What's new

Your show can hold a code of conduct

Company, then Production settings, then Code of conduct. Write what your company expects of everyone taking part, and publish it. It takes headings, bold, bulleted lists and links, so you can set it out properly and point at your society's full policy where there is one.

Everyone reads it before they start

The first time somebody opens a show that has one, the code of conduct is what they see. They read to the end and acknowledge it, and then they are into the show as normal. It only ever stands in front of that one production, so the rest of Callboard is still there while they decide.

Anyone can read it again later from the Company page.

A parent or guardian can answer for a young performer

For a company running a junior show this is the point of the whole thing. Where a parent runs the account, they say so on the same screen and answer as themselves. Where the young person has their own login and their parent does not use Callboard at all, you send that parent a link by email: they read it and acknowledge it with no account and nothing to install.

The young person still reads it themselves. A parent answering by email does not take that away, because knowing what is expected of you is the half that belongs to them.

Nobody is locked out

Somebody can say they have a question, or that they cannot agree. Either one tells your production team and changes nothing else. They keep the schedule, the callsheets and everything else.

Whoever manages members can mark it as sorted once it has been talked about.

You can see who has read it

The same screen lists everyone: who has acknowledged, who has not, and anyone who raised something. Send a reminder to whoever is outstanding, ask a guardian directly, and export the whole record as a file to keep.

That export is the only copy that leaves the app. Deleting a production takes the acknowledgements with it, so if your committee needs to keep the record, take it first.

Updating it asks everyone again, and says what changed

Publish a change and everyone is asked to acknowledge the new version the next time they open the show, with a line at the top saying what is different. Fixing a typo does not have to bother anyone: publish it as a minor correction and nobody is asked again.

Every version you publish is kept exactly as it was, and so is every acknowledgement against it. What somebody agreed to in March is still readable in September.

Anyone who needs a word shows on the members list

If somebody could not agree, or asked a question, a small note sits beside their name on the Company page for whoever manages members.

A colour means the same thing everywhere

Blocking was violet on the schedule and gold in notes. Music was blue in one place and green in another. The same handful of colours was doing different jobs on different screens, so learning what one meant taught you nothing about the next screen you opened.

There is one set of colours now, shared by the schedule, notes and action items. Blocking is Blocking wherever you meet it. Files and videos remain separate for their categories.

Categories are yours to set

Company, then Production settings, then Categories. Rename any of them, give it a different colour, and choose whether it appears on the schedule, in notes, or on action items. Add your own for whatever your show actually does: a costume parade, flying, a photo shoot.

The standard categories can be renamed and recoloured but not removed. Renaming one is safe. Everything already tagged with it stays tagged.

The calendar is colour coded

A rehearsal now takes its category's colour, so a week reads as a shape rather than as a list of titles. An event in more than one category is filled with all of them, easing from one into the next in order, so a call that is choreography then music then band looks like it.

What is yours is still marked, and marked more plainly than before. A pale bar runs down the left edge of anything you are called to. That used to be the colour of the whole event, which is exactly why the colour was not free to mean anything else.

Filter the schedule

There is a filter row above the calendar: one chip for each category your show actually uses, plus For me. Choose two categories to see both, and add For me to narrow either to your own calls. It works in List, Month, Week and Day.

Tapping a name opens a profile sheet

Tapping a name anywhere in the feed opens that person: their photo and contact details, the roles and parts they hold in this show, and the productions you have both been in. Bylines, mentions, Seen chips and the reactor list all lead to the same place.

Who reacted to a post can now be seen

The list of who reacted to a post was a small box that clipped after a few names and could not be scrolled. It is a sheet now, with a tab for each reaction and rows you can tap.

Two people with the same first name now stop being a guessing game

A name grows only as far as it has to inside your company, so a lone John stays John and two become John M. and John T.

Company is the company, and settings have a page of their own

Everything that configures a production had collected on the Company page: roles and permissions, groups, categories, branding, the urgent number, the end of the run. For a cast member the page was a list of people. For whoever runs the show it was that list with a control panel underneath it, most of it two screens below the fold.

Company is the company now. Who is in the show, how to reach them, and the two ways of adding someone. Everything else sits behind Production settings at the foot of the page, and you only see the parts you can actually change.

Invite and the join code stay together on Company, because they are two ways of doing one thing.

The first week has a map

The setup card on Home listed the show breakdown and stopped there: characters, scenes, and linking the two. Those earn their place, because a callsheet comes out empty and says nothing when they are missing. They are not what anyone does on the first day, though.

It now reads in the order the work actually happens. Invite the company, put a rehearsal in the schedule, add the script or score, then break the show down. It also keeps up with you, so a step you complete on another tab is ticked when you come back rather than at the next reload.

An empty list says where to start it

A callsheet needs a rehearsal in the schedule before there is anything to build one from. Props and wardrobe can only be arranged by character or by scene once the cast list and the scene breakdown exist. Those screens already told you as much and then left you to find the way yourself.

Each one now offers the route: one button, going to the screen the missing piece lives on. You only see it if it is yours to do. A cast member reading an empty props list gets the sentence naming who fills it and no button, because sending someone to a screen they cannot act on is worse than saying nothing.

Your part is on the call board

Someone joining a show with nothing yet in the schedule met an empty feed and five tabs. The call board now shows the part they are playing, which on the first day is the one thing that is true about them, and it opens their own page for the show. It stands aside the moment there is a call to make or something owed.

Fixed

• Searching for Callboard showed the bare web address as the result title instead of the name.
• The number on the app icon still would not clear. The fix in 1.7.2 only ever worked if you signed out and back in. It clears when you open Callboard now, and again if a notification arrives while you already have it open.
• Backing out of Production Insights left the production altogether instead of returning to Company.

A mention you add later still reaches people

Put up a post asking the company for something, forget to name anybody in it, and the post sits there: nobody is told, so nobody answers until they next happen to open the app. The fix is obvious enough, edit the post and add @Company, and until now that did nothing at all. The names appeared on the post and not one notification went out.

Editing a post or an announcement to name somebody now notifies them, the same as if they had been named when it went up. Only the people the edit newly reaches. Anybody already told about that post is not told again, however many times it is edited afterwards, and an announcement that was already going to everybody does not go round a second time because @Company was added to it.

The audience shown on an announcement keeps up with the edit too, so who it is addressed to and who it says it is addressed to are the same thing.

The feed reads like a feed

On a laptop the post column was the width of a phone, between two empty margins, with the next call squeezed into a strip beside it. It is a proper column now, centred, and it holds a comfortable reading width on a large monitor instead of stretching all the way across. On a narrower window it moves back above the feed rather than crowding it out.

The sidebar says where you are and how to leave

Your show sits at the top of the sidebar. Open it to move to another production, or to go back to all your shows, without going through your profile first.

The section you are in stays open. Library, Rehearsals and Company show their sub-tabs as soon as you are inside them, with the one you are reading marked. The arrow beside a section closes it without moving you anywhere, so choosing a section and hiding its contents are no longer the same click.

The browser tab has a name. It carries the screen and the show, so several tabs are tellable apart and going back through history lands where you expect.

Screens keep their place even when they change

A list used to empty itself and jump to the top every time it reloaded, so somebody else adding a rehearsal note while you were reading threw you back to the start of it. Notes, the attendance grid, callsheets, rehearsal reports and your own call sheet now update underneath you and leave you where you were. Pulling to refresh keeps your place too.

The app does less in the background

A tab you had opened and moved on from kept re-running its queries every time anything changed in the production, from behind whatever screen you were actually on. Those tabs now wait until you look at them, and a burst of changes settles into one refresh instead of one per change.

Fixed

• Selecting members to email laid the bar across the whole window, over the top of the sidebar.
• The audio player, the Stage Door reply box and the callsheet action bar all sat to the left of the content they belonged to.
• The file library emptied itself to a placeholder every time you uploaded something to it.
• The sidebar was unnamed for screen readers and did not say which section or sub-tab you were on.
• Neither the pricing page nor the plan comparison showed that a Show Pass includes the budget and break-even calculator, and Company listed it as though it were its own.

