ORCHESTOOL is an online service specially developed for orchestras to be able to conduct anonymous surveys.

1. We are orchestra musicians with over 30 years of experience. An online service that gives an orchestra the opportunity to express itself freely and anonymously is a matter of course for us.

2. Anonymity is essential for ORCHESTOOL. All participation in surveys is anonymous.

3. All personal data is stored in encrypted form in the database. We do not pass on any information to third parties.

4. The ORCHESTOOL service is chargeable, as we do not generate any income from data, statistics or advertising.

You need a registration if you want to create a survey. A member of the orchestra board or another person who enjoys the trust of the orchestra is most suitable.

No, the registrant's name, title and orchestra will be reflected in the invitation. This way, the person voting can see who initiated the survey.

No, your email address can only be used once in the ORCHESTOOL application. You can register for multiple orchestras if you use different email addresses.

Yes, if no more active polls are running. Scroll to the bottom of your account.

You can pay via STRIPE (credit card, PayPal, Klarna...) or SEPA.

Payment only appears when the survey is activated.

If you would like an invoice in the name of your orchestra director, this is possible via SEPA

Yes, by changing your account name, email address, and password you allow someone else to run the account without losing mailing lists, credits, and archives.

You get 30 days of free access to all features of app.orchestool.eu — no credit card required. Simply register and start.

No. You can start the 30-day trial without providing any payment information.

After the trial, your data is preserved. To continue creating polls and meetings, you purchase units. You will not be charged automatically.

A unit is a single credit used to send a poll or meeting invitation. The standard price is €5.00 per unit, with volume discounts available for larger purchases.

Unused free units expire at the end of the trial period.
Purchased units do not expire. You can buy them in advance and use them whenever you like.

There is no limit on the number of participants. You can invite as many members as your orchestra or association has.

No setup fees, no contracts, no monthly subscriptions. You simply buy units when you need them.

Log in to app.orchestool.eu, go to your account page, and click "Order units". Payment is processed securely via Stripe.

Export a local .xls or .numbers spreadsheet in CSV format.
Create a new list in Orchestool under Lists and upload your local CSV list.

The mailing list should only contain email addresses (no column titles, no numbering).

Only email addresses on the mailing list can participate in the survey.
The administration of the mailing lists is in your hands.

Import / rename list

You can assign a label to selected email addresses (better visual overview).

A click on an instrument label then shows all e-mail addresses with this label. You can then e.g. export to a new or existing list.

Add instrument label

Click on an instrument label, now all email addresses with this label will be displayed. Select all and export them to a new or existing list.

Export instrument group

To edit an email address, click it

Edit email

Add an instrument label to selected emails (better visual overview)

Add email

Insert the selected emails into a new or existing list.
This allows you to create desired lists directly in the app.

Export emails

It is also possible to duplicate a list and remove unnecessary email addresses to create a desired list.

Duplicate list / delete emails

Open the desired list and then click List Actions > Download List.
This will download your list including the instrument labels.
When you import this list, for example, into another account, the instrument labels will also be included.

Delete an entire mailing list

Delete list

Adding or deleting e-mail addresses is possible until you activate a survey with this mailing list.

After activation it is possible to change an e-mail address, if required, without affecting that person's participation key.

If you send a reminder afterwards, the invitation will be sent to the edited address.

ORCHESTOOL currently offers the following models:
• Vote (Yes/No)
• Vote (Yes/No/Abstention)
• Valuation (Reinvite? Scale answer)
• Valuation (Reinvite? Yes/No)
• Election (here you can create your own labels to be chosen)
• Questions (scale answer)
• Questions (Yes/No)

Your poll needs a mailing list, a name (title) and an end date. Optionally you can add a subtitle, text, instrument, position, project and a picture.

In the relevant survey, click on ' Activate'.

Activation will also send the invitation to the mailing list.

No, as soon as you activate your survey, you can no longer edit it.

Should you still e.g. want to change the end date, please contact us at info@orchestool.eu

Yes, click in the relevant survey under ' List' on ' Send reminder' to send a reminder to all participants who have not yet taken part.

An automatic reminder can be set at a self-determined time.

The survey starts as soon as you activate it.

