The Communications tab lets organisers contact selected event participants from the event record. Where Stage Manager production contacts or lineup performers exist, it can also send crew-only or performer-only updates to those contacts, with Stage Manager templates for common production messages. Contactable production-contact and lineup rows can open Communications with that contact already selected. It keeps the message, recipients, channel, replies, and delivery context closer to the event than a separate email tool can.
Before sending
- You need permission to send messages.
- Recipients need usable email addresses or phone numbers for the channel you choose.
- SMS requires available SMS credits and suitable recipient numbers.
- Use filters to avoid sending the wrong message to the whole event.
- Check whether the message should be event-wide, filtered, participant-specific, crew-only, performer-only, or split by audience.
Send a message
Open the event Communications tab
Use the event page tabs.
Use context where available
From Stage Manager setup or lineup, use Message on a contactable production contact or performer to start with that contact selected and other recipient groups cleared.
Choose channels
Select Email, SMS, or both.
Start from a Stage Manager template where useful
Crew and performer templates can prefill running-order changes, technical-pack updates, call-time changes, or technical-information requests.
Filter recipients
Use compliance, payment, status, participant selection, the Stage crew selector, or the Stage performers selector before composing.
Write the message
Add email subject and body, and SMS body where selected.
Preview email
Use preview to check rendered email content.
Send
SmartGig queues the communication and records progress where available.
SMS credit behaviour
- The compose panel shows available credits.
- SmartGig estimates manual SMS credit usage before sending and reserves those credits before messages are queued.
- Long SMS messages can use more than one credit per recipient.
- Sending is blocked when estimated SMS credits exceed your available balance.
- Crew and performer SMS recipients are included in the estimate only when they are selected and have usable phone numbers.
- Reserved manual SMS credits are linked to the queued delivery batch so the same SMS is not charged again when ClickSend sends it.
- Emails are free and unlimited for event managers.
- Automated SMS scenarios are controlled separately from manual Communications in Settings > SMS Notifications.
Filter first, compose second. It is the safest way to message only unpaid, part-paid, non-compliant, not-started, approved, confirmed, crew-only, or performer-only audiences.
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