The Production™ — User Guide

The Production™ is where you run your podcast day to day. It takes every guest from the first hello through to a published, promoted episode, and keeps the board, your contacts, sponsors, emails, reminders, files, calendar, tasks, reviews and the AI tools in one place, so nothing falls through the cracks. The AI drafts; you decide what goes out.

• Answer the three setup questions when you first sign in: your show's name and whether you do a pre-interview call, where replies should go, and your time zone and recording days. Your board is built for you.
• Work through the setup checklist at the top of the Overview.
• Settings → Your show → Show branding: your show name, host name, logo and color. Email Sending, in the same place, sets who your emails come from and where replies go.
• Settings → Booking → Recording availability: your hours, time zone, days off and public holidays. Connect your calendar and Zoom there too.
• Record on Riverside, StreamYard or a link you always use rather than a new Zoom meeting each time? Settings → Your show → How guests join your recordings, then “My own link”. Every confirmation and reminder for that show's recordings carries your link, and no Zoom meeting is made for them.
• Settings → Your show → Your links: your application form, booking pages and review page, each with code to put it on your own website.

The Pipeline board is the main screen. Each card is one episode and its guest, moving through your stages (for example Inbound → Pre-Interview → Confirmed → In Production → Published).

• Guests arrive by themselves from your application form, your booking pages, Calendly or Acuity. Add someone yourself with New episode, or bring in a spreadsheet with Import a list.
• Invite guests from The Outpost (Settings → Your show): tick it and you get your show's application form link to paste into an Outpost offer. People who apply through it fill in the same form, accept the same agreement and go through the same pre-interview and rules as anyone else, and their episode is marked Came from The Outpost. The Outpost only ever has the link: nothing about your guests is shared with it.
• Someone new is sent to your application form before they can book, so you have their details and their agreement to your release first. Paste your own release under Settings → Your show → Guest agreement and release, and guests tick to accept it. You can open booking to anyone instead, under Settings → Booking → Who can book.
• Guests a booker or agency puts forward wait for you, their card marked Needs your say-so, and nothing is sent to them until you say so.
• Archived episodes, at the top of the board, lists guests you passed on or who said no.
• Deleted an episode by mistake? Recently deleted, next to Archived episodes, keeps it for 30 days: press Restore and it comes back as it was (owners and admins).
• Rename, recolor, reorder or remove your stages, and say what each one means, under Settings → Your show.

An optional AI producer interviews new applicants before you spend time on them, so you hear how someone tells a story before you book them. It comes with Automator and Production House, and you can switch it off under Settings → Guests.

• The guest gets a link by email as soon as they apply, and chooses Talk it through or Type my answers. Talking works in any up-to-date browser once they allow the microphone; typing needs no microphone and works anywhere. The questions are the same either way.
• You get a transcript, a scored card and, for a spoken pre-interview, a recording. A typed one has no recording, so nothing about how the guest sounds is scored.
• Approve → Confirmed, Hold or Pass. The score never decides: you do.
• Every pre-interview is listed under AI pre-interviews in the menu. Change what the AI listens for under Settings → Guests.

• Before you record: press Prepare me for a research brief on the guest, questions to ask and a prep sheet. If the guest has written a book, a Their book tab turns your own notes and star rating into three reviews — Amazon, Goodreads and your blog.
• The run of show is the script you read, with your sponsor's read in place. The app suggests whose turn it is, from what each sponsor is still owed and the episode's topics.
• While you record, the recording companion (Automator and Production House): press Open the recording companion and it opens in a new tab, so put it on a second screen or a tablet. It listens through that device's microphone and shows you follow-up ideas, a checklist of your planned questions that ticks itself as they're covered, a reminder when the sponsor read is due, and the time. Only you see it. Before it listens, you tick that you've told your guest. What it hears isn't kept unless you tick Keep this transcript with the episode when you finish; your checklist and notes are. A session runs for up to 90 minutes. An owner or admin turns it on under Settings → Guests → Recording companion.
• The recording: with Zoom connected, the recording and transcript arrive by themselves.
• After you record: press Make everything for the description and titles, show notes, chapters, quotes for social, a newsletter paragraph, an article and a promo pack for the guest. You approve the guest's email before it goes.
• Audio cleanup evens out the volume and removes background noise; the cleaned file is saved with the episode's files and deleted from the service that cleaned it.
• Send to Buzzsprout or Transistor puts the episode there as a draft — title, description, show notes and the audio you pick. Nothing is published from here; you publish it there. Link your show first under Settings → Advanced → Your podcast host. Once it's sent, the episode's downloads come back once a day, on its page and under Analytics.
• Send to my Broadcast site: if your show has a website on The Broadcast, an owner or admin connects it under Settings → Advanced → Your Broadcast site. Each episode is then sent there when it goes live in your podcast feed: its title, link, show notes, key takeaways, chapters and guest. A guest's photo, bio and links go only if they accepted this show's guest release; otherwise only their name. The button on the episode sends it sooner, or again after changes. Nothing goes public on its own: it waits on your Broadcast site until you approve it there.

Every guest, booker and sponsor in one place, with their photo, links, book, application answers and episodes.

