Ministry Centered Technologies

We are very excited to introduce our newest feature, Facebook integration. For the past several months we have been learning about how to develop on top of the Facebook platform and thinking about the best way to do this integration. I am really happy with what we have come up with and I hope this helps your volunteers become more informed about when they will be serving. Let me go ahead and walk you through the integration process:

1.) Install the Planning Center Online Facebook App: You can install this by going to http://apps.facebook.com/planningcenter/ . We will shortly be adding a link to this from the Planning Center Online Dashboard & Schedule pages. Make sure you click “Allow”.

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Around three weeks ago we enhanced the mobile version of Planning Center with the ability to schedule and email people. Now we’re proud to announce that we just updated our mobile site to include the ability to add and edit items, songs & headers!

Additionaly, each user can easily change their status from the mobile site as well. Status is indicated in a color-coded bar at the top of the flow, and can be changed independently for each position they are scheduled.

Only mobile phones whose web browser is based on webkit (including iPhone, Android & Pre), are able to use any editing functionality at this time, for reasons explained in the previous post.

We have yet another exciting release, and this one is in the world of mobile phones. Last night we released an update that allows you to perform certain tasks on the mobile version of your phone (including iPhone, Android, and Pre). You now have the capability to schedule people and email those that are scheduled. This also paves the way for our new official Planning Center Online iPhone App that released today! The official app is a streamlined version of the updated mobile interface that runs more smoothly and remembers your password.

We apologize to our Blackberry users, but because the Blackeberry’s internet browser is not built on WebKit (like iPhone, Android & Pre), it is much more difficult to program and as a result, the Blackberry will still be read-only. Though our Blackberry users are very important to us, we discovered that only 2% of our mobile users use the Blackberry, but don’t worry- we aren’t giving up! We are continuing to find ways to improve the use of PCO on your Blackberry so stay tuned for any break-throughs and updates we may have in the future.

Hey PCO users! We have an exciting release for you. The most exciting part is a feature that people have been asking for, and that we are FINALLY adding for you! Yes, it’s about “time” these features were added. Let me explain:

Block Out Dates by the Hour/ Conflicts by the Hour:

Until now, users were only able to block out dates a whole day at a time. We realized this did not meet everyone’s needs, especially since there are some weekend services that have something happening in the morning and evening. So now, you are able to block out your dates one hour at a time. As a result, when a scheduler is scheduling and conflicts come up, they will only show as a conflict if their block-out time actually conflicts with the plan time and/or rehearsal time. The new dialog box will look like the picture on the right, and it’s rather self-explanatory. Just choose the date/s and time/s  you want to block out. It’s as easy as that!

Change The Date Of A Plan You Are Creating

When you click on the “Create A New Plan” link, the dialog box that comes up will now look different. Here you will have an option to set the date of this plan. Something we were running into a lot is if someone had accidentally deleted a plan that wasn’t the last one in the list, and had to add that back in,  the system would automatically create it for the next date past the last dated plan in the service (as it should), but it wasn’t very intuitive or easy to change the date. So now if you are in a situation like this, you can set the proper date before the plan is even created. It will also automatically update any times you have, according to that new date. If you choose to not set a date, it will add a date depending on the frequency you have set (just like normal).

New Time Options

The “edit a time” dialog box looks different now as well. Since block-out dates and conflicts are now by the hour, we’ve added end times to all your times. When you enter in a Plan, Rehearsal, or Other time (which is a new type), you will be able to designate when it will end. This will make any conflicts more accurate.

The default end time has been set to one hour after the start time, but we’ve added a great new option to help you change your times for multiple plans at once. When you edit a time, just check the new “Update in Future Plans” box at the bottom, and whatever changes you made to the time in that plan will be applied to that same time in any existing future plans!

Simplified Pages for Viewers

You can now specify that scheduled viewers should see the full plan, the song list, or their schedule only. The full plan is how it’s always been. The song list lets them view the plan, but omits any non-song items and only shows headers and songs in the flow. The schedule only option doesn’t even let them go to plan view, but takes them to the “my schedule” page which just shows them the plan dates, times, and positions they’ve been scheduled for. This is great way to simplify the experience for your users who don’t need to see plan details. You can see what the schedule view looks like by clicking “my schedule” underneath the calendar on the main plans page.

To specify this new view option, click “properties” at the bottom of the plans list on the main plans page, and then click the pencil to edit any of the people categories you want to change the view options for.

We hope you enjoy these timely updates and are able to be even more efficient with the way you plan your worship services!

Ask not what you can do for Planning Center Online, ask what Planning Center Online can do for you. And in this case, we’ve blown the doors off! We have released a new Media page- on your normal Planning Center site, and then also on our Community Media page. It’s slick, easy, and integrates with Worship House Media. There are three major things that have changed or been added, and below I address each one.

