Availability requests explained

The most frequent question in any working band is "can everyone do the 14th?", and the most common way to ask it is a message that gets six answers, two of them about something else. expert.band replaces that with an availability request: one personal link per member, one tap to answer, and a page that shows who said what.

This article explains the feature in full: what is sent, what the member sees, what the leader sees, what happens with SMS, and where the edges are.

Where it starts: a gig

Availability requests belong to a gig. When an enquiry arrives, the band leader or a manager creates the gig with what they know: name, date, start and end time, location, fee if known, and the status request, which means "someone asked, nothing is signed". Requests and confirmed gigs are shown in different colours in the calendar so nobody mistakes an enquiry for a booking. The gig can be created in a minute; the rest can be filled in later.

Sending the request

On the gig page, open Availability. Choose the members to ask (all, or a subset if it is a trio date), and the channels: email, SMS, or both. Send.

Each selected member receives a message with a personal link. The email and, if the member has a phone number on their account, the SMS both point to the same page. The SMS is short: the band name, the gig date, and the link. Messages are sent in the member's own language.

The link carries a token that identifies the member and the gig. That is why no login is needed: the page already knows who is answering. It also means the link is personal; forward it to someone else and their tap counts as yours.

What the member sees

A small page with the band name, the gig details and two buttons: "I'm available" and "I can't make it". One tap saves the answer and shows a thank-you. Changed plans? Open the same link again and pick the other option; the latest answer counts. The page works on any phone, in any browser, in seconds, which is the point: a drummer on a building site at 10 am can answer without finding a password.

If the link is not valid (the gig was deleted, for instance), the page says so and tells the member to ask the leader for a new one.

What the leader sees

The gig page shows the state of the request: a summary line (4 available, 1 unavailable, 1 pending), each member's answer, and when the request was sent. Members who have not replied are clearly listed. Send a reminder to only those people rather than everyone.

Once enough people have answered, decide: confirm the gig, decline the enquiry, or book a dep for the missing chair (see deps and substitute musicians). Confirming changes the status; you can notify participants by email when you do.

Participants are the next step. Not every member plays every gig, so the gig has a line-up: by default everyone who said they are available. Participants get later reminders, appear on the printed gig sheet and can be assigned packing items. You can adjust the list by hand.

Email and SMS: how the two channels behave

• Email is unlimited and always sent. Every member with an email address (which is every member, since invitations go by email) gets it.
• SMS uses a monthly allowance: 50 per paying account, shared by all the bands that account owns. Availability requests, rehearsal reminders and rating-round links all draw from it. The billing page shows how many are used this month. The allowance resets on the first of the month.
• When the allowance is used up, the app tells you at the moment of sending and falls back to email. Nothing is silently dropped.
• A member without a phone number simply gets the email. The send result shows, per member, whether the email and the SMS were sent, capped, or skipped for lack of a number.
• During the trial, SMS works as normal.

A rough budget: a 6-piece band sending SMS for 4 enquiries and 3 rehearsal reminders a month uses 42 SMS. Bands with more traffic send requests by email only and keep SMS for reminders, or the other way round. For the practice of running requests well, see asking the band "are you free on the 14th?" without 40 messages.

Typical flows

The wedding enquiry. Couple writes on Monday for a June Saturday. Gig created as request, availability sent to all 7 members by email and SMS. Six answers by Monday evening, the seventh after a reminder on Tuesday. Quote goes out Tuesday with the confidence that the band can play. Couple accepts; gig confirmed, participants set.

The "either band" enquiry. A manager with two acts creates the same date as a request in both bands and sends two requests. Whichever band is complete first gets the quote.

The trio subset. A ceremony-only enquiry: the request goes to the three members who play the trio. The other four never hear about it.

The tentative date. A venue asks "keep the 14th free for us?". Create the request, ask the band, and leave the gig as a request until the venue confirms. Members can see it in the calendar as tentative and plan around it.

What it does not do

• It does not ask people who are not members. Deps and guests outside the band are contacted by you, and their availability is a note on the gig.
• It does not hold a date in members' personal calendars; it records their answer for this gig. An "available" answer is information for the leader, not a contract.
• It does not chase automatically. Reminders are sent by the leader when they choose, to the people who have not answered.
• It does not check for clashes with a member's other bands, even on expert.band. Each band's calendar is its own.
• The answer is binary: available or not. "Available after 6 pm" goes in a message to the leader.

Privacy

Members' phone numbers are visible to the band leader and managers in the member list and are used only for the band's own messages. Each member adds and changes their own number on their account page. The personal link is unguessable; it is not password protected, so members should not post it publicly, though the worst case is an answer recorded under their name for one gig.

Do this today

• Ask every member to add a phone number on their account page.
• Create your next open enquiry as a request and send an availability request by both channels.
• Note how long the last answer takes; for most bands it is hours, not days.
• Once confirmed, set the participants and attach the setlist so the gig page is complete.

Full reference in the gigs documentation. To start with a 30-day trial, register here.