The subscription belongs to the society

A society's plan used to sit on one person's login. Only they could see the card, download an invoice or cancel, and when they left the committee nobody could reach it at all.

It is the society's account now. Invoices, the payment method and cancellation are reachable from the Subscription panel, and they outlive whoever set it up. Every committee member can see what the society is on and when it renews. Acting on it needs the billing permission.

Somebody can look after the money without running the committee. A treasurer holds a billing permission the same way a webmaster holds the website one. Being an admin does not grant it, so the person who adds members cannot cancel the plan by accident.

Receipts go where you say. Set a society address so invoices stop following a treasurer out of the committee.

Ownership can be handed off

Moving a show into a society used to hand ownership to the society's owner as well, demoting whoever was actually running it. Linking a show now only starts the society paying for it. Whoever runs the show keeps running it.

An owner can transfer a production to any member, from Company, above the danger zone. You become an admin and keep every bit of access you had. A society's owner can hand the committee over the same way, from the Committee tab. Both are reversible.

A show can leave a society too, by its owner or by the society, without either party deleting anything.

Societies has a proper place in the app

Societies is a nav tab of its own, beside Shows, Talent and Profile. The switcher in the top bar jumps straight to the one you were last in, and a long press opens the full list.

The Committee tab is a table now, so a name, a role and what somebody has been given all fit on one line. A member can leave a society on their own.

What a plan covers

A society's plan covers the shows it runs. A show you keep out of the society follows your own plan instead, so what you are paying for is what you get.

A Show Pass carries its own show. It no longer counts against your plan's production limit, so buying a pass on the show you have frees you to start the next one.

A Show Pass now includes Budget. Departments, expenses, income and the break-even calculator, on the show the pass covers.

Company is bought for a society

Company is the organisation's plan, so it is bought for a society rather than for a person. Free covers you, a Show Pass covers a show, Company covers the company.

It is not sold through the App Store. Show Passes and Callboard Talent still are.

The free month has ended

The 30 day early access trial is withdrawn. Free still covers a production, the schedule, notes, callsheets, files and audition sign-ups, with no card and no time limit.

Fixed

• A society could not be handed to anybody who was not Callboard staff. Transferring ownership failed with a permissions error for every real committee.
• The Calendar tab counted dates that had already passed. It counts what is coming up.
• Budget's paywall named the wrong plan. It said Company on a screen a Show Pass unlocks.
• The website poster kept showing the previous photograph after a new one was uploaded.
• The website's mobile menu wrapped, leaving one link stranded on its own line.
• Committee text came out with asterisks in it on the public site, instead of bold and italics.
• Gallery photographs stayed readable after removal. The file was left in place when the image was taken off a page.
• The auditions page led with the wrong things. The creative team is on it, the general information is off it, and the parts list is gone.
• The billing toggle sat above every plan card while applying to one of them. It is in the Company card, next to the price it changes.
• Talent profiles: photographs load in place rather than jumping the page, headshots open as a gallery you can swipe, and the details underneath are labelled.

Front of House

Your society gets a public website, built from what you are already putting into Callboard. Publish a show and it appears on What's on. Add the performance dates and they are on the show's page. Open auditions and the sign-up form your performers already use is linked from the site.

Community theatre websites die two deaths: the volunteer who maintained it leaves the committee, and the domain bill ends up with nobody. This is aimed at both. There is nothing to host, nothing to update separately, and nothing that stops working when the person who built it stands down.

Four looks, each taken from something a theatre already prints or hangs. Marquee, Playbill, Foyer and Revue. Pick the look and feel that works best for your company.

Your colour, not ours. Set the society's accent and it carries across every page: headings, dates, the ticket button. The site works out a readable shade for text and for buttons on its own, so a pale colour stays legible rather than disappearing. Left empty it uses Callboard's base brass theme.

Your logo sits beside your name at the top of every page. A crest or an emblem works better than a logo with the name written in it, because the name is already set in type next to it.

The pages. Home, What's on, past shows, a page per show, auditions, about, contact. Show pages carry the poster, the synopsis, the dates and times, the company list, and production photographs with captions and credits. The about page carries your committee and your supporters, with their headshots and logos.

Committee dates can go on the site one at a time. Nothing is published by default: an AGM is on the site only if somebody ticks the box, so your working calendar stays yours.

The auditions page says what you are casting. The parts, the age range and whatever you want people to bring, alongside the sign-up link.

Taking it down is one switch, and it is reversible. A site that is not published, or that has been taken down, resolves to nothing at all rather than to a draft anybody can read.

On a Company plan the site runs on your own address, yoursociety.org.nz rather than a Callboard one. You buy the domain, Callboard does the hosting, the certificate and the renewals. Every plan gets the site itself.

Company plans also see how it is doing. Page views over the last 90 days, which pages get read and where people arrived from. No visitor is identified and nothing is stored about who they are. Every society, whatever the plan, gets told if the site has quietly stopped saying anything is on.

Somebody can look after the website without looking after the money. The person who maintains a theatre website is rarely on the committee, so there is now a website permission that grants exactly that and nothing else. They can edit and publish the site; they cannot change the plan, the committee or a production.

Fixed

• Deleting a file left it there. It removed the bytes and kept the row, so the file came back on the next load and the storage was never returned. It hit anyone with the Manage files permission who was not also the owner.
• A new audition application told owners and admins only. Whoever holds Manage auditions was running them without ever being told somebody had applied.
• Transparent photos came out with a black box behind them. A PNG with a transparent background, on prop and wardrobe photos. Transparency is kept now.
• The Societies screen scrolled sideways on a phone. The tab strip ran off the edge and took the rest of the app with it.

What Callboard costs now

Three things, at two price points: Free, a Show Pass, and Company.

Free covers one production, for as long as you want it. 30 members, 1 GB, and the paperwork every show needs: the feed, the schedule, rehearsal notes, callsheets, attendance, your cast list, your files and your audition sign-up form. Files and audition sign-ups both used to sit behind a paid plan, which had it the wrong way round. Putting the script in is the first thing anyone does with Callboard, and it was happening behind the paywall.

A Show Pass is $99 and unlocks one production for six months. 100 members, and 15 GB in its own pool that does not touch the rest of your storage. It adds learning tracks, choreography video, video in the feed, the audition pipeline, props and wardrobe, action items, custom branding and music stand mode. This is Production Activation, renamed and brought down from $119. Six months is longer than most rehearsal periods and a run, so buy one when a show goes into rehearsal and pay nothing in the months between.

Company is $39 a month, or $390 a year. Down from $79. Unlimited productions and members, 50 GB, and it adds Production Insights, the budget, multi-production admin controls and the talent directory. Two shows a year on passes costs $198. At four shows a year, Company is cheaper.

If you are on Starter or Pro, nothing changes. Neither is sold any more and neither is going away. You keep every feature you are paying for at the price you are paying, and your plan still has its own card on the pricing page so you can see exactly what you hold.

Files are free, and free files stay in the building

On Free, a file cannot be made downloadable and the watermark is always on. Most of what Callboard holds is other people's copyrighted work, and the rights holders are the same companies you licence your shows from. A free tier with an open download button is how a product becomes known as where amateur companies keep pirated scores. So Free can read the files in the app but cannot redistribute the files: fully useful for rehearsing, useless as a way to pass a score around.

Music stand mode

Reading a script or score in the app is free. Rehearsing off it every night is the Show Pass. Music stand mode is the marked-up, offline, hands-free half: annotations, saving a score to the device so it opens with no signal, page turns from a pedal, and the screen staying awake while you play. Downloads sit there too.

Nothing about how it works has changed. Basic viewing came down to Free, and the performance side is what a pass now buys.

Share one department of the budget

Your Wardrobe can now see the wardrobe budget without seeing the rest of it.