Incorporation of Media into PCO: If you have videos that you think would be useful for your staff/volunteers to see on PCO, you can now easily upload them. We will even process them for you, create thumbnails, and make them streamable. Editors and Administrators will now see a ‘Media’ tab, along with the Plans, Songs, and People tabs (yes, we are definitely branching out aren’t we?). You will just click on ‘add a media’, enter the information, and then you can just upload it like you would with a song. It will display so nice and pretty as well!

Now, we realize that this is probably going to cause many of you to need more file space (media takes up a lot of space). We are working on putting together some new options to where you could pay for extra GB’s of space. So look for that to come in a mini-update in the future. Also something to note is that the maximum size for a single file has been changed from 150MB to 1GB.

Community Media Page: Recently we added the Community Songs page, and we are equally excited about adding this Community Media page. You will have direct access to the Worship House Media catalog, where you can browse and add any of their media to your own PCO account’s library. And if you decide you want to use it someday, you can purchase the media then use it how you’d like. This page is slick and nice- and as a side note, we do have plans in the future to add more providers along with Worship House Media. Exciting stuff!

Plan Item Dialog Changing: The Editing Item dialog box looks different now, since we needed to make room for any media that may be indicated. Mostly everything is just moved around, but still present. The notes are near the bottom now, and on the right, you can add media to that item or song if you want to. There’s also an option to click on ‘add a media’ under the drop-down option for add an item.

If your item has a song attached, it will still be blue in your service flow, even if it has media attached as well. If, however, your item has media attached (and no song), it will be green so that you can easily differentiate between regular items (black), songs (blue) and media (green). Only dramas, countdowns, song videos & regular videos will make the item a media item;  background videos & images don’t make an item a media item unless the title of the item is the same as the title of your media.

Miscellaneous: We’ve redesigned the expanded plan item view which previously showed item notes and attachments, and now includes a section for media thumbnails and adds any media attachments to the bottom of the attachments list. In addition, we’ve added video capabilities to the mp3 player.

Tutorial Video: To help you get acquainted with the new features we have also published a new tutorial video which I want thank Aaron for staying up until 4:30am last night doing this. He went above and beyond the call of duty.

Conference Season is here!

We have already been to Catalyst West Coast & the Willow Creek Arts Conference and had a great time!! It is awesome to meet you guys and hear your excitement & ideas for Planning Center Online. We have a few more conferences this year and we hope to see more of you. Next week we are at the Saddleback Worship Arts Conference and then the National Worship Leader Conference & Echo Church Media Conference in July. If you go to any of these conferences please stop by our booth and visit us!

Hello PCO users! A new mini-update for you has come once again. Hope you are all enjoying spring wherever you are!

New Look Becomes Permanent: We are very excited about our look! It will now be the default. As you know, we are continually looking to improve the look of the site and are always working on making things better. Hope you enjoy!

New Email Look: The notification emails will now look slightly different (just a little more organized). Things are situated a bit differently but no information has been excluded that was there before. Another change to the emails is that you can now edit the default email text. When you go to “email these people”, your box will have the script that we have written, which you are now able to edit if you’d rather have it say something else.

Edit Scheduled Person Dialog: This box comes up when you add or edit someone scheduled to a plan.  It now looks a bit different but again, all content is the same. The biggest difference is that we’ve moved the plan & rehearsal times to a list on the right, and instead of assigning the selected person to a time by checking a checkbox, simply click on a time to select or deselect it. We really feel that this looks much cleaner and will be redesigning several of the other dialogs in the near future.

Quick Links Change: We have moved Quick Links from the left sidebar to underneath the Plans tab. When you hover over Plans, you will see the Recently Viewed Plans at the top (if applicable), then all the Quick Links for that same day below.

Hope you enjoy these updates! Just a few more little things to make the site look and run smoothly.

Hey everyone! We just wanted to send out a quick blog post about some new mini-updates that we’re releasing today! Hope you enjoy them- we anticipate that you will!

Adding Items:

Now you can add an item to anywhere in your plan! You’ll see the plus symbol throughout the items already added, and to add an item in between certain items, just click on that plus.

Subscribing to Comments:

Anyone desiring to get emails notifying them of new comments on an item can now subscribe to receive those emails! When you click on the bubble of the item comment, you’ll see the option at the top to subscribe to receive emails for one of the three: this item specifically, this plan, or the whole service in general (all plans/items that would be commented on within that service).

Positions Drop-Down Box:

This is a minor change, but we thought we’d notify you of it anyway: When you are adding or editing a person’s position, you will see the drop-down box with all positions show up. This is just a small change but we wanted to notify you of it.

Enjoy!