Formatting item details with bold and bullet lists

Every timeline item has a Details box: the notes that ride along with an activity and show up on the crew's live run of show / runsheet and the printed BEO. A cue list, a kit checklist, a running order for a set. The box formats as you type: bold looks bold, a list looks like a list, and what you see in the box is what the crew reads.

The formatting buttons

Open the event in the planner and click into the Details box on any timeline item. Three buttons appear just below the box while you are in it:

• Bold makes the selected text bold, or turns bold on for what you type next. Ctrl+B (Cmd+B on a Mac) does the same.
• Bulleted list turns the line you are on into a bullet point. Press it again to turn the line back into plain text.
• Numbered list does the same with numbers.

A button is shaded while the cursor sits in text it applies to, so you can tell at a glance that a line is bold or part of a list.

Click away and the buttons tuck themselves back out of the way, and your Details are saved automatically, the same save when you leave the box as the rest of the row. There is nothing to submit. Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac) saves and leaves the box from the keyboard.

Shortcuts while you type

You never have to reach for the buttons:

• A bulleted list: type a dash and a space at the start of a line. The list starts there and then. Press Enter for the next point, and Enter on an empty point to finish the list.
• A numbered list: type 1. and a space at the start of a line. Lines that start 3. and 4. are a list that begins at 3. Numbered lines that don't count on from each other, such as 25. Dec above 27. Dec, stay as the text you typed.
• Bold: select the words and press Ctrl+B.

A dash in the middle of a sentence ("Mum - brother - nieces") is left alone; only a dash at the very start of a line starts a list. A time such as "10.30 access" is left alone too.

Plain line breaks are kept as you typed them, so you can lay out a few short lines without them collapsing together.

The red accent

One piece of formatting has no button: a red accent for the single thing on an item a crew member must not miss. Wrap the words in equals signs, =do not open the main doors before 6=, and they render in warning red on the crew's run of show and the printed sheet. In the Details box itself they stay as you typed them, equals signs included. Use it sparingly.

A worked example. Typing this into an item's Details:

Sound check running order:
- Band line check
- Vocals last
=Doors stay shut until check is done=

gives a heading line, a two-point bulleted list, and a red warning line underneath on the crew view. Select "Vocals" and press Bold to make that one word stand out.

Pasting

Paste from an email, a document or a spreadsheet and the box keeps the words, the bold and the lists, and drops everything else: fonts, colors, tables and links arrive as plain words. Nothing you paste can change how the run of show looks beyond bold and lists.

Where the formatting shows up

Details render with this formatting on the two surfaces crew and the kitchen actually read from: the live crew run of show and the printed BEO / function sheet.

Item and line descriptions

The description on an item in your Items catalog is the same kind of box, with the same three buttons, so a package or line item you sell can carry a formatted description onto a client-facing quote or confirmation. So is the description on each line of a quote, an invoice or an event's pricing: click into it and the buttons appear underneath. One deliberate difference: the red accent is switched off on those client-facing descriptions, so an equals sign on a formal quote stays an equals sign. The red accent is a crew-facing signal, so it lives on the run of show, not on documents you send to a client.

Good to know

• Bold, lists and the red accent are the whole set. There is no italic, underline, heading or color picker. That keeps every timeline row fast to edit even on a long run of show, and keeps the crew view easy to scan.
• Lists have one level. Tab moves you on to the next field rather than indenting a point.
• Keep it simple. If a Details box is growing complicated, it is often a sign the information wants to be its own item or an attached file.