Collaborators & Crew
How to add the groups and individuals you're working with on an event, and how to structure them based on event size.
Events are built by many groups working together. Collaborators are how BackOps represents those groups — and crew are the individual people within them.
Getting your collaborators and crew set up early gives you a complete picture of who's involved in the event and lays the foundation for how work, files, and communication get organized throughout the platform.
What Is a Collaborator?
A collaborator represents a group of people — a company, a vendor, a department, an artist's team, a client, or any other collection of individuals that plays a role in the event.
Collaborators are intentionally broad. They don't have fixed roles like "vendor" or "sponsor" — they represent whatever groups are actually involved in your event. In practice, this might include:
- Your own production company or internal team
- External vendors (audio, lighting, catering, power, tenting, logistics)
- A client or organizing body
- Artist or performer teams
- Speakers and their support staff
- A venue and its staff
When you created your event, BackOps automatically set up your first collaborator using the name you entered. Every additional collaborator you need can be added from the Manage Collaborators section in the left-hand sidebar.
How to Structure Your Collaborators
How you break down collaborators depends on the size and complexity of your event.
For smaller events, the simplest approach is one collaborator per company or group.
- Your production company
- Each vendor (catering, A/V, etc.)
- Your client
- Any speakers or performers
This keeps things clean and easy to navigate without over-engineering the structure.
Adding Crew Members
Under each collaborator, you can add crew members — the individual people who belong to that group.
For each crew member you can store:
- Name and title
- Role on the show
- Email address
- Phone number
- Any other information you want to track
Adding a crew member doesn't automatically invite them to the platform. You're building a contact list and a record of who's working on the show, which is useful even if you never invite them into BackOps directly. When you do want to invite someone, you can do that separately.
Add crew members even for contacts you don't plan to invite into the platform. Centralizing contact information in BackOps — rather than across email threads and spreadsheets — makes it much easier to manage throughout the event.
Custom Attributes
The default crew fields cover the basics, but every event has its own information needs. Custom attributes let you extend what you collect about crew members.
Common examples include t-shirt sizes, dietary restrictions, certifications, and accommodation preferences — anything that matters for your specific event.
See the Crew documentation for a full walkthrough of the custom attribute system.
Next: Areas
Learn how to define the physical spaces of your event.