Turn "Visible to all members" off in the budget settings, then open a department with the pencil icon and pick who else can see it. They get that department's allocation and its expenses, and nothing else: no other department, no income, no grants, no box office. The department list shows you at a glance which ones you have shared and with whom.

It is read only, and it always was. Adding an expense, changing an amount and marking something paid have needed budget management from the day the budget shipped. Nothing here hands that out.

Worth knowing if you have not touched this setting: until you turn it off, your whole company can read the budget. That has always been the default and it is easy to miss.

Closing a season keeps the record

Closing a show used to delete it. Everything went: the schedule, the notes, the callsheets, the cast list, the lot. A company's history in Callboard was worth nothing the day its show closed.

There are now two end-of-run actions, and the destructive one is no longer the default. Close season keeps the show as a season in your history. Delete permanently is still there, in the danger zone, behind a typed confirmation.

A closed season keeps its members, the schedule and attendance, notes, callsheets and reports, characters and scenes, the props and wardrobe lists, the budget, and everything written in the feed.

Closing no longer deletes anything same day. Your prop and wardrobe photographs, the images in posts and announcements, and the banner and logo stay for good on every plan. What happens to scripts, scores, tracks and video depends on what you are paying:

Company (and Starter or Pro) Kept. There is no clock at all

Show Pass Kept for 60 days, then removed

Free Kept for 30 days, then removed

There is something worth in looking back at a show once it is over, for the people who were in it as much as for the team that ran it. If your company is paying for Callboard between shows, deleting the show is the last thing it should do. So a Company plan keeps the lot, no expiry, no deletion.

A season on the clock stops counting against your storage, so closing a show hands the space back straight away even though the files are still there to read.

A closed season is genuinely read-only. Nobody adds to it, changes it or joins it. Everyone who was in it can still read all of it, and anyone can still leave. Reopening is one action, it cancels any scheduled removal, and it puts the show back exactly as it was.

Closed seasons do not count against your production limit, so a company on Free can close last year's show and start the next one. They sit under Past seasons on Home rather than among the shows currently running.

When a Show Pass runs out

A pass running out is the same event as closing a season, because that is what it is. The show has stopped being live and has become history.

You get ninety warned days. A notice thirty days before the pass expires, another on the day it does, and a third a week before anything is actually deleted. Every one of them names the date the media goes, and it is the same date each time.

These are the only emails Callboard sends you about your shows. Push notifications carry everything else, which works because everything else concerns a show currently in rehearsal and you are opening the app daily. This one reaches you between shows, when you are not, and it is the only notice that ends in something being deleted.

Only the people who can act on it are told. The production's creator, and its owners and admins. Not the whole cast, who cannot buy a pass and would only be getting a billing deadline they can do nothing about. Everyone else sees the banner next time they open the show.

What eventually goes is the Script & Score section, all audio and all video. Everything else stays for good: rehearsal documents, design drawings, health and safety, permission forms, contracts. Those are your own paperwork, not the material you licenced. Companies on Company plans are exempt from the purge entirely.

Downloads keep working the whole way through the wind-down. Retrieving your own material is what the window is for, so the download stays on even on Free. Music stand mode does not come back with it.

Societies

A society is the organisation that mounts the shows. Until now Callboard had no name for the "customer". A subscription attached to whoever clicked Buy, and a production belonged to whoever happened to create it, so a production team handing over to the committee had nothing to hand over except a login.

A society holds three things: its shows, its committee and its subscription. It is in the profile drawer, above Plan and billing, because a society is what a subscription can belong to.

Move a show in and the society holds it from then on. You can move shows you created, and past seasons come with them.

The committee can see the society's shows without being in them. A dashboard with the shows, the committee and the subscription, and the numbers across all of them: members, storage, what is running and what has closed. It reports counts and dates, never rosters. Reading a show still means being in it, which is one invitation away and leaves a record.

The committee governs its shows without reading them. Close a season, reopen one, buy a Show Pass. It does not get to open the show. That line is where cast measurements, guardian contacts for minors and Stage Door threads sit, and those stay with the people actually in the production.

A committee member can ask to join a show they are not in. Every show the society runs is on the dashboard, and the ones you are not inside carry an Ask to join button. Somebody running that show decides, exactly as they would for anyone else, and the request arrives with a chip saying this person sits on the society, so approving it is a two second decision rather than a suspicious one. Once they are in, their member row says Committee too.

Nobody is added automatically, on any tier. A production also carries people who belong only to it, a contracted director, a choreographer, a wardrobe team, and that separation is usually deliberate. A production manager liaising with the committee does not mean the whole committee reads the rehearsal notes. Consent sits with the people who bear the cost of it.

Everyone who can approve a join request is now told there is one. Asking used to file a request and announce it to nobody, so it sat on the Company screen until an owner happened to look, which on a busy show could be a week. The production's creator, its owners and its admins now get a notification and a push, and it clears from all of their panels the moment any one of them approves or denies it.

Company plans belongs to a society now, on the web and on the App Store both. Buying Company asks which society it is for in the same sheet, and makes one for you there if you have not got one yet, rather than sending you away to create one and come back.

A society that has never paid is not restricted at all. It holds shows and a committee perfectly well, so you can set one up before you buy anything.

Audition sign-ups

The public sign-up form is where somebody who has never used Callboard meets it for the first time, usually on a phone, on a link a friend sent them. This is a pass over what happens between opening it and the tick at the end.

An audition now has to say where replies go. It used to be optional, and blank meant replies went to whoever happened to send each message. That stopped working the moment registrations started acknowledging themselves, because nobody sends those, so a blank address left applicants replying into an unmonitored Callboard inbox instead of reaching the company. It cannot be a Callboard address either: Callboard cannot tell anybody whether they can move their audition slot. A shared society inbox works better here than one person's, and it keeps a volunteer's own address off every email you send.

Applicants now get an email when they sign up. It says what came through, which roles they put their name down for, the slot they picked and when they sent it. Registering used to end at a tick on screen, which lasts exactly as long as the tab does, and the company fielded "did you get my application?" for the rest of the week.

Filling the form in no longer risks losing it. Switching apps to check a date and coming back could replace a half-typed application with "Form not found" if the network happened to be down at that moment. The form now keeps what you have written whatever happens behind it.

If an audition closed while somebody is filling the form in, they are told, and their answers stay put. The company gets to decide whether to take a late one.

Guardian details are required rather than requested. The form has always said it needs a parent or guardian's contact details for anyone under 18. It now means it: a name, an email and a phone number, before the form will send. A production cannot run a minor in a show without a contactable adult, and the moment to ask is while they are already filling in a form.

The parent or guardian gets their own email. It says who registered, for what, and that their details were given as the guardian contact, with a line for saying so if they were not expecting it. Being named as a young person's guardian by a company you have never heard of is worth being told about, and it is also the only thing that catches an address typed wrong. The form says a copy is going to them before the address is typed, not afterwards. Where a parent fills the form in themselves and uses one address for both, only one email is sent.

Renaming an audition slot no longer strands everyone who signed up for it. Sign-ups recorded the slot's name rather than the slot, so renaming "Saturday morning" to "Saturday 10am" made every existing applicant read as unmatched and flagged them all as moved. The scheduler tracks the slot itself now, and a rename simply follows through.

Removing a slot or a question no longer takes the answers with it. Deleting a custom question hid every answer already given to it: still in Callboard, invisible, on candidates the team was making decisions about. Removed questions now show on the people who answered them, marked as removed, and withdrawing a slot puts the people who chose it back in the unscheduled list instead of losing their preference.

Self-tape can be offered on its own. The option only appeared if the audition already had slots in the diary, so a company casting entirely on tape had a switch that did nothing.

The form asks for what the production actually turned on. Vocal range and dance experience were still submitted when the audition had them switched off, filled in from a Talent profile the applicant never thought to check.

