| 22 February 2020: Caller's Companion for Mac OS is now "digitally signed" to comply with new security requirements in Catalina (10.15). If you're having issues with running CC on a Mac, trying downloading the current new Mac Demo following the directions on the Demo download page.
16 February 2019: Just a quick note that the old Yahoo CC Group is gone. To chat with other users, ask questions, and share tips please join us on the Callers Companion Facebook Group.
 
What is Caller's Companion?
Caller's Companion makes it easy for dance callers to catalog
large numbers of dances and to create, edit, save and duplicate "Sets" of
dances for programmed events. Caller's Companion contains detailed
options for cataloging contra dances, squares and English Country
Dances by Name, Author, Type, formation, level, first figure, music,
and more, as well as user customizable fields. As of Feb 2020, there are 115 Caller's Companion users around the world.
A robust Search engine allows you to search by figure within
a specific part of a dance, for example, finding all dances with
a "Petronella" balance in B1. Caller's Companion has multiple print
options including a number of different formats for dances
and sets and a detailed "programming matrix" to make it easy to
spot repetitive elements in a Set (for example, several dances
in a row that contain "Men allemande Left 1-1/2").
Dance entry
is fast and standardized with user customizable "Insert Call" buttons
so all dances are entered with the format and phrasing you like
to use. A "Source" area allows you to link one dance to the author's
website, an online video, and to other related dances.
For more information:
- Take the Quick Tour for a screen-by-screen look
- Watch the Intro
Movie for a full run-down of all features
- Download Caller's Companion (Mac
or Win) and try it yourself!
Below are a couple of screen shots of the Dances and Sets areas.
See the Tour page for a more complete overview
or download the fully functional demo and
try it yourself. 
A sample Set list for an evening...
These two screen shots are just to give you a quick idea. Please see the "Tour" page for a complete overview of all Caller's Companion's capabilities.
Caller's
Companion is a FileMaker
Pro "Runtime" application and
does not require FileMaker Pro or any additional software to
run.
Older posts
13 October 2017: Caller's Companion just got it's 100th user. Thanks to everyone for their support, feedback and patience over the last 8 years in making CC an invaluable tool for Contra Dance (and some ECD) callers. I hope to be able to continue improvements in the future. As a labor-of-love / shareware project, you're sharing CC with other callers and showing them how you use it helps spread the word and also support future efforts as well as the hundreds of hours that I've already invested in it. Thank you again! Love, Will
Special thanks to Bev Bernbaum, my initial beta tester; Linda Leslie, who provided invaluable feedback in the early years and made feature suggestions to support ECD calling; and Nils Fredland, for extensive feedback around iPad use.
21 July 2014: A new "demo" file has been posted (v.1.2b11) which contains the new iPhone/iPod Touch layouts. These layouts offer basic search and display functionality for your dances but no editing, and as such are primarily for a backup or reference copy of your dance, though one could call from this as well.
To try these out, simply install FileMaker Go 13 on your device and then load the CallersCompanion.USR files as you would with an iPad (using iTunes). CC will detect the mobile device and display the special screens. You can send me comments if you wish though I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to offer a further update.
29 August 2013: My most frequently asked support question is how do I transfer my CC file to the iPad. Here are two FileMaker KnowledgeBase articles on doing just that: Here's a FileMaker KnowledgeBase article on transferring files and using them with FileMaker Go: http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7754 and http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7769
As both articles note, transferring means that you've made a copy of the file on the iPad. If you edit the iPad copy (or the computer copy for that matter) changes will NOT be synced. Be sure to keep track of which copy is your "Master" one so you don't wind up loosing changes you've made in one file or entering different data in both. Again, changes are NOT synced between your iPad and computer.
01 January 2013: Happy New Year! Caller's Companion (version 1.2) is now compatable with FileMaker Go 12 for iPad, the free version, so you no longer have to pay $40 for the original version of FileMaker Go in order to use CC on your iPad. New users can simply download the new demo version of Callers Companion and transfer the CallersCompanion2.USR data file to your iPad using iTunes. Existing users will need to convert to version 1.2 using the instructions and downloadable files available at ConvertHelp. (If you do not have an iPad, it is not necessary to convert your files and there is no other benefit in doing so at this time.) thanks to everyone for their patience, it's been an extremely full year!)
16 June 2012: Caller's Companion now has 50 registered users in Canada and the US, across 24 states and provinces. Thanks to everyone for their support!
FileMaker Pro 12 News / Free Filemaker Go for the iPad (9 April 2012) - Filemaker Pro 12 was released a few days ago and I'm already getting inquiries about a version of CC that uses FM 12 because FileMaker Go, the iPad app for FileMaker based databases is now free instead of the previous $40. Version transitions, such as the rather major one from FM 11 to FM 12 can require time to test properly, so the short answer is that I will have a test Demo version available as soon as I can though it may take a few weeks. Once enough people have played around with the demo, I'll release an update that will allow you to convert to the new version. To those of you who might have recently spent that $40...sorry, FileMaker gave no advance warning that they would do this, even to developers.
Update 1.01b38 (29 Oct 2011) - Caller's Companion now support email of dances and sets directly from within the program. You can email a dance or set as text and also include a formatted PDF attachment of the same.
News Flash - 6 Feb 2011 - Caller's Companion now runs on the iPad! Nils Fredland and several other callers are calling from their iPads. If you are a current CC user and want to run CC on your iPad you need to do the following: 1) update your copy of CC to at least version 1.01b29; 2) download buy the free FileMaker Go ($39.95) from the Apple App Store; and 3) use iTunes file Sync to transfer your CallersCompanion.USR file to the iPad. To save yourself the $40, please check back in late April or May 2012 for a Filemaker Pro 12 based version of CC that uses a new free version of FileMaker Go.
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