Hello everyone and Happy New Year! We at Ministry Centered Technologies hope you had a great holiday season. With the beginning of another year comes another release for Planning Center Online! I would like to tell you about the three new features we just released.
Recently Viewed Plans
The first is that from now on, when you hover over the Plans tab, you will see a list of the most recent plans you have accessed. This will make accessing your plans easier and more intuitive! Just hold your mouse over the Plans tab, and it will list the last few plans you were working in or viewing.
Public Viewing
The next feature is an area on your plans page that allows you to enable public viewing. Here you can copy the link of that plan and send it to those who don’t have access to your account so they can view your basic service flow! You will even have the capability to easily post this link on a blog of your own.
Category Divisions
The last and final feature is on the properties page. Categories are now divided into sections: People Categories, Plan Notes Categories, and Item Notes Categories. This will be easier for those of you using a lot of notes and categories. This also means that when you click on a category, you won’t need to choose the category type anymore, since they are already divided right on the page.
Updated Design
In addition to our new features, you’ll notice that when you sign in, the information in the upper right corner (name, logout, etc.) will look different. It will have your picture and anything you may need to click on that was in the upper right corner before. Just a clearer, sharper look to the page!
This is the first small update of a few that will be released within the next month or two, so look for more to come soon! Hope you enjoy this first update!
robb esperat said
Public Viewing at last!!! Thanks team. This makes a world of difference.
QUESTION: How long will the link last?
Sherly said
Thank you So much for all your hard work and dedication, you guys are amazing and I ask God that He continue to Bless your lives!!!
Jeff Berg said
robb: As long as you have the “public” switch enabled…so forever.
Chris Johnson said
Thanks Guys! Keep up the great work. Can’t wait to see the next Update.
QUESTION: When I import a .usr file upon entering in a song, as soon as I click “IMPORT” the window closes and I have to reopen it to finish editing arrangement items such as bpm, key, etc… Can You help?
katiewillard said
@Chris We’ve had some issues with this this morning. If you’re on a mac, try holding down command then clicking refresh. If on a PC, hold down control then click refresh.
Thanks!!
Toyia said
Has anyone else had issues today with sending requests? It keeps telling my people that I’ve scheduled them for EVERY position. The poor techies are like “Um, I don’t know how to play bass.”
Anyone?
Other than that, I love the changes!
katiewillard said
@Toyia We have had issues with emailing this morning. By now everything should be working fine. I would suggest resending all of those emails, and then people will get the correct one. So sorry for the inconveniences!
Lorraine Kibblewhite said
ok … I am not getting how to get the link to work. I enabled on of our plans. Copied the link from the top of my browser. Pasted it in an email. Sent link to my coworker. He clicked on the link ..it said … you must be logged in to view this page.
What am I missing?
katiewillard said
@Lorraine Could you please send us the link at support@ministrycentered.com? We will look into it further. Thanks!!
Larry Vance said
I have most of my songs linked to Amazon.com
When I enable public viewing of a service, the song is displayed with an icon to purchase the song, however the image link is broken.
The address for all of the Amazon images is showing up as: http://localhost:3000/images/widgets/plan/amazon.png
Jeff Berg said
Hey Larry,
Thanks for posting about this, I have fixed this and I am deploying it right now.
Thanks!
Judson said
Well done team! Love every update you offer! And we are so happy to help “evangelize” your service to so many other churches!
Mike D said
Thanks for the continual updates!
Sure makes it nice to use
worship1 said
Thanks folk! Even better than I imagined!
Question: don’t we need to show credits when posting song titles to the public, per copy rights?
Jeff Berg said
@worship1 I believe you only have to reference the copyright owner when showing lyrics.
Bonnie Schilling said
Hi guys, I was in the middle of updating the church songs last night, adding pdf’s and mp3’s to each song down the songs list. You all started your update around 9:18 our time so I quit for the night. I signed on tonight and noticed some changes. Then I started to resume where I left off. Tonight I get an error message that says :
You have exceeded your file storage usage. To fix this you can either upgrade your account or remove some files from your account.
Is this true and just a coincidence that I just happened to be on the very last record that I could enter or is this a problem with the upgrade?
Let me know. Thanks!
ministrycentered said
@Bonnie I looked at your account and it seems to be just a coincidence. You can see you file storage usage here by logging in and going to http://www.planningcenteronline.com/attachments
Gary Krueger said
Just a little request about the Remember Me checkbox near the log in entries. It should be OFF by default. I keep having to uncheck it every time I log in. Thx
ministrycentered said
@Gary Thanks for the suggestion! We will consider this in future versions. The main issue would be most people would rather have it remember that for them. Also, we don’t remember your password just the e-mail address so that you don’t have to type it in the next time you come to the site.
David Price said
You guys rock! Planning center has changed the way I do ministry…I can’t wait to see what you guys are updating next. God Bless.
kendonshaw said
really like the public viewing feature! Great add.
I have a feature request: A file bin(s)
Example: Our Setup/teardown team has packets of info about the process and where things go. (mobile church) It would be great to have a file bin that people can access on the top level, not the plan level, and download common files for our ministry.
Thanks! I love PCO!
