Everything to get running, use it, and keep it healthy. Skim Part 1 to start in ~5 minutes — the rest is here whenever you want it.
/exec) → back in the sheet: menu → 🔗 Set the App link → paste. This one deployment is your dashboard and what powers the guests' one-click RSVP links.Then run your first event: 🗂️ fill the event details → 📥 Import your guest list → 🔄 Refresh → select all → ✍️ Invite Writer → ✅ Mark Ready → 👁 Preview → ✉️ Send. Then watch the RSVPs land by themselves.
That's it. Everything below explains each piece. New to it? Read the Best Practices guide once — it's one page and saves real pain.
Picture the Sheet as a living guest list, not a static spreadsheet.
The tabs, and their jobs
- Recipients — your guest list. One row per guest, from "invited" through "RSVP'd" to "attended."
- Sent Box — your archive. When the event wraps, 📮 Archive moves the finished rows here, locked. (Unlike a plain mail tool, sent rows stay on your live list until then — that's what lets each guest's RSVP land on their row.)
- Invite Messages — your editable wording library (Step · Subject · Message): Save the Date → Invitation → Reminder → Last Chance → Logistics → Thank You → Missed You. The Invite Writer pulls from here; tweak any message and it flows into your next send.
- Field Bank — a browsable catalog of every column label you can drop in. Reference only.
- Config — the hidden brain. Remembers your column setup. You never touch it.
The Recipients tab has a head and a body
- Rows 1–12 — the head: Common Details — the things that are the same for everyone (Event, Date, Time, Venue, RSVP-by, greeting, signature). Fill once.
- Row 13 — the toggles: Email / Tracker per column.
- Row 14 — the headers. Row 15 and down — the body: one row per guest.
The three big ideas
1. Email vs Tracker. Every column has a toggle. Email = it shows up inside the email (Event, Date, Venue, Dress Code…). Tracker = it stays in your sheet, just for you (RSVP Status, Ladder Step, Table, Notes). One row holds both what the guest sees and your private planning.
2. The invitation ladder. Give it an Event Date and 🔄 Refresh computes each guest's Days to Event and suggests the right Ladder Step — far out it's a Save the Date, closer it's a Reminder, final week it's Last Chance, confirmed guests get Logistics. ✍️ Invite Writer then writes each line's Subject + Message by its step. Guests who declined are automatically left in peace.
3. One-click RSVP. Every email carries personal ✓ Yes · ✗ No · ? Maybe buttons. A guest clicks once — no login, no form — and their answer + timestamp land straight back on their row. Your scoreboard (going / awaiting) updates itself.
How a row lives (the lifecycle)
Add / import → Mark Ready → Preview / Open in Drafts (a real Gmail draft is created; row = Draft) → Send (the draft sends; row = Sent) → RSVPs land on the row → 🔁 New Wave (resets it for the next ladder email) → … → 📮 Archive when the event's done.
Two human checks (Ready, then Reviewed) before anything leaves — and it's your Gmail that sends.
It watches itself (self-healing)
- Edit a guest after you reviewed them → the row quietly drops back to "needs Ready."
- Rename a required column or scramble a toggle → it snaps back.
- Sent one straight from Gmail? Hit 🔄 Refresh — it notices and marks it Sent.
- Give it an Event Date → Refresh keeps every countdown and ladder step current.
The Owl gives you a full-screen web App — your main control room — and a classic Sidebar inside the sheet (a fallback with the same actions in a narrow panel). (To use the App and the RSVP links, deploy once — Part 4.)
The sheet menu — 🦉 10X Invite Agent (deliberately slim; the workflow lives in the App)
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| 🦉 Open the Owl App | Opens your web App (it adds your private access key automatically). |
| 🔗 Set the App link | One-time: paste the URL you got when you deployed. |
| 🪶 Classic sidebar (fallback) | The narrow in-sheet panel — same actions. |
| 🩺 Health Check / Repair | Diagnoses and fixes layout / trigger problems. |
| ⚙️ Setup / Rebuild Workbook | Builds or repairs the sheet's tabs and structure. |
Top — the scoreboard
- The event strip — Guests · Going · Awaiting · Days to go: your headcount, at a glance, live as RSVPs arrive.
- Four pills — Ready / Reviewed / Draft / Sent: where your batch sits in the pipeline.
- 📖 Guide · ⓘ Limits & help · 🔑 License live in the top bar.
The toolbar — prep your wave
- ⚙️ Presets & columns — load an event setup before importing (📣 Warm Blast · 🧑💼 B2B Conference · 💻 Webinar · 💍 Wedding/Gala · 🥂 VIP Dinner · 💝 Fundraiser · 🛠️ Workshop · 🏘️ Meetup · 🏢 Internal · 🔁 Reactivation). Also ➕ Add columns, 🧹 Start Fresh (clear rows, keep the setup — sent history is archived first), 📮 Archive (move Sent rows to the Sent Box when the event wraps), and 🧨 Factory Reset (wipe everything back to the standard fresh layout — the "start over" button; Sent Box, Invite Messages, and your license survive).
