USER GUIDE

INFO ABOUT ACCOUNT TYPES

    • This type of account comes with 5 “seats”. One for the owner/subscriber and four additional seats that can be assigned and reassigned to other users via email.

    • Subscription can be set to renew monthly or annually for a discount.

    • Directors can manage the additional seats from the “Manage Plan and Teams” button on their “Profile” page.

    • When you invite other users to your account via email, they will not need to have their own subscription however they will need to set up a login using the email address that was invited.

    • Directors can add additional monthly or yearly seats that can be assigned to additional users.

    • This includes a single seat to sign in and create, manage and share cue sheets.

    • Subscription can be set to renew monthly or annually for a discount.

    • Individual accounts can share cue sheets with other users, however the other users must have their own paid account.

    • This is a pre-paid two-month subscription with auto-renew turned off.

    • After the two month period has expired, the account will still exist, but access to the data will be suspended.

    • Data is retained under the account so when the account is re-instated later, the users can get back to their past cue sheets. (please read about our Data Retention Policy in our published Privacy Policy. Users should maintain backup copies of critical information in the event of data loss)

  • Directors Accounts have five seats in the base account and have the option of adding additional monthly or yearly subscriptions for extra seats.

    The account owner can manage the addition, cancellation and assign access to those seats by launching the Billing & Team Management window from their Profile.

    If you have seats unassigned, you will be able to add an email address and “invite” a new team member to your open seat. They will receive an email informing them that you have added them to your team and inviting them to SignaCue to create an acccount and/or accept the invitation. You can un-assign a seat at any time and send a new invitation for the open seat to another user.

    You can maintain a mix of yearly and monthly seats to adjust your staff access during seasonal changes in productivity.

  • Free, 7 day trial accounts are offered for evaluation with full access to all features, including adding Co-Editors to cue sheets but EXCEPTING the team seats features which are only accessible for Director Accounts.

    Only one trial period is available per email address. Once a trial or any user account has been associated with an account the user is no longer eligible for a trial account.

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE FEATURES

  • Navigate to your profile to :

    • add an avatar (future use)

    • check your account type and status

    • change your password

    • make changes to your plan and billing

    • add and manage additional seats (Directors Account Only)

  • On your dashboard you will find:

    • Create new cue sheet button

    • Active Cue Sheets - sheets you own

    • Shared-with-me - sheets that others own but have shared with you and you can edit

    • Archived Sheets - sheets that you have archived that can be re-activated or used as templates for duplication

    Displayed sheets:

    • that share the same event name will be grouped together (eg. where multiple sessions are part of one conference event).

    • appear in chronological order

    ‍ ‍Using the three dots menu to the right of your sheet groups you can:

    • Archive the group

    • Delete the group

    • Add co-editors to all sheets in the group

    Using the buttons associated with the individual cue sheets you can:

    • Enter edit mode for the cue sheet

    • Archive the sheet

    • Duplicate the sheet

    • Make a sheet public or copy it’s public URL

    • Delete the sheet

    You can only edit sheets shared with you. Archvied sheets can be managed just like the “active” sheets and can be “unarchived” at any time.

  • In the top right header you will see

    • Dark mode/Light mode toggle button. This is user specific and the choice will persist across sessions until the user changes it.

    • Print/Export button (on the cue sheet pages only)

    • A dropdown user menu containing:

      • Profile

      • Dashboard

      • Send feedback (to the developer for bugs or feature requests)

      • *NEW Import Tutorial

      • Keyboard shortcuts

      • This User Guide

    • Directors & Co-editors also see:

      • Toggle Public Access controls (for Directos and Editors in cue sheet building mode)

    Additional capabilities may exist for some users and new features or navigation may be added at any time.

    *Now you can import a tutorial rundown that goes through the features of the app “one item at a time”. The cues contain the info and instructions of how to use the features.

CREATING & BUILDING THE RUNDOWN
Cue Sheet Detail Page

  • When you create a new cue sheet it has:

    Event Information. The Event Name is used to group cue sheets that belong to the same event. The Date & Time are used to sort the cue sheets on your dashboard. The Event Start Time is used for the beginning cue of your cue sheet.

    Cue Type Management. On the top right you will manage the cue types, and their display order in your Items below.

    Items and Cues are managed below with controls built into the header and each item.

  • In the Custom Cue Types area, you can add cue types from the standard list of cues (eg AUDIO, LIGHTING, CENTER SCREEN, DSM, STAGE) or create any CUSTOM CUE you want and add to your list.

    The cue types appear on tiles that can be dragged and dropped into any order preferred. When you make a change to the order of the cues, they will instantly re-order in the Items below on your cue sheet.