• Filters: All, Guests, Sponsors, Photo needs attention and Would have back.
• Private ratings: rate a guest, sponsor or booker with stars, quick labels ("Would have back", "Late", "Pays on time") and a note. Only people on your account see them. Keep them factual: anyone can ask what you hold about them.
• Invite back starts a new episode for a past guest.

• Add a sponsor, beside the heading on Sponsors & partners, makes someone a sponsor — pick them out of your contacts or give a new name and email. Someone already on screen has Make them a sponsor on their contact page. Nothing else about them changes.
• Each sponsor has their own page: contract dates, rate, what they get on each episode, where they stand against what they bought, and every episode they're on.
• Sponsor report: what has run, what's booked and what's still owed, ready to print or send.
• Invoices: New invoice on the sponsor's page fills in one line for each episode that ran, at their rate. Print it, or email it (owner or admin), then mark it paid when the money arrives. Overdue shows by itself. The sponsor pays you directly; we never handle the money.
• The ad read: add the sponsor's talking points, offer, code and web address, and press Write 4 versions. Every draft uses only their facts, never invents your own experience, and always says it's sponsored. Save the ones you like.
• Episodes take turns: each new episode reads the version that sponsor's episodes used least recently, and the run of show says which. Tailor the read to this episode rewrites it around the guest's topic.
• Renewal reminders arrive before a contract ends.

Reviews from Apple Podcasts (checked daily) and from your own review page, in one list. A new 5-star review adds a task when there’s someone to thank — one of your guests, or someone who left their email on your review page; Thank them opens an email for you to edit and send.

Set a rule up once and it does the follow-up for you. It waits for something to happen (an episode moving to a stage, a date coming round, a Zoom recording finishing, an episode going live, a Calendly or Acuity booking, or only when you press the button) and then does one of these:

• Email the guest one of your templates.
• Add a task, or move the episode to another stage.
• Email you a background brief before a recording.
• Write the guest's promo posts for you to check and send.
• Tidy up the audio recording.
• Tell another app about it, for Zapier and the like.

• Email templates: every email the show sends, editable, with names and dates filled in for you. Any template can also be sent on repeat, every week, two weeks or month.
• Guest reminders go out before recordings and calls, in your booking calendar's time zone, and can be sent by text to guests who've agreed.
• Guests can check where they're up to, update their details, change their recording time and cancel their booking themselves. You're emailed the old and new times whenever a guest moves one.
• A practice interview for your guests (Settings → Your show → Practice interview for guests): tick it, and guests who book a recording on that show get a link in their confirmation and their reminder to a free 20-minute practice interview in Rehearsal Studio, set up for your show. Each guest gets one free practice every 90 days. It starts off, each show has its own, and only the owner or an admin can change it.
• Unsubscribe: emails you write or send on a schedule (Send Email, automatic rules, the promo kit, review thank-yous, emails on repeat) carry an Unsubscribe link. Someone who uses it gets none of those from your account any more, but still gets emails about anything they arranged with you themselves, such as their booking confirmation and reminders. If you try to send them one, you're told why it didn't go.

• Files: kept with the person or episode they belong to. Documents and photos are kept while your account is open; audio and video files are removed 30 days after the recording by default (adjustable in Settings), with a week's warning, unless you press Keep.
• Calendar: your recordings and calls from every source, plus anything you add yourself.
• Tasks: the jobs you add and the jobs your rules add, in one board.
• Analytics: how many people sit at each stage, whether your rules are running, where your guests come from, and your episodes' downloads.

Press ⌘K (or click the Ask button, bottom right) and ask in ordinary English, about your show (“Who's recording this week?”) or about the app (“Where do I change my logo?”). It never changes anything.

Settings is at the bottom of the left-hand menu. Things you rarely change are folded away under "More" at the bottom of each tab.

• Your show: your shows and hosts, name, logo and color, how guests join your recordings, who your emails come from, your links, your stages, your guest agreement and release, reviews, the practice interview for guests, and inviting guests from The Outpost.
• Booking: whether your booking pages are open, recording hours, days off and holidays, who can book, your calendar, Zoom, Calendly and Acuity, pre-interview call hours and guest reminders.
• Closing your booking pages for a while: Settings → Booking → Booking pages → Closed. Nobody can book or move a time on any booking page on the account, for any show, so no confirmations or booking notices go out. Your hours are kept, bookings already made stay as they are, guests can still cancel, and reminders follow their own setting. Calendly and Acuity aren't affected. Choose Open to take bookings again. Only an owner or admin can change it.
• Guests: the AI pre-interview, the recording companion, booking agencies, and whether guests sent by bookers wait for you.
• Account: your name and password, your plan and invoices, your team, downloading your data and closing the account.
• Advanced: other tools such as MailerLite and Twilio, your podcast host for sending episodes to Buzzsprout or Transistor, your Broadcast site, how your audio is cleaned, and the health of the app's background jobs. Most hosts never need it.

Organizer ($39 a month, 4 episodes), Automator ($89 a month, 10 episodes, plus the AI tools and automatic rules) and Production House ($149 a month, unlimited episodes, three people and several shows). Paying yearly gives you twelve months for the price of ten. Your content is never used to train AI.

Open Help & Support in the app for common questions, or email support@theunfairai.comCopy and a person will answer.