Import your schedule
Most competition directors already have their season written down somewhere — a spreadsheet, a PDF a hotel sent over, a page on their own website. You do not have to retype any of it. Herding Cats reads the document you already have and drafts the whole season for you to check.
Nothing is saved until you press the button at the end. You can change your mind the whole way through.
What you can feed it
The season builder takes:
- A spreadsheet — CSV, TSV, or Excel (
.xlsx) - A PDF — including planning grids, calendar exports, and scans
- Pasted text — an email, a list, whatever you have in your clipboard
- Your own website — it reads the schedule off a tour-dates page, whether it shows this season or last season
Files can be up to 10 MB each.
Old-style Excel files (.xls) and Apple Numbers files are not supported. Open the file, save or export it as .xlsx or CSV, then try again.
A PDF with no text in it — a scan, which is really a photograph of a page, or a form some printers turn into pictures of letters — is read from pictures of its pages instead. It takes a little longer, and only the first 12 pages are read. Check names, dates and numbers closely in the review. If even the pictures can’t be read, it says so: try a clearer copy, or export the data as a spreadsheet.
You do not need to tidy the file up first, rename columns, or delete extra sheets. Hotel spreadsheets, calendar exports, planning grids, and forwarded schedules all work as they are.
Draft your season
- Open the season builder
Open Manage seasons from the season picker in the sidebar and press Build from your website — or go to Events in the left menu, then the Season planning tab, and press the same button.
The page is headed Build a season. The website box is already filled in with the page your last season was read from (or your company website).
The strip headed Building for has a chip for this year and each of the next five. Next year starts picked. Click this year as well to add the season already under way, or pick several years to create each event once in each of them. The last picked year cannot be unpicked.
- Give it your document
Under Season document there is a box that says Drop a schedule document here, or browse. Drag your file onto it, or click it to pick the file.
If your schedule is in an email rather than a file, click …or paste a schedule or email instead, paste the text, and press Read the pasted text.
- Say which season, if the file covers several
There is a small box that reads Which season? (optional — e.g. “2027”). Fill it in only when one document lists more than one season side by side. Otherwise leave it empty.
- Add your website too, if you like
Below the divider marked or there is Website or schedule page. Type your tour-dates page address and press Scrape the schedule.
This reads the schedule on your own site and works out which season it lists — a page headed “2027 Season” is read as 2027, even where the dates leave the year off. If that is a year you are building, the dates stay exactly as listed; an older season moves each event to the same weekend in the years you pick. The strip at the top says which season your site lists.
A document and a website are not an either/or. Do one, then the other. Herding Cats puts the two together into a single list for you to review — this is what “merging” means here.
When it finds the same event in both places (same city, same dates), it keeps it as one row and uses whatever you already have. It never overwrites something you filled in; it only fills in the blanks.
Check the list before it becomes real
Next comes the review screen, headed This season’s events, with a count like (14 of 16 selected). Underneath it says Uncheck events that aren’t happening. Adjust anything — nothing is saved yet.
Each row is one event, and every part of it can be edited right there:
- The Event name
- The Venue (optional)
- The Airport — the three-letter code your staff fly into
- The start and end dates
- A status dropdown, which starts on Status —
The tick box at the start of each row controls whether that event gets created. Untick anything that is not happening this year. The little bin button removes a row entirely.
Under each row you will see where it came from — Last year: for something read off your website, or Document: for something read out of a file, along with the exact wording the document used.
A row with no airport shows No airport — flight features degraded. It will still be created, but flight searching and travel planning for that event will be limited until you add one. It only takes a second to fix here.
Near the top of the list there is a Booking status: line summarising what it found, with chips like 3 confirmed, 2 on hold, and 1 cancelled (unchecked). Anything the document marked as cancelled is unticked for you automatically.
If you spot something missing, the buttons at the top of the card let you add more without starting over: Import a document, Scrape website, and Add event.
Create the events
When the list looks right, press Create {number} events at the bottom.
If a ticked row is missing a name or has a bad date, you will see a message telling you which ones and you will not be able to continue until they are fixed — or you untick them.
You will also see a line telling you how many events this uses out of your plan’s yearly allowance for that year.
The finish screen is headed Season drafted. Your events are created as drafts — you still fill in venues, timelines, and staffing afterwards.
Press Open the season board to go straight to planning, or View events to see them in a list.
The other way in: drop everything at once
If you have a pile of files and are not sure what is what, open Company in the left menu and pick Document intake underneath it. The page is headed Document intake, and that menu link is always the way back to it.
