We need to create a report that provides the following information to enable our team of touring actor/trainers to know where they are and what they're doing from day to day:
Performance
• event date
• Call time for the day
• End time of the day
• organisation who've booked us
• Organisation address
• Main contact from the organisation
• Organisation contact number

• Venue (could be different from the booking organisation)
• Contact at the venue
• Contacts' phone number

• 3 or 4 activity/performance/workshop times on that day
• 4 actors' names
• Our teams' facilitator's name
• Actors fee for the day
• Actors travel expense rate for the day
• Name of the event
• Year group (school audience)

Rehearsal information
• Rehearsal date
• Venue
• Contact at the venue
• Contacts' phone number
• Call time for the day
• End time of the day
• Actors fee for the day
• Actors travel expense rate for the day

This is a lot of information on one report but its proved vital in the kind of work that we do as the team can be doing something different each day on adifferent theme at a different venue.

I can see how much of this info can be drawn from fields that are already in any appointment however. there are things like times and rehearsal information that I'm really stumped on. I think there might be a way of using the extra fields but its defeating me at the moment.

Any ideas or has anybody got anything already designed that's like this?

Cheers

You can create such a report. The main question is where are you storing all this information?

Why are times and rehearsal information stumping you? Where do you keep rehearsal information? Is it a project or appointment or...? Is the rehearsal information part of the Performance meaning would you use one object such as project to hold both the performance and rehearsal information?

Basically what I'm asking is how is your data structured within Daylite?

quote:

The main question is where are you storing all this information?

I agree. Apart from being overwhelmed by the complexity of the report writing process I'm very aware that a lot of the issues I face are about how I'm inputting the information in the first place and precisely where its being stored.

In the case of the Date, venue, etc that's all provided for in the fields for an appointment. The call time for the actors and the end of the day are fine also (although I wish DL would show the start/end times in separate fields from the date).

quote:

Why are times and rehearsal information stumping you? Where do you keep rehearsal information? Is it a project or appointment or...? Is the rehearsal information part of the Performance meaning would you use one object such as project to hold both the performance and rehearsal information?

Basically what I'm asking is how is your data structured within Daylite?

Ok.

Each Project represents a group of performance days funded by one organisation and to be delivered in a specific geographical area to a group of schools; Eg - Stanford Anti-Drugs Programme, Funded by Stanford Council - 10 schools - 2 days per school over a period of 6 months. The project would be linked to Stanford Council as the funding/commissioning organisation, Stanford Schools, the particular schools group and the company's delivery team.

Appointments for those 20 performance days are linked to the project also. Each performance day would also be linked to the venue and the main contact at the venue. In addition, each appointment is 'owned' by the facilitator who is usually a user on DL.

We usually perform three to four times during anyone day. I can see that one solution would be to enter 3 or 4 events in the day instead of one but that becomes laborious at the front end of the process. I'd like to use the 'extra fields' but there don't seem to be any for appointments.

Within a school term (you might say 'semester') there might be 3 or 4 similar programmes that have to be entered as separate projects in DL, as the funding source, geography and themes of each project will all be different. However, the team of 1 facilitator and four actors delivering across the term would be the same. They would be identified as say, the Autumn '07 School Team and set up as a group with this name. (The facilitator needs a separate field in the report as they can differ from gig to gig if needs be). As I indicated above, the whole project and each performance day would be linked to this group as well.

Rehearsals are separate days to performance days and would also belong to a specific project. They are entered as separate appointments to performance days. The rehearsals take place at any one of three known venues.

Actors fees and travel expenses for performance days and rehearsal days can be different depending on the funding source and need to be shown separately. Facilitators fees are different too. This information would generally be confidential and not appear on the actors' call sheet. The facilitator's call sheet would need all of the information.

As I'm writing this I can see that the problem is as much about efficiency and speed of data entry as it is about reporting. The challenge is that we are not a touring company; we don't go out and deliver the same play every day for three months. Its a different show each day in a different school for a different project.

With this much information to be shown there are arguments for each day to have a separate call sheet. This is particularly useful if information about the gig or the rehearsal changes, which it does from time to time. However most gigs and rehearsals for the term are booked well in advance and the list of dates effectively forms part of the actors' contract at the outset of the term['s work so I'd also be interested in a 'table' or list of dates if sufficient columns could be shown.

I've looked at creating a booking form for a project and I'm reasonably sure that by using drop down menus etc,. we can make this entry process better but I'm unclear how it all links up together.

I hope that explains the issue a bit more.........

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Pete,