Help / Planning

Reviews, lessons, and the playbook

Every event and campaign teaches you something: the email that filled the class, the question every parent asked, the costume order that went out a week too late. A review writes it down while it's fresh, and the lessons come back the next time you plan it, so next year starts from what you learned instead of from memory.

Writing a review

Open an event, registration period, season, or promotion and choose Write the review (it's also under After it's over). A campaign has its own Lessons tab. When you record a campaign's final results, or an event's results for the first time after it ends, the review opens next.

At the top, say how it went overall (1 to 5), whether marketing started early enough, and how many days sooner (or later) to start next time. The page shows when marketing actually started, when registration opened, when it filled, and how that compared with last year, so the answer is easy. Add a sentence or two of summary if you like.

When everyone's had their say, choose Finish the review. You can reopen it any time.

The sections

Each lesson is its own line, under a section. Type it and press Enter; Shift+Enter starts a new line, so a pasted list adds every line at once.

Campaigns and promotions: what worked, what didn't work, change next year, definitely repeat, timing issues, repeated parent questions, and operational issues.
Events, registration periods, and seasons: event feedback, marketing feedback, recurring parent questions, timing problems, operational notes, successful strategies, and areas to improve.

Edit a line to add more detail (why, or how you know), the area it's about (marketing, registration, pricing, family communication, staffing, logistics, the day itself), and whether it comes back next time: keep doing it, change it next time, or don't bring it up again. Each section starts with the sensible choice. For a parent question, add the answer and about how many families asked, so next year's emails and posts can answer it up front. Drag lines by their handle to put the most important first.

An event's review also shows the lessons from its campaigns, so nothing is written twice. Notes written before reviews had sections show under From earlier notes; edit each to move it where it belongs.

Asking the team

Choose Ask the team and pick the people who were there. Each gets a notification with a link. They add their own lines (marked as theirs) under any section, then choose Send my feedback, and you're told. Anyone who hasn't answered gets one reminder a few days later. The review shows who's been asked and who has answered.

The family survey

Open the survey from the review's Family feedback card. It asks families five short questions: how it was overall (stars), whether they'd come again or recommend it, what they loved, what could be better, and anything they wish they'd been told sooner. You can add one question of your own.

Email it to families writes the email for you, addressed to the groups taking part (or your enrolled families), and opens it to check, approve, and send like any other email. Each family's button carries their own link, so their answers land on their record and they can change them later. In any email, the {{feedback_link}} personal detail is the linked event's survey link.
Or Copy link to share it anywhere: a text, a social post, a QR code at the door. Anyone with the link can answer.

Answers collect on the review with the average rating and how many would come again. Add as a lesson turns any answer into a line, or let AI read every answer at once. Close it when you're done; the link then thanks families and says it's closed.

Help from AI

Each of these is a draft for you to check. It opens on the review with every line ticked: untick anything that's wrong, edit any line or move it to another section, then add the rest.

Sort my notes into lessons: paste the debrief from a staff meeting, a group chat, or notes from your phone, and AI files each point under the right section in your words.
Find what families kept asking: AI reads replies to its emails, calls and texts the team logged, website inquiries, and survey answers from when it was promoted and run, and lists the questions that came up more than once, with about how many asked, a real quote, and a drafted answer.
Turn the answers into lessons: AI reads every survey answer and groups what families said.

The Strategist's own review of an event or campaign can add its lessons to the review too, marked as the Strategist's.

When it's planned again

Next year's version of an event or campaign opens with Lessons from last time: what to keep doing, what to change, and the questions families asked, from every earlier year (and for an event, its campaigns). For each one, choose:

Applied (or It's in the plan, for something to keep doing).
Make a task: give it to someone with a due date. The task links back to the lesson.
Not this year: it comes back the year after.

A change you've applied is settled and doesn't come back. Something to keep doing comes back every year, until you stop carrying it (edit the line and choose Stop carrying it). If last year's review said marketing started too late, a button moves this year's promotion start by the days you said.

Something with no earlier years shows lessons from others like it: other events of the same type, or campaigns with the same goal. When you copy an event or campaign, you can bring its lessons along as a checklist on the copy (see Copying events and campaigns). AI drafts for a campaign follow its lessons and answer the questions families asked. About 45 days before a repeating event (earlier if last year's marketing started earlier), its owner is told how many lessons are waiting.

The playbook

Playbook (in the sidebar, under Learn) gathers everything you've learned across every review: what to keep doing, what to change, the questions families ask (with their answers), timing, operations, and feedback. A lesson learned in more than one year shows once, with every year it came from.

Studio rules sit at the top: lessons you've pinned (the pin button on any line) and rules you write yourself. The Strategist follows them in every plan, draft, and suggestion.
Write it with AI drafts studio rules from everything you've learned, for you to check.
Filter by section, area, kind of event, year, or whether it's been acted on, or search the words.
Lead times that worked shows when marketing started in each kind of event's best year, and Waiting for a review lists what ended lately without one.
Export everything as a spreadsheet, or print it.

The playbook is what your studio learned; the resource library (beside it under Learn) is what it reaches for: checklists, plans, lesson plans, and templates. AI drafts there follow your studio rules too.

Reminders

3 days after it ends, its owner is asked for the review (a campaign's owner is asked for its results first; once they're in, for its lessons). At the same time, everyone else who had a part in it (whoever owned its posts, emails, and offers, had its tasks or checklist lines, or follows up its leads) is asked for their feedback, and reminded once if they don't answer.
10 days after it ends, if the review still isn't finished, its owner gets one more reminder.
The dashboard's Reviews to write lists the feedback you've been asked for and the reviews waiting on you (every one waiting, for Owners and Admins).
The Strategist recommends finishing reviews, and going through last year's lessons when something is coming up.

Turn these notifications on or off under Settings → Notifications (Reviews).

Who can do what

Everyone can read reviews and the playbook, and add their own lessons and feedback to a review. Owners and Admins finish reviews, edit or remove any line, act on last year's lessons, ask the team, run the family survey, use AI, and keep the playbook. Each person can edit or remove the lines they wrote. Emailing the survey needs permission to write emails, and making a task from a lesson needs permission to manage tasks.