A survey ends on the specified end date at the selected time or earlier if all participants have voted.

Yes, click ' Share' in the survey in question.
People (shadow users) only see the survey they were invited to, so you can invite different people for different surveys.

Shadow users can see the preview (draft), follow the participation and see the result at the end of the poll.

No, you do not need to register to take part in a survey.

You will receive an invitation from the administrator to take part in a survey.
All that is needed is your email address.

No, your vote is anonymous.

No, you can only take part once per survey.

After you have voted, your personal voting code will be displayed. This is proof that you have taken part in a specific survey and that your vote has been correctly recorded in the database.

The code will be automatically saved in your my.orchestool account.

The content of your vote will not be displayed.

The voting codes are listed in the results of the survey.

We do everything we can to avoid emails being seen as spam.
If emails are still filtered as spam, it is possible to accept our sending address mail@orchestool.eu in your email program. This is different for each provider, e.g. Address book, friend, VIP, not spam, rules, filters, etc...
You can look up how this works for your provider on the Internet.

1. Draft: Create a meeting, set the agenda, select a mailing list.
2. Activate: Activate the meeting (costs units). The invitation emails are sent to the list of participants.
3. Start: Start the meeting on site on the scheduled date (max. 4 hours).
4. End: Close the meeting and generate a PDF summary report.
5. Archive: Completed meetings are available for download as PDFs in the archive.

The following vote types are available:
• Yes / No
• Yes / No / Abstain
You can also set the required majority.
You can edit a topic until you activate the vote on that topic.

You can add or edit topics at any time — even whilst the meeting is in progress.
Exception: Once you have started a poll on a topic, you can no longer change that topic.

Once the meeting has ended, you can generate the PDF report containing all the voting results.
This is saved in the archive (Meeting > Archive).

The planning module is an orchestra-focused calendar for managing musical productions.
It is designed for organisations that wish to keep track of what is taking place, when, where and with whom. Productions can be organised and services planned.
Each musician can select the productions they wish to appear in their personal calendar (my.orchestool.eu).

The planning module operates on three levels:
• Production: A project such as a concert programme, opera or tour.
Each production has a title, a type and, optionally, a description.
• Service: An event within a production — a rehearsal, dress rehearsal, concert or performance.
Each service has a date, a time, a venue and a type.
• Access via lists: Each production is linked to a mailing list. All members of this list can view the production and its services in their personal calendar (my.orchestool.eu).

The planning module offers three calendar views:
• Day: Detailed view of all services on a single day.
• Week: 7-day overview showing all services in chronological order.
• Month: Full monthly view, colour-coded by ensemble or type.

If more than one ensemble is configured, the calendar can be filtered by ensemble. Clicking on a service opens its details and allows the organiser to edit it on the spot.

These are the reusable building blocks of the calendar, which can be configured once as ‘modules’ and then used across all productions:
• Genres: musical categories such as concert, opera, chamber music…
• Event type: terms such as rehearsal, stage rehearsal, dress rehearsal, concert…
• Venue: rehearsal rooms, concert halls…
• Ensembles: groups such as the main orchestra, choir or youth orchestra. Only visible if more than one ensemble is defined.
The option for multiple ensembles can be enabled in the Planning settings.

Yes, each member logs in at my.orchestool.eu → Planning and can view the productions for all the lists of which they are a member.
Individual productions can be enabled or disabled in your personal settings: Only enabled productions appear in your personal calendar and in any external calendar synchronisation (Google, Apple, Outlook, iCal). Changes take effect immediately and any external subscriptions are updated automatically.
Services that you do not play within a production can be ‘crossed out’.

Yes. Any musician can subscribe at my.orchestool.eu (→ Planning → Settings). There are four options available:
• Outlook: Subscribe to the same URL in Outlook Desktop or outlook.com.
• Apple Calendar: Add the personal webcal:// URL to the iOS / macOS Calendar app — updates are received automatically.
• Google Calendar: One-click OAuth synchronisation (events are transferred to a dedicated calendar in your Google account) or the manual URL as an alternative.
• Other: Any calendar app that supports iCal/webcal subscriptions will work with the URL.
The subscription URL is personal (contains a token) and only displays that person’s services. If the organiser edits a service, the subscribed calendars update automatically — usually within a few minutes, depending on the client’s update interval.

