Managing staff and stages

Once your venue is set up, you'll want to bring in the people who help run it — and tell NextSet about the physical spaces where your shows happen. This article covers both.

Inviting staff

Go to Dashboard → Staff to see everyone on your team and send new invitations.

To invite someone:

1. Click Invite Staff in the top-right corner.
2. Enter their email address.
3. Choose their role (see the role table below).
4. Click Send Invitation.

NextSet sends them an email with a link to accept. They'll appear under Pending Invitations until they click the link and create (or sign into) their account. Once they accept, they move to Current Staff and can log in to your venue dashboard right away.

You can revoke a pending invitation at any time by clicking the X next to their name in the pending list.

Staff roles

There are three roles you can assign. Pick the one that matches what each person needs to do:

Role	What they can do
Staff	Basic access — view the venue dashboard and event details
Director	Everything Staff can, plus run live shows and control the timer
Admin	Full venue management — same access as you, the owner

Most show-night team members should be Director so they can start and advance the timer, switch modes, and drive the projector during the event.

To remove someone from your team, open the Staff page, find their card, and click the remove icon. They'll lose access immediately.

Setting up stages

Stages let you name and describe the physical performance areas in your venue. Events are then attached to a stage, which helps with scheduling and keeps your screens and projector labelled correctly.

Go to Dashboard → Stages to manage your stages.

To add a stage:

1. Click Add Stage.
2. Give it a name — something clear like "Main Stage", "Patio", or "Room 2".
3. Optionally enter a capacity and a short description.
4. Tick Set as default stage for new events if this is your primary performance space.
5. Click Create.

You can edit or delete any stage by hovering over its card and using the edit or delete icons that appear.

The default stage

Marking a stage as default means it's pre-selected whenever you create a new event. If your venue has only one stage, set it as default so you never have to think about it again. If you later add more stages, you can change which one is the default at any time.

How Directors access the timer

Staff with the Director role can open your event's director controls directly from their browser — no extra setup needed. Share the director link for the event with them, or they can find it from the venue dashboard under their assigned events.

The director controls let them start sets, call changeovers and intermissions, add or subtract time, and advance the rundown. All changes appear live on every connected projector and backstage screen automatically.

For a full walkthrough of what directors can do during a show, see How the timer works and Director controls.

Common problems

A staff member can't see the venue after I invited them. They need to accept the invitation first — check that they clicked the link in the email. If it expired, revoke the old invitation and send a new one. They also need the right role: a Staff member has limited access, so if they need to run shows, change their role to Director or Admin.

The "Invite Staff" button isn't visible. Only the venue owner and Admins can invite new team members. If you don't see the button, ask an Admin at your venue to send the invitation.

A stage I deleted is still showing on the projector. Reloading the projector page will refresh the display. Stages on active events aren't automatically removed from those events — edit the event directly to reassign it to a different stage.

I accidentally set the wrong stage as default. Open the stages page, click edit on the stage you want, tick "Set as default stage for new events", and save. The previous default will be replaced automatically.