Plan your weekends
A season is not really a list of events. It is a run of weekends, and the problem is never one event on its own — it is two events on the same Saturday sharing one pool of people. Herding Cats gives you three views of that, and this page explains when to use each.
The three views
| View | Where | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Events | Events in the left menu | Finding one event and its details |
| Season planning | The Season planning tab | Seeing the whole tour at once |
| Weekend view | A link from either of the above | Working one weekend down to the last role |
Events: your season, grouped by weekend
Go to Events in the left menu. The page is headed Events.
Two small toggles sit at the top:
- By weekend or Table — how the events are laid out.
- Upcoming, Past, or Archived — which slice of the season you are looking at.
By weekend is the useful one for planning. Your events are gathered into weekend groups, with a line at the top telling you how many events sit across how many weekends. Use Expand all and Collapse all to open and close them together.
Each weekend group has a header showing its label and a sub-line like 3 events · 12 staff assigned. Next to it are two buttons: Weekend view and Add event. The pencil icon renames the weekend, so you can call it what your team calls it.
Inside a group, the events are listed with these columns: Event, Venue, Dates, Airport, Staffing, and Status.
The badge moves through the season with the event: Tentative, Contracted, Housing, Ready for staffing, Staffed · ready for travel, Good to go, and finally Debrief.
Scan that column and you know instantly which events still need work.
An empty dash (—) in the Venue or Airport column means that detail has not been filled in yet.
Season planning: the whole tour on one screen
Press the Season planning tab. The heading reads Season planning, and underneath: The whole tour on one screen. Staff it like the puzzle it is — all at once, no double-books.
At the top is a summary chip in the shape 12 weekends · 18 events · 143/200 slots filled. That single line is the health of your season.
The left side is one block per weekend, headed W1, W2 and so on, with the weekend’s dates. Inside each is a card for each event showing its name, the airport, and a filled bar — 8/12 filled. Every card has a Weekend view link beside its weekend heading.
If a competitor is running something on your dates, the event card carries a warning starting Same dates: or Within a week:. A softer one reads Within a week: for near misses. That is your cue to look before you sign a contract.
Down the right-hand side are three cards that explain the season as a whole:
- Time off on file — the weekends your people have actually marked. Everyone else is assumed available — these are the marked exceptions the plan works around.
- How this plan was built — the rules used, in order, whenever you ask Herding Cats to suggest staffing.
- Season load — how many weekends each person would end up working. Someone at their limit shows an at cap badge.
The buttons across the top of this tab are Import data, Market intel, Build a season, and Build season plan.
Build season plan asks Herding Cats to solve the whole season at once. It shows you what it wants to do; nothing is assigned until you press Apply {number} assignments on the bar at the bottom. Full details are in Staff an event.
Weekend view: one weekend, all the way down
Press Weekend view from either of the pages above. The page is headed Weekend of {dates}, with the line Every event on this weekend, one screen. One staff pool, no double-books.
Each event on the weekend gets a card. Under the name you will see:
- A filled ratio — green when the event is fully staffed, amber when it is short.
- The venue, or Venue TBD when it is not set yet.
- The airport code.
- The rooming state: Rooming: draft, Rooming: sent to hotel, or Rooming: confirmed. Nothing shows if you have not booked rooms for that event.
Under each card, the roles are broken out one by one. Beside each role is a count of who is on it against how many you wanted, and a link reading See all candidates.
Spotting the gaps
This is what the weekend view is for. Three things to look for:
- Amber role counts
Any role count in amber is short. Under it, a small grey line spells it out: 3 open slots, or 1 open slot.
- People who told you no
Beside each assigned person is a chip showing what they said about that weekend: Available, Prefers not, or Unavailable. If they marked a specific stretch of dates, the chip reads Away with the dates.
Anybody with no chip has not answered. Herding Cats assumes people are available unless they say otherwise.
- Flights not booked
A small chip shows how many of the two flight directions are booked — for example 1/2. Grey means nothing booked, amber means half, green means both.
When you run staffing, the bar at the bottom may say · 3 slots couldn’t be filled. Hover it and it names each one with a reason — often something like Nobody on the roster is tagged Judge.
That is not a bug. It means there is nobody to pick, and it needs a decision from you: hire someone, retrain someone, or change the plan.
Looking at cities you have not committed to
The third tab, Exploring, is for markets you are only thinking about. The heading reads Exploring and the description tells you how many open explorations you have.
An exploration is a placeholder city with tentative dates. It does not show up in your operational lists, and it does not count against your plan’s yearly event allowance until you promote it. Each exploration card has Market intel, Viability projection, and Venue prospects sections, and three actions: Promote…, Apply a task list…, and Abandon.
Use it to sketch out next season without cluttering this one.
What to do next
- Staff an event — fill those amber counts.
- Staff availability — get people to answer before you plan around them.