Smaller things

• Join requests notify the people who can approve them, and that reaches the join code too. Where a production has joining set to approve, which is the default, typing the code files a request, and a request has always told nobody: it sat on the Company screen until an owner happened to look. Those now arrive as a notification. Nothing about the codes or the links themselves has changed, and a production set to let people straight in is unaffected, as is anyone arriving on an emailed invite, because neither of those files a request in the first place.
• Adding and deleting audio only ever worked for whoever created the production. On one show with 31 members, not one of them passed the check the rule was actually making, its owners and admins included, and the Musical Director who uploads the learning tracks least of all. Deleting was the worse half: it reported success and the track came back on the next load. Fixed, and adding a track and removing one are now the same permission: if a role can upload audio it can delete it, so a Musical Director can clear a bad take without needing file management for the whole show. Editing a track's audience still needs that, because who may hear something is a different decision from whether it should be there at all.
• "Upload choreography clips" did nothing at all. The permission existed, it could be granted, and every step of the video path asked for owner or admin instead of asking for it: a Choreographer could not add a clip, could not delete one, and on the Video tab had no upload button to press, sitting directly above a panel inviting them to add choreography video. It now works the way the audio one does, and by the same rule: a role that can upload clips can delete them. Deleting a clip also used to report success when it had been refused, having already removed the video, so the clip came back on the next load with nothing behind it.
• Buying a Show Pass early used to cost you the time you had left. A second pass now extends from the date the first one ends instead of starting again from the day you bought it.
• Documents in Admin and Forms could not be deleted. The delete reported success and left the file exactly where it was, which is why nobody noticed. Fixed, and the files left behind by it have been cleared up.
• Storage limits are enforced on the server now, not only by the upload button. There are real limits on what an upload can be, too: 100 MB for a file, 200 MB for a recording.
• Upload buttons are hidden rather than greyed out when your plan does not allow uploads. A greyed-out button is a promise that it could work.
• Audition applications now notify the people who run the auditions. The alert went to owners and admins, which was who ran casting before roles carried their own permissions. A Casting Director or an audition panel, granted "Manage auditions" and nothing else, could open every application and schedule every session and was never told one had arrived: they found out by going and looking, which is the job the notification exists to remove. Those roles are notified now. Owners and admins still are.

Comments

Comment threads open as a sheet instead of expanding inside the post. A thread that expanded in place pushed every card below it down the feed, so reading a busy post shifted everything under it and left you no way back to the post you were reading without scrolling past the whole thread. The sheet scrolls on its own and closes back to exactly where you were.

Comments arrive live. A thread you have open updates as people write in it, with no pull to refresh.

Sort a thread by Relevant, Newest or All.

Long posts collapse to six lines with a More at the end of the writing rather than floating beside it. A single-thought update never reaches six lines and still shows in full; a set of blocking notes stops taking over the scroll.

The number on the app icon

It could not be cleared, and clearing your notifications did nothing to it. On iOS that number is set by the app rather than by your notification list, so swiping the notifications away in Notification Centre left it exactly where it was. Reinstalling Callboard was the only way to shift it, which is not a reasonable thing to ask.

It now clears when you open Callboard, along with any Callboard notifications still sitting in Notification Centre.

Between times it shows how many unread notifications you actually have. It used to send the number 1 with every push regardless, so the first notification a device ever received pinned the badge at 1 and it never counted up or down again.

If you are still on an older version, the number will now correct itself to your real unread count each time a notification arrives, but it will not reach zero until you update.

Callboard Talent

Callboard was initially created to serve running productions and the backstage work of theatre companies. Talent is the other side of the coin, for the performer: a profile companies can find you by, with your credits, headshots, showreel and vocal clips in one place.

Applying to auditions is free and stays free. Any signed in member can apply to any open audition, with or without a profile. What Talent adds is being found by companies who are not looking for you yet.

Talent is $4.99 USD a month for an individual, and the first month is free. It is included at no extra cost if you already pay for Starter, Pro or Company.

You choose who can see you. Three levels: the people in the shows you are already in, legit production companies on Pro or Company, or any signed in Callboard member. Whichever you like.

You need to be 18 or over to be discoverable. Under 18 you can hold a profile and apply to auditions all the same.

Auditions fill themselves in

Open an audition form while signed in and it arrives already filled in from your profile: your name, contact details, age, voice, dance experience and skills. Check it over and send it.

Everything you have applied for is now in one place. Your Talent page lists every audition you have applied to through Callboard, what you put your name down for, and what audition slots you requested. This works whether or not you pay for a profile.

Callboard however does not show you the stage a company might currently have you sitting in their audition pipeline. That is the company's to tell you, in their own words and their own time. Once you accept an offer to join a production, or the company writes to say you were not successful, only then is that reflected in your private profile.

Verified credits

Callboard already knows which shows you have been cast in via Callboard. Those can go on your profile as verified credits, marked so a company can see Callboard is vouching for them rather than taking your word for it.

Nothing is added on your behalf. Your profile offers the shows it can verify and you pick the ones you want on there. A verified credit can be removed but not edited, which is what makes the mark worth anything.

For companies casting a show

Search for eligible performers from the Talent portal Pro and Company plans. Search by name, skill or voice part, narrow to people open to auditions, and set a town or city to find performers within 25, 50, 100 or 250 km of it. Open a profile for credits, headshots and a reel.

An applicant's profile arrives with their application. If somebody applies with a Talent profile, it is on their candidate card, so their credits and headshots are in front of you while you are reading what they sent.

Closing an audition now stops sign-ups. Closing one took the form out of view, but a form somebody already had open could still be sent. It is refused now, and the person is told the audition is no longer accepting sign-ups rather than being left to wonder.

The score reader now behaves like a music stand

Markings you made just before turning the page could vanish. The save waited a second and a half before writing, and turning the page cancelled it. Draw a marking, turn, and it was gone, with nothing to say so. Turning the page now saves first, and so does closing the reader.

The screen stays awake while a score is open. Prop an iPad on the stand, play a number without touching it, and it no longer dims and locks mid-performance.

Pedals have their own setup screen. Bluetooth page turners send different keys depending on the mode they are switched to, and Callboard only listened for the arrows, so a pedal straight out of the box often did nothing and gave you no way of telling why.

Tap the pedal button in the top bar and press a switch. Callboard shows you what it received and what that switch does.

If your pedal has four switches, this is now supported and you can pair jumps between your bookmarks instead of turning pages. Two switches stays as it was, with everything turning the page. Set once per device.

Page turning also keeps working while you are marking up a score.

A timeline across the bottom replaces the row of bookmark buttons. The bar is the whole score, the marker is where you are, and your bookmarks sit along it as dots. Drag to travel. Tap the bookmark count to open the list, jump to any of them, and delete the ones you no longer want. Removing a bookmark used to mean finding the page first.

The dots are magnetic. Tap near one and you land on the bookmark, not on page 138 next to it.

Arrows either side of the bookmark count step you straight to the next or previous one, so working through the numbers you have marked does not mean finding them on the bar each time.

Page turns are calmer. The page used to shrink, drop and fade all the way out, and if you were zoomed in it snapped back to normal size on the way through and out again. It is a quick soft dip now, and your zoom stays put.

Scores you can open offline. Orchestra pits and church halls are where reception goes to die, and until now, a score that would not download was a score you did not have.

Open a score with a connection and tap the save button in the top bar. It is then kept on that device, and still opens when you have no connection at all, bookmarks and all. Tap it again to remove it.

The copy is held encrypted and inside Callboard, not as a file in your photos or documents, and it still carries your name across it the same way. It is a copy for you to play from, not a copy to pass on.

Your markings come with it. Saving a score takes every page of your markings down with it, and anything you write while offline is kept on the device straight away and sent up to the cloud the next time you have signal. The reader tells you which of the two has happened.

Callboard also now tells you when you have lost your connection, wherever you are in the app, and puts itself right again on its own when the signal comes back. Nothing to reload and nothing to pull down.

It also stays signed in when you have no connection. It used to hand you the login screen, which was no use at all when the thing you were trying to reach was already sitting on the iPad.

