Ministry Centered Technologies

We have restored the database to our new server. We are now working on getting the app fully functional. Anyone know how to get rmagick running on Red Hat Enterprise Edition?

Jeff

Hello,

We are back at our office and we are hooking up the database server and uploading the database right now.

Jeff

Hello Everyone,

In case you don’t know what’s going on, let me tell you.

Yesterday (Jan 2), we had an overwhelming amount of traffic since almost all of you resumed work after the holidays at the same time. This caused major strain on the servers which caused them to be either very slow or non-responsive. We had anticipated this and had already ordered new upgraded servers at another server facility, but we were dependent on that facility to give us the proper information to start using their servers. Unfortunately, we did not get the information in time and subsequently weren’t able to make the transition before you all came back for the new year. This caused the problems yesterday, but by the end of the day, everything seemed to be working smoothly again.

Then at 7:00am Pacific Time this morning, the ISP (internet service provider) that our current server facility uses went down. Their ISP is AT&T and as a result, every other server in our area (almost all of them in Palm Springs) is also down. Our server facility (DISC) is working frantically with AT&T to get this fixed and this morning told us it would be resolved in an hour. This has obviously not been the case as it is still not fixed, and they are unable to give us an estimate.

So unfortunately for us, these 2 unrelated incidents happened 2 days in a row when almost all of you are dependent on our site. I can’t tell you how sorry we are about this. I personally use the site at my church as well, and I know how dependent we are on Planning Center, so I know what many of you are going through. Please know we are doing EVERYTHING in our power to resolve this as quickly as possible.

So here is the current status. We finally received the information to switch over to the new servers this morning. Jeff has been frantically working all day getting the application installed and setup. Our problem is that the database is stored on the servers at our old server facility which is the one that is down. So instead of waiting an undefined amount of time, Jeff is driving to the facility at this very moment to physically retrieve the servers so that he can bring them back and immediately transfer the database to our new servers. The facility is an hour away, which unfortunately means that you won’t be able to get to your information for at LEAST another 2 hours, but in all likelihood, it will take quite a bit longer to transfer all the information over.

We are committed to finishing this as soon as possible, but can not give an accurate estimate on when you will regain access to the site other than tomorrow morning. In addition, since we are being forced to rush the server transfer process, there will probably be slight issues during the day tomorrow as well until we are able to fully test it.

We want to thank you for your continued patience and for helping make Planning Center what it is today. We appreciate you and are so blessed to be able to help you organize and facilitate your ministry.

Aaron Stewart
Product Manager
Planning Center Online

UPDATE (1:45pm PST): We have gotten our new servers pretty much up and running and we are going to our current datacenter to remove our servers and bring them back to the office so that we can upload the database to our new server farm.

Hello Everyone,

I am sorry to report that Planning Center Online is down right now. At around 7:00am (PST) this morning I received a text message letting me know our site was down. I immediately checked and saw that the issue was with our internet host DISC (who provides internet to practically every business where we live), who I called. When I called them they let me know that this was affecting all of their customers and they were working on it. Around 10:00 I called again and they let me know that the issue is with AT&T and that they are working together to solve this issue. I will update this blog as I get more information.

The funny thing about this is that we just got access to our new servers at RackSpace. RackSpace guarantees 100% up time and we are excited to see the performance increase that we will get from their superior network. I am working on installing PCO on those servers and I hope to transfer over ASAP.

Again we are sorry about this and if you have any questions or comments please call us at (88 777-2821 or e-mail us at support@ministrycentered.com.

Thanks!
 
Jeff Berg
Owner/Developer
Ministry Centered Technologies

Planning Center Online is proud to be a sponsor of the 2008 National Worship Leader Conference and we hope to see you there!

Hey Everyone,

We have been feeling like the PCO site has been a little sluggish the last week so we have just added another server and things seem to be screeming again. Have Fun Planning!

Jeff

What a year it has been, especially the last couple of months. I would like to bring you up to date and let you know what has been happening around here.

Worship Leader Praise Award Nomination

First, I am very excited to tell you that Planning Center Online has been nominated for a Praise Award as one of the top five Worship Technological Innovations of 2007 by Worship Leader Magazine! This is the 7th year for the Praise Awards and the top vote getter in each category will be announced in the March/April issue of Worship Leader Magazine. I would like to encourage all of you to go vote at www.worshipleader.com.

Welcome our new team member

Second, I am happy to announce that Ministry Centered Technologies has a new member of its team! His name is Jeff Spillman (yes, we now have two Jeffs) and his role will be aiding in future business development as well as the day to day operations of the company. He can be reached at spillman@ministrycentered.com. Please drop him an e-mail when you have any questions, suggestions or just want to say hi.

New Billing Options

Finally, many of you have been requesting to pay by check. I am glad to let you know that we are able to accept checks now and you can prepay your account for six months or the entire year using the payment method of your choice.

Once again I want to thank you for your past suggestions. Because of your inquiries and input, we have added many new features to Planning Center this year, which has enabled us to offer you a better program. As always, we want to encourage you to let us know what you would like to see in the future.

Thanks again for choosing to use Planning Center as your worship planning software. I am excitedly looking forward to partnering in your service planning in the New Year!

Merry Christmas,

Jeff Berg
Owner/Developer
Ministry Centered Technologies

Hello Everyone,

Well, it’s been a busy couple of months! We had a great time at the Saddleback Worship Conference in California and the National Worship Leader Conference in Austin, TX, and it was awesome to get to meet so many of you face to face. We are always blessed to hear how Planning Center is helping to better organize your ministries, and continue to be motivated to improve the service.

