TillyGen and Slack

What this is about

Production communication has a rhythm: quiet prep weeks, then a burst of questions the day before the shoot, then minute-level coordination on the day itself. Slack absorbs that rhythm well — a channel per production, threads per topic, and everyone reachable on a phone. The danger is that the channel starts answering plan questions from memory. The fix is structural: the current call sheet PDF from TillyGen is pinned in the channel, plan changes get announced as posts with a fresh export attached, and anything discussed that changes the plan flows back into TillyGen before the thread scrolls away.

An integration is good when nobody talks about it any more: the data is where it is needed and nobody exports anything.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• The pinned message holds the current call sheet PDF and the TillyGen plan link — the channel's answer to most questions is that pin
• A thread per shoot day keeps the 6 a.m. logistics separate from the general noise of the production channel
• Via the TillyGen API and an incoming webhook, a plan update can post itself to the channel the moment it happens
• Decisions made in threads get restated once in the plan — the thread is the discussion, not the record

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Open a channel per production with a naming convention the team recognizes, and invite crew plus the client contact if they work in Slack.
2. Pin one message containing the current call sheet PDF and the link to the TillyGen plan; update this pin, never add a second one.
3. Announce every plan change as a short post with the new export attached — what changed, for whom, from when.
4. Optionally wire the TillyGen API to an incoming webhook so schedule updates post automatically instead of relying on someone remembering.
5. Sweep threads at day's end: anything that alters shots, times or crew gets entered in TillyGen, then the thread gets a checkmark.
6. Archive the channel at wrap — the plan history lives in TillyGen, the conversation history can sleep.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Plan questions answered from memory in the channel — three people now hold three call times for the same location
• The important schedule change lands in a DM instead of the channel, and half the crew reads about it on set
• The pin still shows Tuesday's call sheet on Friday because updating it is nobody's job

With TillyGen

Slack carries the conversation, TillyGen carries the plan the conversation is about. The pinned export and the plan link keep every thread anchored to one source.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.