If you try to open a score you have not saved and there is no connection, Callboard now says so plainly instead of telling you the document could not be loaded.

Two pages at once, when there is room for them. Turn a tablet sideways and the score opens as a spread, the way it sits on a stand. Page 1 is on its own and then 2 and 3 face each other, so what you see matches the printed copy. Half as many page turns.

It appears on its own whenever two pages genuinely fit, and folds back to one page as soon as you zoom in past that. There is a button in the top bar if you would rather decide yourself.

You can mark up either page without leaving the spread, and your markings stay with the page they were made on, so they are in the right place when the same score is read on a phone later.

If a score's pairing comes out a page off, because of a cover or a contents page, the arrows button in the top bar shifts it. Set it once and it is right for the whole company.

Clearing annotations now confirms current page or all. The bin cleared the page you were on, and there was no way to clear a whole score short of visiting every page. It now offers this page or all pages.

Files, video and audio can be edited

Everything you upload carries details. A title, what kind of file it is, the group or scene or musical number it sits under, who can see it. None of it could be changed once the upload finished. A typo in a title, a track filed under the wrong number, a design document that should have been admins only: all of it meant deleting the file and uploading it again.

There is a pencil on every file, clip and track now, beside the delete button. It opens the same form you filled in on the way up, with the file itself left out.

Nothing is re-uploaded, so a clip keeps how far through it each person had watched, and everything keeps the date it arrived.

Worth knowing:

• Changing a file's type is how you move it between the four sections of the Files tab. Who can see it does not change with it.
• Changing a clip's scene or number, or a track's musical number, moves it into that group. Type a group that does not exist yet and it is created.
• A learning track can be moved across to Other, and back.
• If you uploaded it, you can edit it. Changing who can view or listen to something still needs the Manage files permission, the same as it does when you upload.

Who can hear an audio track

Scripts, scores, documents and video have always let you say who a file is for and control privacy. Audio never did, so every learning track and every recording was open to the whole company whether or not that was right for it.

Rehearsal recordings now work like everything else in the Library. All members, specific groups, or admins only, set when you upload or afterwards from the pencil. Everything already there stays open to everyone, exactly as it is today, until somebody changes it.

Callboard tells you when you have lost your connection

There is a bar across the top when the connection drops, wherever you are in the app. It puts itself right and disappears on its own when signal comes back, so there is nothing to reload and nothing to pull down.

Your schedule and callsheets are there without a connection. Whatever was last loaded stays on the device, so you can check what time you are called from within a basement, a pit, or a hall with no signal. The screen says it is showing what it last downloaded and how long ago, because an old call time presented as the current one is worse than no call time at all.

Callboard stays signed in offline. It used to hand you the login screen, which was no use when the thing you were trying to reach was already on your iPad.

Anything you can only do with a connection stays as it is. This is about reading what you already have, not working around a signal that is not there.

Loading pages now show you the layout of what is coming

Every screen said "Loading" in the middle of an empty box, then replaced it with a list starting at the top, so your eye had to find its place again on every tab.

Each screen now draws the shape of what is arriving: a feed of posts, a list of sessions, a grid of clips.

The Library opens faster and uses far less data

Every file in the Library drew its own preview by downloading the whole document first. On a library of twenty scores that was hundreds of megabytes to fill one screen, every time you opened the tab.

Previews are made once, when the file is uploaded, and are a few kilobytes each from then on. Files uploaded before this build their preview once on each device and keep it. On a mobile data plan the difference is the tab costing you almost nothing instead of a chunk of your data.

Invitations work with whatever email someone signs up with

An invitation used to be tied to the exact address it was sent to. If the person already had a Callboard account on a different email, or the address was typed slightly wrong, the invitation sat there pending forever and they ended up joining with the code instead, landing as ordinary Cast with none of the role you had chosen for them.

The link in the invitation email now carries the invitation itself. Whoever opens it can accept on whatever address they sign in or sign up with, and they arrive with the right role. The link works for 14 days and stops working the moment it has been used once.

Because the link now travels with the invitation, an invitation forwarded to somebody else would let them in. So a link can only ever bring somebody in as a member. If you invited an admin, that still needs the address you sent it to, or you promote them yourself once they are in.

Opening the link and signing in takes you straight into the production, rather than leaving you on your list of productions with the invitation still sitting there to accept by hand.

You can withdraw an invitation

There was no way to take one back. A wrong address, or somebody who has since said no, stayed on the Pending invitations list with nothing to do about it but wait.

Each pending invitation now has a Cancel next to Resend. It asks once, then withdraws it and stops the emailed link working. Send a fresh one to the right address whenever you are ready. An invitation whose link has run out now says so on the row, rather than looking like it is still waiting on somebody.

Props and Wardrobe read more clearly

A visual pass over both tabs, aimed at the two things people actually look at: what colour a status is, and what a thing is called.

Alterations and Donated no longer share a colour. Wardrobe's six-stage pipeline had purple meaning two different things depending which stage you were looking at, and Donated and Struck were close enough in grey to tell apart only by reading the word. Each status now has its own colour across both Props and Wardrobe.

A prop or garment's name is the biggest thing on its row. It used to sit behind a coloured photo placeholder and a filled status pill, both louder than the name itself. Status is now a small dot next to the word, since the coloured stripe down the left edge of the row already carries that. The placeholder for an unphotographed item is a plain tile rather than a random colour, the same in both tabs.

Search now works on the Props list, and on Wardrobe's Characters view. Type a prop, garment, character, scene, or whoever is sourcing or wearing something, and the list narrows to it, in whichever arrangement you're standing in. Wardrobe's Characters view previously had no search at all.

Show Ready leads with what needs doing. Collapsed, it now shows a one-line count of what's outstanding instead of just a bar and a percentage, and the percentage itself no longer reads as an alarm when a show is still early in its build.

A character's card in Wardrobe no longer shows empty camera icons for garments nobody has photographed yet. Early in a build, when most things have no photo, the card is shorter and shows only what's actually there, with the ready count sitting on the bar it describes.

Inside a character's own wardrobe screen, the scene range under a look now reads in plain sentence case on one line instead of wrapping across two, "Plan it" is the button that stands out on an unresolved change since saving a plan settles it, and the Edit control next to a look's name is quiet until you reach for it.

Tapping a prop or garment's status no longer changes it. A tap sat exactly where your thumb lands to open the card, and a status is not something you mean to change that often. Tapping now opens the card like the rest of the row does; a long press, or a right click, still opens the full status picker.

Fixed along the way: on narrower phones, the "Visible to" readout next to Show Ready could run into the arrow that expands it. And Wardrobe's search field is scoped separately from Props', so a search on one tab doesn't quietly narrow the other.

Smaller things

• The edit and delete buttons in Files, Video and Audio were too small to hit reliably on a phone. They are the same size on screen and roughly twice the target under your thumb.
• Deleting a video asked for confirmation in a box that ran off the side of the screen. It fits now.
• Error messages no longer show you the internals. "TypeError: Failed to fetch" and an instruction about running database migrations were both reaching members; you now get a sentence about what happened and what to do about it.
• The Files tab no longer sits on "Loading" forever when there is no connection.
• Marking up a saved score offline refused to take a stroke on any page you had not already written on, and said the page could not be loaded. On a saved score an empty page is an answer rather than a gap, so those pages are writable again. A score you never saved is still read-only offline, which is the case that guard is for.
• Uploading a file and setting who can see it to "Admins only" could fail outright, unless you were the production's owner or admin yourself. Fixed, for anyone with permission to upload in the first place.
• Opening a post or announcement composer with no connection could bring the whole app down around it rather than just the composer. It now says the editor needs a connection and offers to try again, and picks up on its own once you have signal.
• Backing out of an Apple purchase sheet on iOS could bring up a technical diagnostics panel, as if the purchase had failed rather than simply been declined. That panel is back to only appearing for a genuine problem.

