When plans change
What this is for
It’s Thursday night. Your judge calls with a family emergency. The event
starts Saturday.
What follows is never one problem. It’s a flight to cancel, a replacement
to find and screen, new travel to book same-day, a hotel room to
reassign, an assignment sheet to redo, payroll to fix, and eleven people
who need telling. The knowing-what-to-do part is the hard part, and it’s
usually held in one person’s head.
Herding Cats holds it instead. You say what happened; it maps out
everything that touches, hands you a checklist, and tells the rest of your
team.
Reporting what happened
Open the event and click Something changed?
It’s in the header at the top of the event page. Hovering it shows
Report a mid-season disruption.Pick what happened
The panel asks What happened? and gives you six cards:- Someone dropped out — A judge, MC, or crew member can’t make it —
or didn’t show. - Venue problem — The venue moved us, changed rooms, or something’s
wrong with the space. - Schedule shifted — Dates moved, or the day-of timeline changed.
- Equipment failure — Truck trouble, gear failure, or missing kit.
- Weather threat — A storm is threatening travel or the event.
- Something else — Anything that doesn’t fit the buckets above.
- Someone dropped out — A judge, MC, or crew member can’t make it —
Say who, if it’s a person
Pick them from the event’s roster.Write one line
The box asks What’s the one-line version? — for example
Jordan called — family emergency, out for the weekend. There’s a
second, optional box for anything else worth knowing: what’s already
been tried, who already knows.Click Build the plan
It reads your actual situation — how many roster slots are filled, how
many days out you are, whether that person has flights booked, whether
they hold a hotel room or a rental car, what airport the venue is near —
and writes a plan from it.Review the plan
The screen reads Here’s the plan, with steps grouped under
Right now, Today, and This week. Uncheck anything that
doesn’t apply. Add anything missing in the box at the bottom. Each step
shows who usually handles it.Click Save plan & alert the team
The button counts your steps. Every other admin and coordinator gets
told right away.
The plan does not have to be perfect at 11pm. Save it with the five things
you know need doing. You can add steps to it later from the event page.
Working the checklist
Once saved, the plan lives at the top of the event’s page, headed with a
count like 2 open disruptions. It also shows on your Dashboard
under Open disruptions, and on the Travel page.
Each one shows when it was reported and how far along it is —
3 of 8 handled.
For each step you can:
- Claim it, so your team can see you’ve got it. Your name shows next
to it. Unclaim hands it back; if someone else claimed it, the button
reads Take over. - Mark it Done when it’s handled.
- Skip it if it doesn’t apply after all.
- Add a step of your own in the Add a step… box.
When it’s all handled, click Resolve. If steps are still open it will
check first — Some checklist items aren’t done or skipped yet. Resolving
closes this disruption anyway — with a Resolve anyway button. You’ll
get a Disruption resolved — nice work.
Who to call: the replacement list
When somebody drops out, the plan comes with a call list, headed
Who to call for {role}. It’s every person on your roster tagged for
that role, ranked, with a badge telling you where they stand:
| Badge | What it means |
|---|---|
| Available | No time off marked for those dates. The calendar says free — always confirm by phone. |
| Prefers not | They asked to keep those dates clear. Workable, but lead with that when you call. |
| Marked away | They marked those dates as time off. Last resort — plans change, but be gracious. |
People already working that weekend are listed separately, so you don’t
call someone who’s already booked.
Next to each name are buttons to call, text, or email them. The
text and email open in your own phone or mail program with the message
already written — who you are, which role you lost, which city, which
dates, whether travel is needed, and an ask that fits their situation. You
can edit every word before you send it. Nothing goes out from Herding Cats
on your behalf.
If nobody’s tagged for the role, it says so: Nobody on the roster is
tagged for {role}. Check the swing list or add the tag to someone who can
cover.
Playbooks: teaching it your way
The steps you get aren’t generic. They come from playbooks — a
scenario, and the steps your company works through when it happens.