The results of the poll are only visible after all those entitled to vote have voted, or after the end date has passed.

The result contains the following tables:

1. The result (summary)
2. Any comments, if any
3. The mailing list (here you can see who participated and who did not)
4. The code list (this contains the personal voting codes of the participants)

The result is calculated with the votes that have these codes

In the case of a yes / no / abstention vote, there are 2 variants of the calculation in the result:
1. Abstention as non-participation
2. Abstention as a no

The 5 levels (no to yes) are points 0 1 2 3 4 or 0% 25% 50% 75% 100%.
For each question, the sum of the points is calculated as a percentage, here the reference is 100% = number of participants x 4P (highest number of points).

Example with 50 participants:

100% = 50 x 4P = 200P
For example, a question has 130 points, then the following is calculated:
100% x 130P / 200P = 65%

Yes, in the relevant survey, click on ' Result'.

The PDF is read-only and contains the name of the person who created the PDF (Admin) in the metadata.

30 days after the end of the survey, it will be automatically deleted.
Generated results remain saved as PDF in the ARCHIVE until you delete them yourself.

Click on 'Result' in the survey and a preview will appear.
Tap & hold on the preview until it changes color or a context menu appears, then drag to the side. The PDF will appear in a new window, and you can now use the share icon to save the PDF to your files.

MY.ORCHESTOOL is a personal user environment for orchestra members.

The surveys to which you were invited appear here, as well as the personal voting codes of the surveys in which you took part.

As a Shadow User (survey observer) you can observe the surveys for which you have been invited.

A Pinboard is also available.

If e.g. several surveys are activated for you, you are no longer solely dependent on receiving invitation emails.
In my.orchestool you can see all your surveys and you can see at a glance whether you have already taken part or not.

After participating in a survey, you have the opportunity to register for a my.orchestool account.

Account deletion is only available when no active polls or meetings are registered under your account.
• A poll is considered active when it has a start date and has not been trashed.
• A meeting is considered active when its status is anything other than Ended.
As long as active items exist, the Delete row in your account settings is shown greyed out and is not clickable. Close or trash all active polls and end all meetings first.

Once the deletion has been confirmed, the following data will be permanently deleted and cannot be recovered:
• All surveys and PDF results
• All meetings and PDF reports
• All mailing lists
• Your GDPR/Data Processing Agreement (if signed)
• Any remaining units (expired – no refund)
• Your account settings
You will receive a final PDF via email documenting the cancellation.

Yes. If you still have units remaining, you are offered the option to transfer your account to a colleague before deleting. This hands over — lists, units, and settings — to the new owner.
How to find a colleague:
1. Start typing the colleague's email address in the search field.
2. After 2 characters a live search runs against all registered users in your orchestra.
3. Click the matching suggestion to select the colleague.
4. The Send invitation button becomes active only after a valid match is selected.
Note: the invitee must already be a registered user in your orchestra. Go to Account → Users and add them first if needed.

After clicking Send invitation, your colleague receives an email with two links:
• Accept transfer — confirms they take over the account. You are notified by email and the Orchestool team completes the ownership change.
• Decline — the invitation is cancelled and you are notified so you can choose to proceed with deletion instead.
The invitation link is valid for 7 days. If the colleague does not respond within that period, the invitation expires and you can send a new one or proceed to plain deletion.
You can only have one pending invitation at a time. Sending a new invitation automatically cancels any previous one.

When you confirm account deletion, the system automatically generates a closure PDF and sends it to your registered email address before any data is removed.
The PDF contains:
• Your name, email address, and orchestra
• The closure date
• An inventory of what was removed (units, lists, GDPR status)
• A formal "This account has been permanently closed" statement
Keep this document for your own records.

To confirm, enter your registered email address in the confirmation field and click Delete account. If the address does not match exactly, you are redirected back with an error.
Once confirmed:
1. The final PDF is generated and emailed to you.
2. All your data is permanently removed from the system.
3. Your session is destroyed and you are redirected to the login page.
This action is irreversible. There is no grace period and no undo.