Cast no longer gets a pay wall for simply opening a tab

If a production was on a plan that didn't include Budget, Props and Wardrobe, or Actions, opening one of those tabs threw a full upgrade card over the screen with a price on it. The only way out sent you off the tab you had just chosen.

Most of the people meeting that were cast: members of a production that they don't pay for and can't change the plan on.

Those tabs are simply not there now for anyone who couldn't use them anyway. They stay visible for the production's owner and for whoever holds the matching permission, because those are the people who would go and ask for the feature. Everyone else gets a shorter list of tabs and no sales pitch.

Help text now tells you what a field is actually for

Every create, edit and upload form has had its field hints rewritten. The thought applied to each one: does this help someone finish what they came here to do.

A few that were doing no work at all now do:

Placeholder text that was a bare label, "Event title", "Session title", "Description", now shows an example instead. Several fields were quietly optional with no way of knowing.

• The scene and character forms say why the tick lists matter. Ticking who is in a scene is what lets a callsheet call exactly those people, and that was never stated on the screen where you do it.
• The breakdown item in a callsheet explains that picking a scene calls the people in it, and that you can still add or drop anyone by hand.
• Assigning a prop for a scene explains why you pick the character rather than the person, and where crew go instead.
• Repeating an event now says each date is created as its own event, so you can move or cancel one without touching the rest.
• Private events told you to "add people or groups above" without saying why. It now says what private actually means and what you need to do first.
• Upload forms say what a file needs to be rather than only what it cannot be. The video hint explains the .mov problem instead of listing formats, and the audio hint says why MP3 beats WAV.

Plainer words throughout

Error messages no longer say "Failed to" at you but give a detailed message as to what failed as well as:

• Video attached to a feed post was being refused on activated productions even though Activation includes it
• The Files tab had a stray blue notice that matched nothing else in the app, and repeated the panel directly beneath it word for word
• Filtered lists that find nothing now offer a way to clear the filter instead of leaving you to work out why the list is empty
• Production Insights, callsheets, the notification list, saved posts and the cast list all pick up the same treatment
• Adding a character or a scene on the Cast tab now uses the same round accent button as the rest of the app, bottom right. It was a full width bar with what looked like a text field in it

The company list has been redesigned and now reads as a table

On mobile, a member's row shows their name and what they do. Tapping it opens the rest: their roles, their casting, contact details, the guardian on record and when they were last in the app.

On a laptop or a desktop monitor the same row spreads out into columns, so you can read a whole company down the page instead of opening people one at a time. Nothing is hidden that was not there before. It moves between the row and the panel depending on how much room the screen has.

Picking people for a group email is a checkbox in the first column now, not a long press, and the checkbox in the header takes everyone the filters have left on screen. Tapping a column heading now also sorts by it.

Your production roles now have an order, and you can now set it

Anywhere Callboard puts one role against a name, it has to choose one. A post in the feed, whoever a callsheet came from, the name at the top of a rehearsal report.

It used to choose from a fixed list that only knew the roles Callboard ships with, so a role your company created custom never appeared. Someone who was both Cast and the Dance Captain always read as Cast.

Owners and admins can now drag the roles in Company, Manage, Roles into the order that suits the company. The one nearest the top is the one that shows. Renaming a role, and changing what it can do, stay with the owner.

Guardian numbers are numbers you can ring

A guardian's phone number and email now have Call and Email beside them, in the same place you edit them. They act on what is in the field, so a number you have just taken down over the phone can be rung before you have saved the record.

In a member's expanded row the guardian's details are tappable too. The email was not shown there at all before but is now visible.

The desktop app has had a polish pass

Everything sitting beside the sidebar was anchored about 50 pixels to the right of where the sidebar actually ends. On most screens that read as slightly wrong spacing. On the Schedule, where a solid bar meets the sidebar, it was a plain strip of empty background.

That was one measurement, used everywhere. Everything now agrees on it: the content column, the schedule, the auditions board, the toast, and the file selection bar.

You can see where you are with a keyboard

Tabbing through Callboard now marks whatever has focus with a brass outline, on every screen. It only appears when you are moving by keyboard.

The add button sits next to what it adds

The round add button used to sit in the bottom right corner of the screen. On a wide monitor that put it a long way from the column it was adding to. It now sits at the edge of the content instead. The Schedule and the auditions board keep theirs in the corner, because those two use the whole width.

The schedule's list stops at a readable width

Month, Week, Day and Attendance still fill the screen, which is the point of them. The list did too, so on a monitor each event was a date at one edge and a call time at the other with a lot of nothing in between. It now takes a column, lined up with the tabs above it.

Signing in on an iPad

The sign in box was sizing itself to fit its own contents instead of the screen, so it came out as a narrow strip with space either side of it. It takes a proper column now, and the same one on an iPad as on a desktop.

Message the team updated

Message the team in the profile menu used to redirect you to the Stage Door tab to start again from there. It opens the composer instead, already pegged to your next call, so something you thought of while you were somewhere else in the app now simply takes one tap.

The profile menu is grouped

The menu moved between this production and your account three times on the way down. It runs this show first, then you and the app, then log out.

Changing a file's visibility now saves

Setting a file's visibility while you upload it has always worked. Changing it afterwards did not.

Selecting files in the Library and setting them to Admins only, or to specific groups, looked like it took. The eye icon changed and the sheet closed. Nothing was written. The setting was gone by the next load, and the file stayed visible to everyone in the production the whole time.

Callboard was doing exactly what each file said. The file still said everyone.

If you have restricted a file after uploading it, open Library, Files and set it again. It holds now.

Prop and wardrobe photos

Replacing a photo showed you the old one. The new picture did upload and save, but anything that had already loaded the previous version kept showing it, for up to half an hour. Replacing a photo now takes effect straight away.

A wardrobe item's photo was not shown when you opened the item to edit it. The button offered to add a photo to an item that already had one, and there was no way to remove a wardrobe photo at all. All three are fixed.

Tapping a photo now opens it full size, on a prop card, a wardrobe row, the running order and a character's wardrobe. Changing a photo is the Change photo button, or tapping the empty square on an item that has none yet, so tapping a picture no longer replaces it by accident.

A photo that fails to upload says so. It used to save the item without one and tell you nothing.

Attendance stays available after the run

The Attendance tab disappeared once a production had no upcoming events, which is exactly when someone asks whether they were marked in for a particular call. It stays now for anyone who has been called to anything, and it reaches back 90 days. Past events are read only there, as they have always been. Anyone who has never been called to an event still does not see the tab.

Smaller things:

• The note type chips on Rehearsals sat further in from the edge than everything else on that screen
• A tick on a dresser row in a quick change plan stayed invisible until the box filled
• Last active in the company list was reading a stale value and showing almost everyone as recently active
• A video on a post that has been taken down no longer plays
• A change Callboard cannot save now says so, instead of appearing to work until the next load

Scripts, scores and paperwork now live in one place

The Library's "Scripts & Scores" and "Documents" tabs have merged into a single Files library. They were never really two things, and the split meant guessing which tab something belonged in: a set drawing or a rehearsal handout fitted neither.

Everything now files itself into one of four sections:

You don't create these and you can't rename them. Say what the file is when you upload it and it lands in the right section on its own.

• Script & Score: scripts, libretti, scores and parts
• Rehearsal: blocking, research, rehearsal paperwork
• Design & Production: set, wardrobe, lighting, sound
• Admin & Forms: health and safety, permission forms, contracts

Groups, without the folders

Inside a section you can tag a file with a group ("Act 1", "Costume Refs", "Week 3") and everything with that tag gathers under one heading. The field suggests groups already in use, so a company doesn't end up with "Act 1", "act one" and "Act I" sitting side by side.

There is deliberately no folder tree. Nothing to create, nothing to rename, nothing to drag files between, and no way to bury something three levels down where nobody finds it again. A group is only a label, and search looks at group names as well as titles.

Every section also has an Other, so a file that doesn't match anything never has to be filed somewhere wrong just to get uploaded.

