Key Behaviors

These backend behaviors are important to understand before you wire Sentinel into a production flow.

external_id controls candidate reuse

Candidate identity in Sentinel is anchored on external_id.

When you pass candidate details while calling Create Workspace Session, use a stable external_id from your system for that person.

That lets Sentinel associate repeated attempts with the same candidate record rather than treating every attempt as a brand-new person.

If you manage candidates separately, see Create Candidate.

session_policies override workspace defaults

Workspaces hold the default policy for a course or exam. When you create a session, you can optionally send session_policies to override those defaults for that one attempt.

Use this when a particular session needs different behavior than the workspace baseline, while still keeping the workspace policy as the default for everyone else.

Policy is frozen when the session is created

Session policy is effectively fixed at session creation time.

If you later update the workspace policy with Update Workspace, that change does not retroactively alter sessions that already exist.

If you need different behavior for a candidate who has not started yet, create the session with the intended session_policies or update the workspace before creating that session.