- 📥 Import — pull a guest list from a Google Sheet, or paste one. Common headers auto-match (Guest/Name → Recipient Name, E-mail → Recipient Email, RSVP/Response → RSVP Status, # of Guests → Party Size, Meal → Dietary Restrictions, Table → Table / Seating); anything else comes in as your own column. RSVP words are understood — attending / regrets / tentative land as Yes / No / Maybe. Imports append below your list; totals/summary lines are skipped; email-less rows still land (you'll see a ⚠ count). Import the same list twice and it warns you — duplicates are almost never what you want; to replace a list, 🧨 Factory Reset (or 🧹 Start Fresh) and import once.
- 🕒 Countdown — computes Days to Event from the Event Date and fills blank Ladder Steps (manual picks always stick; declined guests get nothing).
- ✍️ Invite Writer — writes the Subject + Message into your ticked guests, each by its ladder step, pulling from the editable Invite Messages library. Tick guests first — nothing selected, nothing written. It only writes the wording; it does NOT create a draft, so your Mark-Ready checkpoint stays intact.
- 🗂️ Common details — Event, Date, Time, Venue, RSVP-by, greeting, signature. Fill once, then apply to your ticked guests.
- 🎚️ Email / Tracker — flip any column between shows inside the email and stays in your sheet.
- ✉️ Messages — edit the seven ladder messages right in the app.
- 📎 Attach — a PDF/image (the invitation card, a program) on every email in the batch.
- 📮 Sent history — browse the archived Sent Box, read-only.
The guest table — your worklist
- Every guest with their RSVP chip · Party size · Days to go · Ladder step · Lifecycle.
- Filter by search, RSVP, step, or status; Columns… picks which extra fields show; tick the guests you want — or Select all (filtered).
- Click any row and a drawer opens with every field — edit CC/BCC, fix an email, set a table, add a note, all without touching the sheet. ➕ Add guest opens a blank drawer. (Sent rows show their email fields read-only — that's history; tracking fields still save.)
- Selection drives everything: Invite Writer, Common Details, Mark Ready, and New Wave all act on your ticked rows.
The action bar — the send lifecycle (the 2 checks)
- ✅ Mark Ready (check 1) → 👁 Preview + draft (creates the real Gmail drafts + logs Reviewed = check 2) or 📨 Drafts (opens them in Gmail) → ✉️ Send ready (sends from your Gmail — with the RSVP buttons inside).
- 🔁 New Wave — after a send, resets the Sent rows so the same guests can get the next ladder email (RSVPs and history are kept; guests who said No are automatically skipped).
- Send warns before a big batch — Gmail caps daily sends, so work in waves of ~25–50 (sends are auto-paced to keep Gmail happy).
The classic sidebar works with zero setup. Deploying unlocks the full-screen App and the one-click RSVP links (they point at this same deployment).
/exec).Change the code later? Deploy → Manage deployments → ✏️ edit → Version: New version → Deploy. That "New version" step is what makes changes go live; your link stays the same.
🔐 One link, two faces — keep yours private. The link the menu opens contains your private access key — it's your dashboard; share it only with your own team (they run the app as you, a shared event inbox). Your guests never need it: their RSVP links carry only their personal token, and the bare address without a key just shows a polite "use your invitation link" card. Your guest list is never visible to guests.
This runs on Google Sheets + Apps Script. Sturdy, but not a bulk-email platform:
- Gmail caps daily sends: ~100/day on a free @gmail account, up to ~1,500–2,000/day on Google Workspace. Past the cap, the rest fail until tomorrow.
- Send in waves of ~25–50. Filter by step or RSVP and work one slice at a time. The app warns you before a big batch, and paces itself so Gmail's spam filter stays happy.
- Very large runs can hit Google's 6-minute limit — the tool pauses and asks you to click Send again to finish.
- It's your Gmail — your name, your sending reputation. Preview before a big run.
- Guest privacy is on you too: the Sent Box and Recipients tab hold real people's emails and answers — share the sheet and the keyed app link only with people who should see them.
- Questions: Agent@10xfinanceai.com
🔄 Next event (fresh run): App → ⚙️ Presets & columns → 🧹 Start Fresh. It archives your Sent rows to the Sent Box, clears the guest rows, and keeps your setup.
⚠️ Keep the sheet healthy
- Add guests below row 14; don't insert/delete rows in the top zone.
- Don't rename the tabs (Recipients, Config, Sent Box, Invite Messages) or the gold required headers — they snap back.
- Don't type in the green status cells (Ready / Reviewed / Status) — the buttons run those.
- Changing a toggle or header un-readies your rows so you re-check before sending — that's a safety feature.
🆘 Something looks off? (try the lightest first)
1. Layout shifted, data fine → Menu → 🩺 Health Check / Repair.
2. Tangled beyond repair — duplicate columns, double imports, the App says it can't load → 🧨 Factory Reset (App → ⚙️ Presets & columns, sidebar → Maintenance, or the sheet menu — the menu one works even when the App won't open). It wipes the guest rows and custom columns and restores the standard fresh layout; your Sent Box history, Invite Messages wording, license, and app link all survive. Then: preset → details → import once.
3. You need the data back exactly as it was → File → Version history → See version history → pick a version before the mistake → Restore this version. The whole sheet snaps back.
4. Beyond saving → start over from a fresh copy of the original link (do a version-restore first — your Sent Box history lives in this copy).
💡 Before anything risky (a giant import, a bulk edit), File → Make a copy as a one-click backup.
The Owl's playful name is for you. The invitations your guests receive stay warm, clear, and professional. 🦉