Sensible privacy, without setting it every time

Files still control who can see them one by one, but each upload now starts on the setting that suits it rather than the same one every time. Contracts start as admins-only. Health and safety forms and permission slips start as downloadable, because they exist to be printed and signed.

Change any of it on the way in, and once you do, the app stops second-guessing you.

If a batch has ended up with the wrong audience, Visibility in the toolbar lets you select several files and set them together instead of opening each one.

Props and Wardrobe are now two tabs, not one

They were sharing a tab and a toggle, which made both harder to use than either needed to be. Props and Wardrobe now sit side by side in the Library, each with its own List / Characters / Scenes strip in the same style as the rest of the app.

A prop is assigned to a character, not to a person

This is the bigger change underneath. Who brings a prop on in a given scene is now recorded against the character, not against one named cast member.

That matters the moment a show is double cast. Before, the letter Cinderella carries on in Act 2 was pinned to whoever was playing Cinderella the day somebody typed it in. An alternate or understudy going on saw nothing, and the prop list had to be edited by hand for the night. Now it's attached to the part, so whoever is playing it sees it, including alternates, understudies and swings.

Stage crew still get named directly. A stagehand pre-setting a prop table isn't playing a character, so the picker offers Crew & specific people underneath the character list.

Two smaller things fall out of the same clean-up:

• The word "assign" meant three different things on a prop: who's sourcing it, which characters use it, and who carries it on. Sourcing is now called Sourcing and sits with the sourcing status; the other two say what they actually are.
• Naming the character who uses a prop now fills in every scene you haven't answered yet, so the common case takes one tap instead of one per scene.

Every character has a wardrobe page

Tapping a character in Wardrobe now opens their own page, laid out as a single thread through the show rather than four separate lists.

Their looks are stations on that thread, each with its scene range and its garments shown as actual photographs. A costume change is drawn as a break in the thread, because that's what it is: carrying the off/on list, the plan, and who's dressing it. Props they carry appear alongside the garments for the stretch they carry them.

A character's running order used to be a separate view behind its own toggle, which asked you to pick a person before showing you anything. It now lives inside the character, where it belongs.

Two things that used to be easy to lose are called out rather than silently dropped: garments that aren't tagged to any scene, and looks that haven't been given scenes yet. Neither can appear on the thread, so both get their own section instead of vanishing.

Finding a garment

The Wardrobe item list now has search (by garment, character, performer or scene) and shows a proper photo of each item, the same size Props has always used. A costume is a visual thing and a full company's wardrobe runs long; a 32-pixel thumbnail was not helping anyone find the blue skirt.

Video that works the way you actually rehearse

Choreography clips now play at half speed, or quarter, or anywhere up to double, and can be set to repeat, so an eight-count loops while you get it into your body. That's most of what people were leaving the app to do, filming the screen on their own phone so they could scrub it back in Photos.

The speed you pick carries over to the next clip, because if you're working through a routine at 0.5× you're working through all of it at 0.5×. Repeat doesn't, since that's a decision about one passage.

Clips also remember where you stopped. Come back to a fifteen-minute rehearsal video and it picks up where you left off, and the thumbnail carries a progress bar so you can see at a glance what you've watched and what you haven't.

Fullscreen has been rebuilt. It used to hand the video to the phone's own player, which meant losing every control the moment you went large, and watermarked clips couldn't go fullscreen at all, so the most carefully protected material was stuck in a small box. Now the whole player goes fullscreen: speed, repeat, scrubbing and the watermark all survive, on every device, and the screen turns to match the way the clip was filmed.

Two smaller things in the same area: clips can now be limited to specific groups or admins, the same as any document in Files; and there's an Other clip type for the recording that isn't a routine, a breakdown, blocking or reference.

Callboard on iPad

Callboard now runs properly on iPad rather than as a stretched phone app. The top bar and tab bar span the screen instead of floating in a column down the middle, and the reading width stays comfortable rather than running the full width of a 13" display.

Opening the app no longer shows you a login screen you don't need

If you're already signed in, launching the app used to show the login form for a moment before quietly signing you in, long enough to start typing a password you didn't need. Callboard now holds on its own logo while it checks, and goes straight to your production. If the check is slow, a spinner fades in; if it's quick, you just see the logo and then the app.

A note on Activation pricing

Activating a single production is now $119 for six months, up from $49. Subscription prices are unchanged.

Activation is meant for a company that mounts one show a year and doesn't want a subscription, and at $49 it wasn't doing that job: four activations cost less than a year of Pro, so a company running several shows was better off buying it repeatedly than subscribing, which isn't what either option is for. A single-show company still pays well under a year's subscription.

Smaller things

• Photos can be uploaded anywhere in the library now, not only under Documents, handy for a photographed signed form, a set model, or a costume reference
• The section list stays pinned as you scroll, so you can move between sections without going back to the top
• Filtering by type offers only the types in the section you're looking at, instead of every type in the library at once
• File rows are a consistent height whatever is on them
• Your wardrobe running order now sits properly inside its card instead of pressing against the edges, and its scene markers line up on one thread rather than stepping in and out
• Video thumbnails are widescreen rather than square, so a wide shot of a rehearsal room no longer has its edges cropped away
• Show Ready now counts props nobody is sourcing separately from prop cues nobody is bringing on: they're different jobs, and one number for both said less than either

Wardrobe gets a real costume plot

Costume items now belong to scenes, not to a typed-in scene name, so the app can finally work out what a character is wearing at any point in the show, and what has to change between one scene and the next.

Once that's in place, a few things follow on their own:

Looks. Bundle a character's scenes into a named look ("Ball Gown", "Act 2 Travelling") and the plot talks in those terms. "Change into the Ball Gown" is the instruction someone acts on in the wings; the list of individual garments is the detail they only need if something's missing.

A running order per performer. One continuous read-through of the show for one person: what they're wearing in each scene they're in, what changes between those scenes, and which props they're carrying. It's the document companies otherwise print and pin up backstage. Wardrobe can flip between performers; each performer sees their own.

Props can be linked to scenes too, with a different person responsible in each one, which is how props actually work when one item passes between hands during a show.

Costume items can carry photos now, the same as props.

Quick changes you can actually plan

Quick change detection has been rebuilt. It now looks at consecutive scenes a character is actually in, and treats an act break as what it is: an interval, and the most relaxed change in the show. The old version had this backwards and shouted loudest about the easiest changes.

A flagged change is no longer just a warning. You can:

An accepted change with nobody assigned to it stays amber, because it isn't finished: somebody still has to be in the wings.

• Accept it and write the plan: where the costume is pre-set, who's doing what, what happens in the wings
• Name the dressers, more than one if that's what it takes
• Say it's not a problem, and it stops being flagged (reversibly, if you change your mind)
• Log a change the app can't see, including one that happens mid-scene while the scene is still running. A coat off behind a flat never changes what the character is wearing scene-to-scene, so nothing could detect it

Dressers get told what they're dressing

If you're named on a quick change, it appears on your own page: whose change, which scene, what they're going into, and the plan as written. You don't need to be in the show. Most dressers aren't in a single scene, and this reaches them anyway.

"My show": your own page, one tap away

"My character" is now My show, and it's reachable from your avatar menu on any screen rather than three taps into Company → Cast.

Both changes are for the same reason: it stopped being only about your character. It carries your parts and scenes, your costumes and props, your learning tracks, your next call time, and now the changes you're dressing for other people. Crew who play nobody would never have thought to look under "Cast" for it.

A guide to setting up a new show

Characters, then scenes, then who's in each scene, and only then can a callsheet call the right people. That chain was invisible, and skipping the last step produced callsheets with nobody on them and nothing saying why.

Productions still being set up now see a short guide on Home showing where they're up to and what's next. It only ever points you at the right screen (it never fills anything in for you), and it disappears once the show is broken down.