Herding Cats ships six starter playbooks, written from how touring
competitions actually run:
| Playbook | For |
|---|---|
| Judge or key staffer drops close to the event | The Thursday-night fire drill |
| No-show on event morning | Nobody showed and doors are in an hour |
| Venue moves us or the room changes | A different room, or a different building |
| Dates or day-of timeline shifts | The schedule moved |
| Truck breaks down between cities | Freight, mid-route |
| Storm threatens a travel weekend | Weather |
They’re used automatically for any scenario you haven’t customised. To make
one your own:
Go to Company, then Playbooks
The tile there says: Teach the cascade bot your way: when something
goes wrong mid-season, these are the steps it proposes.Find the one you want under Starter templates
Click Add to my playbooks
It becomes your copy, badged From template, and the button changes
to Added.Click it to edit
Rename it, reorder the steps, rewrite them in your words, add your own,
and set who usually handles each one. Click Save playbook.
Or click New playbook and write one from scratch — a name, a When…
scenario, and your steps.
Your playbooks always win over the starters. You can also switch one off
temporarily without deleting it.
The most valuable thing you can do here is add the step that only your
company knows about. “Call Marcy at the venue before you call anyone else.”
“Check the trailer for the backup sound board.” Those are the steps that
actually save the weekend, and they’re the ones no starter template can
guess.
Swapping one person for another
Reporting a disruption gets you a plan. Actually replacing the person on
the roster is a separate, deliberate action.
Open the event, go to the Staffing tab, and open the person’s
assignmentClick Swap staff
The box reads Swap out {name}, and lists only people qualified for
that role, ranked by availability, airport match, and schedule.Read the amber box
Before you pick anyone, it shows you what this will cost you in travel
follow-up — Inbound flight will be cancelled + rebooked,
Hotel room reassignment queued, and so on.Pick a replacement
Each candidate shows an estimated dollar impact, a fit score, and small
notes — Same home airport, No flights on file — nothing to
rebook, Already on 1 conflicting event.Type a reason if you want one
For example Alice has a conflict — Bob is available.Click the swap button
It names the person and the estimated cost.
What happens next:
- The person coming off is marked replaced and drops off the active
roster. Their record stays for history. - The new person is added in the same role, keeping the hotel nights and
travel method — but not the old person’s flights or hotel room. Those
are deliberately left alone. - Travel clean-up gets queued as tasks, not done automatically. You’ll
see items naming the person and the flight — Cancel inbound flight
for…, Book inbound flight for…. They land in the
Action needed card on your dashboard. - Both people get told. The person coming off gets Removed from {event}
with your reason; the person coming on gets Assigned to {event}. - Every admin and coordinator gets a heads-up that travel follow-up is
waiting.
Herding Cats queues Cancel inbound flight as a task for a human. It does
not call the airline. Somebody still has to do it — the point is that
nobody forgets it exists.
Removing without a replacement
If you don’t have anybody yet, use Remove instead of Swap staff.
The box explains it: Marks the assignment replaced and queues any
flight/hotel cancellations as coordinator follow-up. Optionally pick a
replacement now.
Leave the Pick a replacement now box unchecked to backfill later. It
queues the cancellations but no rebookings, because there’s nobody to book
for yet. If they were sharing a hotel room, it flags that too — the
remaining roommate now has a room short one person.
The knock-on warning
If the person you’re swapping in is already working somewhere else,
you’ll get a box headed Cascade ahead that names the other event and
warns you’ll be leaving that one short. It’s not a block. It’s a heads-up
so you don’t create tomorrow’s fire while putting out tonight’s.
What Herding Cats will not do on its own
Worth being clear about, because the difference matters at 11pm:
- It doesn’t watch the weather or the airlines. Nothing detects a
cancelled flight and files a disruption for you. Reporting is always a
person clicking Something changed?. Automatic weather and airline
detection is in active development. - It doesn’t email studios about venue or date changes. That’s a step
on your checklist — Notify every studio owner — for a human to do, with
human wording. - It doesn’t send the replacement outreach. Those calls, texts, and
emails go out from your own phone and mail program. - It doesn’t cancel or rebook travel. It queues the work and makes sure
it’s visible.
What it does is make sure nothing falls through: the plan is written down,
the right people know, and the follow-up work is sitting on someone’s list
instead of in someone’s memory.