I’m writing this post to address two important questions that come up a lot in my conversations with our Timeline Genius users. (Note: I’ve also provided a short clip above to share my answers in video format.)
Question 1: “How do I handle a situation where I have more than one contact person at a particular vendor or venue?”
To provide a clear answer to this question, let’s consider a hypothetical situation… Let’s say you have a given vendor, Ace Photography, and they have two photographers, Jane Doe and John Smith.
The best way to handle this case in your Timeline Genius Rolodex is to create one vendor record for “Ace Photography,” with “Jane Doe” as the contact person. Then, create another vendor record for “Ace Photography,” with “John Smith” as the contact person. And of course, you’ll enter Jane’s contact information on her page and John’s information on his.
After you do this, you’ll have the flexibility to treat Jane and John as separate individuals. For example, if you’re working on a wedding with Jane, and not John, you can include Jane in the timeline, and not John. Or if Jane and John are both involved in the same wedding, you can add them both to the timeline. In that case, you’ll still be able to assign them to separate timeline items and manage their collaboration rights individually.
Overall, this approach lets you work fluidly with as many vendor contacts as you please. And you can use this same strategy if you have multiple contacts at a venue.
Question 2: “How do I handle a situation where a given vendor or venue plays multiple roles?”
Let’s consider another hypothetical situation to address this question. Assume you have a given vendor, Sparks Entertainment, who is handling the reception music and the photo booth. You can create one vendor in your Timeline Genius Rolodex with the name “Sparks Entertainment (Music)” and the vendor role “Reception Music.” And you can create another rolodex entry with the vendor name “Sparks Entertainment (Photo Booth)” and vendor role “Photo Booth.” Then, you can assign the reception music and photo booth vendors to separate timeline items, as appropriate.
You can also use this same strategy if you have a venue that is handling multiple aspects of an event — e.g. acting as venue and caterer.
If these points aren’t totally clear, please check out the short video posted above. And feel free to post comments and questions here if any come to mind.