Kendon Shaw
katiewillard said
@Kendon Thanks for the suggestion! You could post these as attachments to the service in general, and that might work as a good alternative. But we’ll keep this in mind for the future.
Aaron Stewart said
@Kendon What’s cool about Katie’s suggestion about posting the files to the service, is that they will be available on your main plans page at the bottom of your list of plans in that service, but the same files will be available in every plan at the attachments box at the lower left of the plans.
By the way, to do this just click upload an attachment at the bottom of your service on the main plans page.
Eric Martin said
Will there be any updates to allow calendar events to be saved to Outlook 2003? I see that Outlook 2007 is supported, but I personally hate Office 2K7 and refuse to downgrade to it
katiewillard said
@Eric The reason we can’t link Outlook 2003 is because it doesn’t support iCal subscriptions, and so we can’t support it as it is now. But thank you for the suggestion, and for your feedback!
Mari Olsen said
Very cool. We’re new to POC, but exploring lots of the features. Still trying to find info on whether an OR filter is possible (email people that play a cello or a violin or a bass…). Can someone point me in the right direction?
Aside: My day job is in Microsoft Office: would love to hear more from Eric on problems with Office 2007 (molsen@microsoft.com).
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[...] First of a few releases! Recently viewed plans, public viewing, and category divisions. Hello everyone and Happy New Year! We at Ministry Centered Technologies hope you had a great holiday season. With the [...] [...]
Wayne Alexander said
Planning Center has made such a difference to our ministry!
Some of our worship bands are scheduled to play at our morning and evening service, but individual members of these bands would like to be able to select more clearly on their calendar whether they’re unavailable in the morning, for example, but available for the evening.
Katie Willard said
@Wayne We are looking to add this feature in the future, as far as being able to block out times and dates, instead of just dates. Thanks for your feedback and glad you are enjoying PCO!!
Heidi said
I wanted to change my picture on my profile since now I have to look at it everytime I log on. I have deleted the old picture but now when I try to add a new photo I keep getting an error message saying that it needs to be a jpg, etc and smaller than 2mb which it is in jpg. format and less then 2 mb. Are you having problems with this or am I doing something wrong?
Katie Willard said
@Heidi Could you please email us at support@ministrycentered.com? We can take care of it through email, because we are having some issues with this. Just send us the picture, and please let us know which browser you are using and which version too. Thanks!
Narcis Matasaru said
Great Job guys.. !! Good to see that we have good talent on “our” side of this world.
Thanks.
German said
Hello. Great job on the updates. I need some help, though. I accidentally deleted a plan for a service. How can I retrieve that?
Jordan Lloyd said
Great Job with this service… we depend on it for our day to day…
Any chance of incorporating a blog within planning center? We often find a need to relay announcements or an article (for example) to our team.
Great job!
Katie Willard said
@German There is not a way to bring back a deleted plan. So sorry about that!
Katie Willard said
@Jordan We are looking into possibly doing some kind of blog, but are just not sure on the best possible way to do this. We’ve had this request a lot, and it’s something we’re considering.
Thanks!!
clay searsy said
I love this new feature. I’ve wanted to post our Worship Set on our website from week to week as I have people constantly asking what “that” song was we sang. However, are there any plans to allow some customization of the public viewing?
ie… What I’d love to do is disable the item times, disable the description underneath our items, and allow the viewing of the arrangement names. Our people are going to be mainly interested in seeing the name of a song and who did it.
Thanks!
Katie Willard said
@Clay I’m sure there will be more updates to this in the future, but for now, we’ll take your suggestion and keep it in mind! Thanks for the post!!
Jim W. said
We have been “line numbering” our order of service for several months. It’s very nice to call out a “line number” to tech floor for changes, etc…. Could line numbers be added to your plan/order of service reports… I would love it!
This is such a great tool… keep up the great work!
JIM
Carol Maxwell said
This is my first time on here and I just cant figure out what to do. I want to see the songs for the upcoming service so i cant learn them for sign lauguage at Severn Run. I am having trouble. Help
Isaiah said
This is cool.
Isaiah said
I don’t know any of you.
Isaiah said
I go to Lighthouse Church
Katie Willard said
@Carol Could you please email us with your questions? Send them to support@ministrycentered.com and let us know specifically what you are having a tough time with- we’d love to help you out! Thanks!!
Millie said
great update, folks! Thanks.
David said
Thanks for the update. I have a question, though. Every time I copy a plan, the “times” reset to include all times I have listed. I then have to go “People” and unclick all the times they don’t need to be there!!
Help!!
Katie Willard said
@David If you copy the plan, it will copy the times from the last dated plan in that service. So that’s why it could be doing that. You could make a template, then just create a new plan using the template, and it will copy the times from the last plan. Hope that helps!
Thanks! Katie Willard
Darren said
Feature Request for Public Viewing: Can a RSS feed be generated for each ministry that has public viewing enabled? The feed could be as simple as the date/ service title then a link to the public view or as complete as the full run-down of the public view *including the AmazonMP3 links*.
Just a thought, I know your team is hard at work and the efforts are GREATLY appreciated!
Katie Willard said
@Darren We have plans for an RSS feed in the future.
Thanks for the feedback!