Build a Run-of-Show Cue Sheet and Stage Timer

Guests need an agenda that says when things start. The crew needs a different document that says who is on, where, for how long and what happens at each cue. And the person holding the microphone needs a clock they can see from the stage. These are three views of the same list of sessions, and they go wrong when each is typed separately. Agenda and Cue Sheet Builder is a workspace that makes all of them from one schedule.

The short version: build the schedule once, print the guest programme, print the crew cue sheet, and run the stage timer from the same sessions.

The four steps

The workspace shows four steps. Each opens a tool, and each uses the sessions in your project, which live in your browser tab and are erased when you close it, so save the project file.

1. Schedule opens Event Day Schedule: sessions on one or several days, each with a start, end, title, room and presenter. It warns when two sessions overlap in the same room or with the same presenter, and has a Move times control for when a whole day slips. You can copy the schedule, download Excel or CSV, or import a CSV.
2. Printed agenda opens Agenda Builder: a clean programme PDF for guests on US Letter or A4, with an optional subtitle and footer, an accent colour, and switches for presenters, rooms and tracks.
3. Cue sheet opens Run of Show Cue Sheet: a landscape PDF for the crew with time, length, item, who, where, cue or notes and a tick box.
4. Stage timer opens Focus and Stage Timer.

Steps 2 and 3 show the hint "Add sessions first." until the project has sessions. Both can also take typed lines instead, one session per line in the form 09:00-09:30 Welcome | Presenter | Room, with 12-hour times like 2-3 PM accepted and a bare line that starts with no time skipped and reported.

A worked example: a morning programme

Suppose you type this programme into the cue sheet, with the day set to 13 November:

• 09:00-09:30 Doors and coffee, Foyer
• 09:20-10:00 Opening keynote, Dana Ruiz, Main hall
• 10:00-10:45 Product demo, Dana Ruiz, Main hall
• 10:30-11:00 Workshop A, Sam Lee, Main hall
• 12:30 Lunch
• afternoon free time
• 2-3 PM Panel, Sam Lee, Room B

The parser reads six sessions and skips "afternoon free time", because it does not start with a time. "2-3 PM" becomes 14:00 to 15:00. Now the tools show what they each notice:

• The cue sheet counts items and total length, here 6 items and 3 h 25 min. It flags 2 overlaps: the keynote starts 10 minutes before the doors-and-coffee item ends, and Workshop A starts 15 minutes before the demo ends. It flags 1 long gap: Lunch begins 90 minutes after Workshop A ends, and the default threshold is 60 minutes (you can change it from 5 to 600). It also notes that 1 item has no end time, so Lunch shows no length.
• The schedule tool is narrower on purpose. It flags only overlaps that share a room or a presenter. Here that is one: the product demo and Workshop A are both in the Main hall. The keynote overlapping the coffee does not trigger it, because they are in different rooms, and Dana Ruiz's keynote and demo meet at 10:00 exactly, which counts as back-to-back, not a clash.
• Move times shifts a whole day: moving this day by 30 minutes turns 09:00-09:30 into 09:30-10:00, and the others follow. Times stay inside the day, and the tool tells you if any had to be clamped.

The lesson is that the two tools answer different questions. The schedule asks "can this really happen?", and the cue sheet asks "will the crew be standing around, or tripping over each other?" Check both.

About cue notes

The cue sheet has a Cue / notes column filled from each session's Notes field. The schedule screen has boxes for start, end, title, room and presenter, but no Notes box, so notes get into your project by importing a CSV that has a Notes column. The easiest way: download the schedule CSV, add a Notes column in a spreadsheet with entries such as "Lights down, play intro video", and import it back. Blank CSV downloads a template with the right headers. Then print the cue sheet and check that the notes appear. The tool's tip is to print two copies, one for the stage manager and one for sound and lights.

Step 4 in detail: the stage timer

The timer has two modes: Stage and Focus. Stage mode is a big countdown for the person on stage. You type a length (5, 5:30 or 1:05:00, where a bare number is minutes) or pick a preset of 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45 or 60 minutes. The background goes through colours as time runs down: slate before you start, green while there is plenty of time, amber when 120 seconds or fewer remain (you can change this), red when 30 seconds or fewer remain, and a dark red once time has run out, when the clock counts up with a plus sign. At exactly zero the clock still reads 00:00 in red, and from one second past it shows +00:01.

So a 10-minute slot behaves like this: from 10:00 down to 2:00 the screen is green and shows the time; at 2:00 it turns amber with one beep; at 0:30 it turns red with two beeps; at 0:00 it holds red; one second later it turns dark red with three beeps and starts counting overtime. You can also show a message of up to 60 characters, such as "Please wrap up", and add or remove a minute while it runs. Use Full screen on a second display or a tablet facing the speaker, and mind the sound setting.

The clock is based on real time, not on counting ticks, so a screen that sleeps for a moment shows the right time when it wakes. On supported browsers it also asks the device to keep the screen on while it runs. Keep the tab open and the device plugged in during a live event.

"Use my agenda" loads the sessions in your project that have an end time and uses each one's length. Sessions with no end time are skipped, and if none qualify the tool says so. "Next session" moves along the queue, showing "Next session (2 of 5)". For the sample offsite, that gives five timer slots, because the team dinner has no end time. Focus mode is a work-and-break timer, covered in run stage countdowns and focus rounds.

Steps

1. Add every session with a start and an end, a room and a presenter. Use Move times if a day slips.
2. Read any overlap message, and fix real clashes.
3. Download the guest programme from Agenda Builder, check it for typos and print a proof. There is a longer guide in build a printable event programme PDF.
4. Import a CSV with a Notes column if you want cues on the crew sheet, then download the cue sheet and check the timing flags.
5. On the day, load the agenda into the stage timer, set the amber and red times, and test the sound.
6. Save the project file.

Agenda and Cue Sheet Builder and Event Day Schedule are Premium Applications, with 2 trial uses a day before a day pass or plan applies. Agenda Builder, Run of Show Cue Sheet and Focus and Stage Timer are Professional Tools with 10 trial uses a day. The PDF downloads count as usage; the timer has nothing to download.

Common mistakes

Leaving sessions without an end time, which blocks lengths, clash checks and timer slots. Printing the guest programme from a schedule that still has a draft room name. Assuming the schedule's clash check covers every overlap when it only covers shared rooms and presenters. Typing cues somewhere that never reaches the cue sheet. Starting a live event with a laptop on battery and a sleeping screen.

Summary

One schedule, three outputs: a guest programme, a crew cue sheet with timing flags, and a stage timer that uses each session's length. Open Agenda and Cue Sheet Builder with your sessions, or press Try a sample first. More planning tools are in the event tools category.

Open Agenda and Cue Sheet Builder→

Would a Notes box in the schedule help you? Tell us on the contact page.