Improvements

• Adding a scene now lets you tick who's in it while you're creating it, instead of saving and reopening it. The same goes for adding a character and its scenes, thanks to the tester who pointed this out
• Props & Costumes can be arranged by scene or by character, with the arrangement now a proper switch rather than a second row of filter chips
• Status colours in Props & Costumes and Callsheets no longer take on the production's own accent colour, so "needs attention" reads as a status rather than as branding
• Audition and invite emails arrive under your production's name, with a plain-text alternative so they're less likely to be treated as bulk mail
• The sign-in screen now shows the production's branding when you arrive from an emailed invite
• Callback sittings are scheduled from the audition pipeline, and never appear as choosable slots on the public sign-up form
• The slot scheduler now works properly on a touchscreen

Fixes

• Fixed the status filter chips doing nothing in Props & Costumes' character view
• Fixed a join link for a suspended production failing with an unexplained error instead of saying the code wasn't found
• Fixed the Company and Library tabs not rendering after a hard refresh directly onto them
• Fixed candidate cards wrapping names awkwardly and orphaning the "Self-tape" label
• Fixed accepting or dismissing a quick change failing to save

Tell candidates where they're up to, from the pipeline

Write your standard messages once (the callback invitation, the offer, the thank-you-but-not-this-time) and send them straight from the audition board as people move through it. No more retyping the same email for the thirtieth candidate, or keeping a document of wording somewhere else.

Set them up under Auditions → Edit audition → Candidate messages. Each one can include tags like the candidate's name, the role they're up for, and your callback details, which are filled in per person when the message goes.

Callback details (when and where, what to bring) are kept separately from the wording, so you can update the room and time each round without rewriting the message.

Nothing sends on its own. Moving someone into a stage offers the message; you see exactly what they'll receive, can edit it for that person, and send it yourself. The candidate's card shows what was sent and when.

Audition emails now arrive under your production's name rather than "Callboard", so candidates recognise them in a crowded inbox. You can also nominate one address for replies: set "Replies go to" in the audition setup and every reply reaches it, instead of landing with whichever person happened to press send.

Available on Pro, alongside the rest of the pipeline board.

Notes: built for writing something down mid-run

The note sheet now opens straight to the note itself, not a type picker. Title has moved down and is clearly optional. Most notes never used it, and it was pushing the actual note off the bottom of the screen. Adding a note or a divider now uses the same + button as everywhere else in the app, with Divider as a small button just above it.

You can also drag notes into a new order by their grip handle, not just nudge them up and down one at a time. Long notes fold to two lines with a "More" tag instead of stretching the list. Tap it to read the rest, and it never changes how tall the note's card is.

Section headings now stay pinned at the top of the screen while you scroll through that section's notes, so you always know which section you're reading.

Stage Door's emergency number can stay pinned

The number Stage Door offers when a message goes unanswered close to a call can now be pinned to the top of the screen at all times instead, for productions that want it always visible. Turn it on under Company → Settings → Urgent phone number.

The Rehearsals tab now shows a badge whenever a Stage Door message is still waiting on a reply, with a count next to Stage Door itself once you're inside.

Improvements

• Setting up an audition is now a full screen rather than a pop-up. It's a long form saved in one go, and it was possible to swipe it closed by accident and lose the lot; it now asks before discarding anything unsaved
• Fixed audition setup being able to scroll sideways on a phone, taking the top and bottom bars with it

Callsheets now catch a cast that isn't built yet

Setting up your Character and Scene list before you've finished casting is completely normal, but a callsheet item built from an uncast scene used to quietly call nobody, with nothing telling you why. Callsheets now say plainly when a scene has characters nobody's playing yet, right in the item you're building. Once they're cast, one tap re-syncs every affected item at once.

A clearer event screen

Tapping an event in Schedule now leads with what matters to you (your call time and whether you're coming), with the date, location and category tidied into a compact summary underneath. Editing and closing an event are easier to tap, and deleting one now sits at the bottom behind a confirmation, matching how deletion works everywhere else in the app.

Improvements

• Adding a callsheet breakdown item no longer creates it the moment you tap "Add item". It's only saved once you tap Done, so backing out of a half-started item doesn't leave a stray entry behind
• Pull to refresh now works inside a callsheet, not just the list around it
• The Callsheets tab no longer flashes back to "Loading…" every time you switch back to it
• Attendance is reached from Schedule only now, rather than showing up under both Schedule and Rehearsals
• Pop-ups and side panels now all open at the same speed, rather than some feeling quicker than others
• Add/edit sheets in Props & Costumes now use the same Cancel / Save styling as the rest of the app
• A few empty-state messages ("add one below", "above") were pointing at buttons that had already moved; these now point at the + button

Fixes

• Fixed the "…" menu on a note session opening off the bottom of the screen
• Fixed dragging a breakdown item in the callsheet builder also triggering pull-to-refresh
• Fixed a sheet's Save button visibly bouncing when it opened with a text field already focused
• Fixed two pop-ups stacked on top of each other blurring the background twice
• Fixed the attendance panel opening behind the event screen it was opened from, instead of in front of it
• Various layout fixes across Schedule and Callsheets

Stage Door: tell the production team something, without a phone call

Running late? Not going to make it? Send a quick heads-up from the app and someone will let you know they've seen it.

It goes to whoever is running the production, not the whole company, so you don't need to work out who's on duty, and you're not chasing one person who might be driving. Pick a reason, add a note, send. The team can reply, and mark you late or absent from the message itself, so it's on the attendance record without anyone re-typing it.

You'll find it on the home screen next to your next call, on any event in the Schedule, and under Rehearsals → Stage Door.

Running a junior show? You can now keep a parent or guardian's contact details against a young performer. They're visible only to the people who'd need to ring them, never to the rest of the company.

Action Items: a new way to track who owes what, and by when

Raise an action straight from a rehearsal note or a rehearsal report, assign it to a person or a whole group, and peg it to the rehearsal it's needed for.

Everyone sees what's on their plate on the home screen, and their callsheet now tells them what to have done before they arrive, not just when to turn up.

More on the free plan

Callsheets and Attendance are now available on every plan, including Free.

Auditions has been split too: taking sign-ups and seeing who applied is now part of Starter, with the full casting pipeline on Pro.

A proper top bar on desktop

If you use Callboard in a browser on a larger screen, there's now a bar across the top of the app. It shows which production you're in and where you are inside it, and you can click back through it to move up a level.

Notifications and your profile have moved up there too, so they now open from the same side of the screen you tapped them on.

You can also bring a screen up to date without reloading the page: there's a refresh button in that bar, and if you leave the tab open and come back to it later, it refreshes itself.

Improvements

• A redesigned home screen: your call time now reads at a glance, with everything on your plate in one place
• Pull down to refresh on any tab
• A new notification panel, and search built straight into the feed
• Audition roles can be reordered and renamed
• Actions now show who completed them
• Changing your email now waits for you to confirm it before it takes effect
• The sub-tab strip stays put while you scroll (was previously bouncing)
• Adding a prop or costume now uses the same + button as the rest of the app
• On desktop, Escape closes any pop-up
• Audition candidates can now be dragged between columns on a touch screen, using the handle on the right of a card
• On a tablet, the top bar and the tab bar now run the full width of the screen instead of sitting in a narrow strip down the middle
• Buttons and cards no longer stay stuck in their hover state after you tap them
• Tightened who can see other members' contact details

Fixes

• Fixed signing in with Google on iOS
• Fixed the home screen failing to load for some companies
• Your call time now shows on the home screen again
• Fixed production logos and banners failing to upload
• Fixed approved join requests not clearing for admins
• Fixed missing "joined the production" posts in the feed
• Fixed sideways scrolling on the auditions board
• On desktop, scrolled text no longer appears above a pop-up's heading
• On desktop, the Schedule and Auditions screens no longer sit partly behind the side menu
• "Tell the team" and the member picker can now be closed on desktop; both were missing a close button
• Fixed the close button on a new action, and the heading on the Branding pop-up, looking out of place
• Various layout fixes across Schedule, Rehearsals and Callsheets