← Back to your day · The full guide
For whoever is coordinating — a weekend, a trip, a reunion. It is a job anybody can pick up and hand on, not a rank, and you can stop doing it at any time without the thing you were running falling over.
You do not need to read this to coordinate something. It is here for when you want to know what a control does before you press it.
Contents
- What the job actually is
- Making a cruise
- Getting people aboard
- Your four tools, and when to use which
- When the group splits
- Handing it on, and walking away
- Deleting a cruise
- Running it lightly
What the job actually is
On a real cruise a printed programme appears under every cabin door in the evening: what is on tomorrow, and when the ship sails. Somebody writes that. That is this job, and it is the whole of it.
A coordinator does exactly one thing nobody else on the cruise can: publish to the shared programme. That is it. That is the entire extra power.
You cannot see more than anyone else on the cruise. You cannot move anybody, answer for anybody, or remove anybody. Everyone still runs their own day; you are keeping a shared page short and true.
Making a cruise
Cruises, then make one: a name, a start date and an end date.
The app will push back if a cruise is not the right tool — if it is a single day, or if you already have one covering those dates. That is deliberate. A cruise is for a stretch of days a group is doing together; for one evening, just put the thing on your day and mark it an open invitation. When the app refuses, it says why and offers the simpler thing instead.
Nobody boards anything. This is the idea to hold on to while you write a programme. A cruise does not move people into a separate space — everyone still has one day sheet with their whole life on it, and the cruise is the voyage those days belong to. The programme appears alongside somebody's dentist appointment, not instead of it.
Which is why a programme should be short. You are not filling an empty schedule; you are adding to days that already have things in them.
Getting people aboard
From the cruise, invite aboard. You get a link and a boarding code, and you invent a passphrase. Hand the link or the code over yourself and tell them the passphrase separately — the app sends nothing to anybody, ever.
Somebody already on the line joins straight onto the roster. Somebody new joins the line and the cruise at once.
Whether you can invite at all depends on a setting the Director controls. If minting is Director-only, ask; if it is open to coordinators, you can bring your own people.
Being on the cruise with somebody is what makes your cruise-tagged things visible to each other. Until then, being on the same line shows nothing.
Your four tools, and when to use which
Nearly every coordination mistake is reaching for the wrong one of these. The difference is entirely about what you are asking of people.
- Fixture — a fact, needing no answer. "Leave at eight." "Checkout is eleven." It appears on every roster member's day and asks nothing. It never marks anybody busy and nobody can decline it, because it was never a question. Use these freely; they are the cheapest thing you can put on somebody's day.
- Program item — something happening that people may join. "Beach, two o'clock." It shows on the cruise program and anyone aboard can join or ignore it. Nobody is asked, nobody is chased, and nothing counts who did not join.
- Proposal — a real question to named people, when you genuinely need to know. It has a decide-by time and three complete answers: commit, interested, decline. Use it when the answer changes what you do, and not otherwise — a proposal asks somebody to do something, and a program item does not.
- Your own committed item — you are doing a thing and people can see it. Tick "open invitation" and they can join. Often this is all a cruise needs, and it asks the least of everybody.
The honest default is: fixture for facts, program item for offers, proposal only when you need an answer. A program of proposals turns a holiday into a survey.
When the group splits
Four people going to the coast and three staying in is a party: a smaller group inside the cruise. Anybody aboard can form one, not just you.
A party has its own coordinator — whoever formed it — with the same single power, publishing to that party. What the party does is visible inside the party and not to the rest of the cruise, so a splinter plan does not clutter everybody else's day.
You do not need a party for every fork. Two people going for a walk is a committed item with an open invitation on it. A party is worth it when a group needs its own program.
Handing it on, and walking away
Hand coordination to anybody on the roster at any time, from the cruise screen. There is no ceremony and nothing to hand over besides the role itself.
You can also just leave. If you were coordinating, the cruise then shows that it has nobody coordinating it, and anyone aboard can take the job. Nothing gets stuck and nothing needs a Director. This is worth knowing before you start: picking this up is not a commitment you cannot get out of.
The same is true of a party you formed.
Deleting a cruise
Deleting removes the label and its fixtures. It asks you to type the name first, because fixtures cannot be brought back — everything else in this app offers an undo, and this is the one place that cannot.
What it does not do is delete anybody's plans. Everything people put on their own days stays exactly where it is, on their own days, just without the cruise label. Nobody loses anything they entered.
Running it lightly
The app is built on the assumption that a shared program should be short, and it will not help you make it long. There are no reminders to send, no attendance to chase, no read receipts, and no counts of who ignored what. If you want to know something, ask a person.
Two things worth doing:
- Put the fixed points in as fixtures early. Departure, checkout, the meal somebody booked. They cost nothing and they stop the same question being asked six times.
- Leave room. The day sheet fits one screen, and the discovered events fill whatever is left after people's own plans and your program. A packed program is a program that crowds out everything anybody found for themselves.