  • Add items using the Add Items Button, or using the Shift+N shortcut.

    Item Descriptions use rich text (Bold, Italic, Underline, Highlight and Link) so that information can be emphasized and that external resources (eg. graphics and audio files) can be attached to their corresponding Items.

    The user will set durations for each Item. Start and End times will be automatically calculated for each item based on the Event Start Time (setting the start time for the first Item) and the durations of each Item in sequential order.

  • At the bottom of each expanded item, find a “pre-show” and “optional” button. Use these to set the Item as a Pre-Show (A,B,C) Item at the top of the page or as an Optional (O-1, O-2, O-3) item that may or may not be used during the event.

  • Items can be colored either by clicking the color picker icon on the right of the item or by selecting one or many items using the checkbox on the left and using the color picker in the Item area header.

    There are a set of pre-selected theme colors that have been preset in the picker, or you can use your own preferred custom hex code color. Note that not all colors will play well with the content. Darker colors are preferred for Dark Mode compatibility and will be displayed at 30% opacity in light mode (and in print) to maintain visibility with the corresponding dark text and white background.

  • Using the Item selector box on the left of any items, you can select two or more items and using the Link button in the Items area header, Link the items. Linked items will be selected together when any of their Item selection boxes are checked and so they will color, link, duplicate, move and delete together.

    Linked items are anticipated to be useful for repeated sequences in shows, such as awards ceremonies, where the same cue sequence happens with only different names and associated content.

  • Any item, or set of linked items, can be dragged and dropped into a new position. Once dropped all items will recalculate their start and end times based on their new positions.

  • Find a pencil ICON on the right side of every Item in both the build (detail page) and the live (public) page. Clicking this opens a window where you can make notes for yourself (not seen by others) for that item. When a note has been saved, the pencil will light up yellow to remind you it is there. The owner and editors share the personal notes.

  • Using the print/export button in the top right, the cue sheet can be printed or exported to PDF from either the Cue Sheet Detail Page or the Public Cue Sheet.

  • Access a list of keyboard shortcuts from the top right user dropdown menu at any time to help

  • While editing a cue sheet in the Cue Sheet Detail Page, the user can toggle the status of the sheet from “private” (default) to “public”. When the sheet is made “public”, the system will ask to user to create a password. Passwords can be repeated but every time the page is set to public, the user will need to recreate a password.

    Only the Director and Co-Editors of the page can edit the page and therefore are the only ones who can set passwords.

    Fr convenience, the system will display the password as a reminder in the header beside the public/private toggle.

  • Each Item has an arrow on the left side to expand or collapse that item to show the cues associated with that item. Alternatively the user can use the Expand and Collapse buttons in the Item Area header to expand or collapse all items at onces.

    Expand items to edit cues. Note that Cues also use Rich Text (Bold, Italic, Underline, Highlight and Link) so that they can be emphasized where desired and linked to associated external assets.

  • Use the Hide/Unhide Empty Cues toggle in the Items Area Header to either hide all the cues that have no cue data in them so you can concentrate on editing active cues that will need to be called OR unhide the empty cues (default) to add cue data where needed.

    NOTE: Empty cues will not be printed, exported to PDF or displayed on the public cue sheet.

PREPARING AND RUNNING THE EVENT
Public Cue Sheet & Crew Access

  • Once a cue sheet is set to “Public”, it can be accessed by anyone without logging in. However, the user will set a password for the page and can change the password at any time as needed.

    When joining the public cue sheet, users will have to type in the correct password and will have the option of adding their position and name to the crew list, which will be displayed at the top right of the page and remain editable by all users for updates.

    Only the cue sheet owner and any assigned co-editors will have the option of joining the cue sheet as the Director.

    NOTE: If a user is already logged into the page as the Director, and another user (owner or co-editor) joins they page, they will be warned and have the option to “FORCE TAKEOVER” of the Director position. This is a safety precaution just in case a Director were to lose control of their computer in such a way that it leaves the session open. The new Director session will pick up the event in whatever state the previous session was left allowing them to continue where it was left off.

  • All users on the Public Cue Sheet will have access to these features:

    • Export to Print or PDF

    • Toggle on/off Auto Follow

    • Recenter (button)

    • Edit the crew list

    • Live Feedback on Items and Cues (if enabled)

    • Cue Monitoring

  • In addition to the Universal Controls above, the Director also has these controls and capabilities:

    • Cue Mode (default)

    • Rehearsal Mode

    • Live Mode

    • Toggle On/Off Interactivity

  • At the top of the page, users can toggle on/off the Auto Follow feature (on by default). When on, the page will attempt to automatically scroll to and highlight the Item that the Director has either Cued (brought to Focus but not Started) or Started (by hitting Go or Next in Rehearsal or Live Mode).

