published documents, invite or remove participants, and change access tiers.

Unpublishing a Live deal room

The same actions menu used to publish a deal room is used to unpublish it. From the Overview tab, click the actions menu and select Unpublish Deal Room. Unpublish removes participant access to the room until you publish it again. 

Note: Unpublish does not roll back dispatched invitations or engagement analytics already captured. Use sparingly, and let the deal team know before doing so.

Public versus Private Deal Visibility

Whether a deal room is public (anyone with the share link can request entry) or private (off-market) is set during the wizard. Public versus private is independent of Build versus Live. A Build-mode room is invisible regardless of public versus private. A Live-mode public room is discoverable. A Live-mode private room is only reachable by direct invitation.

Tips and Best Practices

• Configure fully in Build, then publish on purpose. Build mode is the staging phase. Use it to load every document, queue every invitation, and audit access tiers before any participant sees anything.
• Plan Publish as a deliberate moment. Once Live, queued invitations dispatch and the audit clock starts. Make sure the deal team has done a full pre-publish walkthrough. Publishing the room itself is reversible (see Unpublishing a Live deal room below), but dispatched invitations and recorded analytics are not.
• Pin the Live deal room to your dashboard. Favorite the room from the Deal Rooms list to keep it at the top of the dashboard during the active deal cycle.