Drop everything on it at once — schedules, rosters, contracts, rooming lists. Herding Cats stores every file as it is, works out what each one is, and puts a button on it pointing at the right place. A schedule gets a button reading Open the season builder — press it and the builder opens with that file already being read, so you never upload it twice. A contract asks which event it is for — a searchable list of every upcoming event, whichever season it’s in — and attaches there; contracts need to be PDFs. The same question is asked wherever you drop a contract: here, on the dashboard’s setup card, or on the Events page.
Each file shows what it thinks it found, in plain words — for example Looks like a season schedule, Might be a staff roster, or We couldn’t tell what this is, usually with a confidence percentage.
A PDF with no text in it — a scan, or a form printed to PDF — is read from pictures of its pages, and its row says Read from page images. Point at it (or tab to it) for why: This PDF had no text layer, so we read the pages as pictures. Check numbers and names closely.
A file that is two things at once — a judges list with a heading for each event, say — is labelled with both, as in Staff roster · also a season schedule, and gets a button for each: Import this roster and Open the season builder. The same file goes to each tool; you never upload it twice.
Under a file that it could not place, there is Help us identify it: with a dropdown. Pick the right kind — Season schedule, Staff roster, Rooming list, Contract (hotel or venue) and so on — and it will route the file properly.
You can drop up to 100 files at a time. Let go of more than that and nothing uploads; instead you will see That’s 120 files — drop up to 100 at a time. Drop the first 100 now, then the rest once they’re up. Split the pile in two and drop the second half when the first is in. The same limit applies wherever you drop documents: here, on the dashboard’s setup card, or on the Events page.
Big drops — more than three files, or more than 4 MB at once — get a panel of their own. While the files go up it reads Uploading 4 of 18, with Don’t close or reload this tab until they’re up. underneath, and each file in the list shows Waiting, Uploading… or Uploaded. You do not have to sit and watch: press Continue in background whenever you like, even while the files are still uploading. The panel folds down to one line and Files keep uploading while this tab stays open. reminds you of the one thing that still matters — keep the tab open until every file is up. You can carry on working anywhere else in Herding Cats in the meantime; if you try to close or reload the tab too early, your browser asks you to confirm.
Once the files are up, Herding Cats works out what each one is, several at a time. The panel reads Processing 4 of 18 and, on a bigger drop, Identifying in 2 batches at once.; each file moves from Waiting to Identifying… to Identified (or Couldn’t be read). From here on you really can close the tab — the work carries on without you.
A small marker in the top bar follows the work on every page. It reads Uploading 4/18, then Processing 4/18 (just the numbers when the window is narrow), then Ready to review · 18 — with 2 couldn’t be read or 3 not reached beside it when that happened, or Import stopped at 83/89 if the import stopped partway. On a phone the same words sit on a thin strip under the header, ending in Open. Click the marker or the strip to come back to your documents; the × clears a finished marker.
A very big drop can run out of time before every file has been looked at. Nothing is lost: the file is stored, its row reads Not reached, and underneath it says Didn’t get to this file in time — identify it from your documents. If the tab is still open, Herding Cats comes back for those files on its own. Otherwise, press Identify the remaining 7 files. You will find it in three places: on the drop panel; beside the top-bar marker, as a small circular-arrow button on a computer (hover it to see the full wording) or Identify 7 more on a phone; and at the top of the Document intake page, where it covers every file still waiting — reading Identify the next 100 of 230 files when there are more than 100. You can also pick a file’s type by hand on its own row.
When it is all done you get one notification for the whole drop, however many files were in it — in the app and by email, headed Your import is done. It says how many files were identified, how many couldn’t be read, and how many it didn’t get to — for example 16 files identified, 2 couldn’t be read — ready to review in your documents. If nothing at all could be done, it is headed Your import couldn’t finish instead, with the reason, and the panel reads This import couldn’t finish. On the finished panel the main button is Review them in your documents, which takes you to the Document intake page — unless you are already on it.
Links you paste keep running even if you close the tab. You will see You can leave this page — we’ll notify you when it’s done. When it finishes, the card reads Import finished. If something went wrong it reads This import couldn’t finish, with the reason.
Press the × on a file’s row to dismiss it. It leaves the list straight away, and its drop’s line counts it — for example 3 files · 2 dismissed. Dismissed files are kept, not deleted: Show 2 dismissed, above your files, lists them again (you can still open the original), and Hide dismissed puts them away. A dismissed file can’t go back into the list; if you need it again, open it and drop it in again.
To clear the whole list at once, press Clear all above your files. It asks first — for example Dismiss all 97 files in the intake? — and dismisses everything except files still being identified, including files already sent to import. While a drop is being identified in the background, the files still waiting their turn stay too.
What to do next
- Plan your weekends — see the whole tour at once and spot the gaps.
- Staff an event — put people on the events you just created.