Playlists vs Live Sessions
Every collection is either a playlist or a live session. Playlists are permanent, ordered lists—they don't change unless you edit them. They're right for class preparation, themed reference lists, and anything that needs to persist across multiple events.
Live sessions are the same structure but with real-time tracking layered on top. The host marks what's playing now, the queue updates automatically, and anyone watching can follow along from their phone. Live sessions are right for socials, events, and any night where the floor benefits from seeing what's next.
Themed Nights
A themed social—90s country, Christmas, Western swing, dances from a specific choreographer—benefits from a dedicated playlist collection built before the night. Create the collection, label it as an event, and filter your dance search to the theme as you add entries.
On the night, you can run the playlist as a live session or simply use it as a reference list. Either way, the dance order is set, the dances fit the theme, and you're not improvising from memory.
For recurring themed nights—a monthly country classics night, for example—keep the collection from the previous run and update it for the next one rather than building from scratch. Clone the collection and adjust the set rather than starting over.
Level-Based Collections
Mixed-level floors are one of the hardest things to manage in class. A clean way to handle this is to maintain separate collections for each level in your teaching rotation: one for your Absolute Beginner floor, one for Beginner/Improver, one for the advanced session.
Each collection holds only the dances appropriate for that level. When you plan a class, you're pulling from the right collection rather than mentally filtering your whole repertoire. The filter for each collection is built into the search: difficulty set to the right range, counts bounded, wall count appropriate.
Level collections also make a useful public resource. If you run a studio or a regular social, sharing a public "Beginner Dances" or "What We're Teaching at Improver Level" collection gives new dancers something concrete to look at before they walk in the door.
Community Vote Collections
When you enable voting on a collection, entries can be upvoted by anyone with access. This turns a playlist into a prioritisation tool: your dancers nominate or vote on what gets taught next, and you see the most-wanted dances rise to the top.
A practical setup: create a collection called "What Should We Learn Next?", label it as a vote collection, and share the link with your class group or Discord server. Add dances you're willing to teach, let people vote over a week or two, and plan your next term's content around the results.
You can also enable comments, which gives dancers space to leave notes like "I've been asked about this three times" or "this one pairs well with the Garth Brooks night." Comments often contain planning information you wouldn't otherwise collect.
Live Events with Request Queues
For a live social or dance night, the live session type is the right starting point. Set up the collection as a session before the night, add your planned dances in order, and enable requests so dancers can add to the queue.
During the event, mark each dance as playing as you go. The queue shifts automatically. If the crowd wants something not in the planned set, they can request it through the collection and it appears in the queue for you to accept or skip.
If you've linked the collection to a Discord channel via the BootStepper bot, requests can come in from Discord too, and now-playing updates post automatically when the track changes. This is useful for events with a side channel for communication, since dancers can follow the session without looking over each other's shoulders.
Sub-Collections and Nested Structure
Collections can include other collections as entries. This makes it possible to build a master event collection that links to several sub-collections—one per floor, one per session, one per instructor in a multi-room workshop. The master collection gives organisers a single view; the sub-collections give each room its own focused set.
For festivals or workshop weekends with multiple sessions across two or three days, this structure keeps everything browsable without forcing everything into one long flat list.
Sharing and Visibility
Collections can be public, unlisted, or private. Public collections appear in the BootStepper collections search and can be discovered by anyone. Unlisted collections are accessible by anyone with the link but don't appear in search—right for sharing with your class group without advertising it broadly. Private collections are visible only to you.
Edit access is separate from view access. You can share a view link freely and still control who can modify the collection's entries. The edit token is required for the Discord bot link, which means only you (or whoever you share the token with) can connect a Discord channel to the collection.
Export and Print
Collections can be exported to CSV or printed as formatted sheets directly from BootStepper. For multi-instructor workshops or events with a printed programme, this means the printed set list stays in sync with the live collection—no manual reformatting in a word processor.