    Crew members may need to disengage Auto Follow periodically while preparing for show, but can re-enable it at any time, especially when needed for the Live Show.

    Additionally, at any time, users can click the “Recenter” button which will cause their browser to attempt to scroll to the Current or currently cued item.

  • The crew list remains editable by any/all users as a convenience so that the crew positions and their names can be documented to assist with directing the event.

  • Each Cue under each Item has a checkbox on the left side. At any time any user can click to check one or more of the cue types in the list. When they do, THAT cue type will get highlighted and move to the top of the cue list ONLY on their screen.

    This is a persistent selection and will be retained across sessions as long as cookie data is not deleted. This allows, for instance, the audio A1 to focus on the audio cues that are specific to their position without interfering with anyone else’s view.

  • Live Feedback on Items and Cues is enabled by default, but the Director can toggle off this feature if desired.

    When enabled, blank fields will appear on the right side of each Item and Cue. These fields are group editable. Anyone can type data into them and anyone can re-edit the field after data has been entered.

    When data has been added to any of the Live Feedback fields, that field will “glow green” on everyone’s screen.

    The objective of this feature is to allow crew, assistants and clients who may be working the event to enter in new/changing information that may be important to the operation of the event (eg. A speaker has chosen to use a lav instead of the podium, a new VOG audio file needs to be shared, or a cue has wrong data in it that needs to be corrected).

    The Director has two buttons, “Copy” and “Clear” beside each Live Feedback field that others do not. The Clear button empties the field of data. The “Copy” button will open a pop up window that allows the Director to agree to insert the contents of the Live Feedback field INTO that Item’s or Cue’s description field. Creating a quick and easy method for updating Item and Cue data.

  • In Cue Mode, the Director has “Cue” buttons on each Item in the list. When the Director clicks a “Cue” button for an item, that item is flagged as “Current”, and auto-scrolled to the top of the page. Previous Items will be flagged as “Past” and greyed out. Subsequent Items are flagged as “Coming” and fully visible.

  • In Rehearsal Mode, a Timer Line will be added below each Item and above its Cues displaying a Timer Line start, duration and end time that initially matches the planned timings for that item. In addition, Directors will have a Go button in addition to the Cue button and the Timer Duration field will be editable.

    The Cue button behaves as it always did, scrolling the cued Item to the top of the page for all users with Auto Follow on.

    The Go button will start a timer on the timer line starting at the intended start time of that Item. The Go button will turn into a Next button for the Item that has been started. Clicking Next will advance to the next Item and retain the ticking clock that was started in the previous item so that the Director can rehearse timings and determine if certain Items need more or less time.

    If a different Item is clicked, out of sequence (not Next), the clock will start based on the newly clicked Item’s start time and continue from there.

    The Rehearsal Mode button at the top of the page, will toggle to become a “Reset Rehearsal” button, once any Item is started allowing the Director to return all the Timer Line values to normal and re-run the rehearsals.

  • In Live Mode, like Rehearsal Mode, all Items will have a new Timer Line to track the Live event’s start, duration and end times. However, in this mode, all timings will be based on the actual time on the Directors system clock.

    The Director will have a checkbox that allows the system to automatically start the first Item on time according to it’s planned start time (assuming most events have a set of pre-show timings that are not time critical to be cued). The Director also has the ability to Reset or End Show.

    In addition to the Timer Line, there is also a Show Status field in the lower right side of each item, that displays the current expected (late, early, on time) status of each item based on the Timer Line values.

    The Director should always be using the Next button to advance through the show assuming no Item is going out of sequence. When the Director advances to the next Item, you will see the values of the Timer Start, Duration and End times update based on the ACTUAL start time and the current values of the Durations. All Durations are editable by the Director so changes can be made to help course correct for late/early endings.

    OUT OF SEQUENCE STARTS! Unlike rehearsal, when an Item is clicked “Go” out of sequence, that Item (and any linked Items) will JUMP from it’s position into the next position after the Item that was just ended. All Items will retain their original Item number plus will be flagged with an OOS for Out of Sequence. All timings will recalculate, cascading through the Timer Line while all of the original planned timings remain present for each Item, allowing the Director to see where any durations need to be manipulated to keep the event on time.

    AUTHOR’S NOTE: Discussing and describing this sounds very complex and seems confusing, however, I found it to be quite intuitive, clear and very helpful in practice.