One of our biggest updates ever is here and we wanted to give you all the details so you can know what has changed. Unlike previous updates, we’re sending this email not just to administrators, but to editors as well, so that everyone can quickly benefit from the new features.

As you know, we strive to make Planning Center simple, powerful, attractive, and customizable, and getting the balance of these things right can oftentimes be a challenge. For example, our new custom reports allow unlimited control of your plan printouts, but in order to provide full customization, we have to sacrifice the simplicity. We think that those of you needing this advanced functionality will find it extremely useful, and those who don’t will barely even notice that it’s there.

Make sure to check out our new tutorials showing some of these features in detail on our tutorials page. Without further ado, here are the highlights of our new features.

Community Support

• Planning Center Online WIKI - Over the past year of developing Planning Center Online we have struggled to build a comprehensive help system, so we have decided to create a community where we can work together to provide the best documentation for Planning Center.
• Planning Center Online FORUM - A very simple forum that gives you the opportunity to ask questions and collaborate with other PCO users. Our support team will also be monitoring this forum.

E-mail & Scheduling

• Send one scheduling request email for multiple positions in a plan or for multiple weeks from the Matrix. The email will contain one “Respond to Requests” link to a new page where you can accept or decline multiple weeks and positions at one time.
• Email these people in plan view gives you a list of exactly whom you are emailing and even allows you to remove individual people.
• Email these people on the main people page lets you add individual people to your list.
• Ability to import a csv file of people from the people page.
• Link to the new login page in all non-scheduling emails.
  (http://www.planningcenteronline.com/login)
• New yellow alert area on the top of the main plans page with a link to respond to any unconfirmed scheduling requests.
• Updated How to e-mail your people & How to schedule your people tutorials

Attachments

• Attachment enhancements. Attachments (your uploaded files) can be assigned attachment types which can then be assigned to certain positions. Scheduled viewers will not see files assigned to other positions, but viewers, editors and administrators will see all file attachments, with attachments for their position in bold. For example, you can assign your capoed chord chart just to your acoustic guitar position and they will be the only person who sees it. Check out our 3 new Attachments tutorials.
• Download all PDFs can choose specific attachment types. Once you’ve set your attachment types, when your scheduled viewers click download all pdfs at the top of their plan, they will only get the pdfs for their position. When viewers, editors or administrators click download all pdfs, they will be presented with options for which attachment types to include.
• Uploading enhancements. Attractive new design that shows live progress on individual files.
• Delete your file attachments or edit them with the new edit and delete buttons.

Printing & Custom Reports

• Print arrangement names checkbox in standard print options
• Standard print header changed to look better and take up less space
• Check or uncheck all in standard print options
• Custom Reports. In addition to enhanced standard printing, you can now create custom plan reports to fully control every aspect of your printout. Once you have created a custom report, choose it in the print options dialog instead of the standard report. These custom reports are created using HTML, CSS, and the Liquid programming language for which we provide documentation. You might need a web developer to help create your report, or you can try your hand in editing one of our sample reports. Check out our new Custom Report tutorial.

Songs & People

• Song title & Arrangement name search boxes on the songs page.
• Last login now displayed on person’s profile
• Name search & ministry filter on the main people page.

Plans

• Quicklinks now collapses and expands when you hover over it
• Alternate title to song elements. Change the title of songs within a plan without affecting the song title in the database.
• Enhanced add song options. You can now sort by song title, or date last used by clicking the column heading. You can also search for any word in the title, not just the first word.
• Previous and next links when editing plan elements
• Post-Service elements. Designate a plan element as post-service to add elements to the end of your service flow without factoring their length into the total plan time.

Site Settings

• New site settings link at the top for the site owner only which includes the link to change your subscription plan
• Add your custom logo to your Planning Center account to personalize the look
• Ability to choose whether new users default to being scheduled viewers (like they are now), or regular viewers
• Set whether or not your regular viewers can view the people page

My Calendar

• Plan times and descriptions are now on one line when you hover over dates.
• People not Available are no longer displayed in My Calendar. You can still click on a month name to get a large calendar view, which does include people not available
• Simplified blocked out date editing. Hover over a date you have blocked out, and click edit next to “You have blocked out this date”
• Updated My Calendar Tutorial

Categories

• You can now set a default “Respond to” person for each category in your ministry from the ministry properties page. When you schedule a person in that category to a plan, it will respond to that person by default, though you are still free to change it.
• You can also now set a default status (unconfirmed, confirmed, or declined) for a category from the ministry properties page and whether or not to prepare email notifications by default.

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We already have an extensive list of ideas we’re working on for the next update, many provided by your feedback. We’ll also be attending the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta in the beginning of October, so make sure you stop by our booth to say hi or to ask any questions if you’re going to be there.

Happy Planning,

Jeff Berg
Owner/Developer
Ministry Centered Technologies

Well after wrestling with Flash all day I have managed to post our new Tutorials section! You will see that we have updated the look and feel and almost every tutorial. We have also added a couple of new ones at the same time. A special thanks to Aaron Stewart from Central Christian Church for recording these videos for everyone to use. You can go watch them at http://www.planningcenteronline.com/home/tutorials.

In Him,

Jeff Berg
Owner/Developer
Ministry Centered Technologies

Wow! What an exciting week! It was awesome to meet so many of our customers. Rick Muchow (right) from Saddleback (if you didn’t know) was able to come by our booth and wish us happy birthday after he had a quick training session with Aaron (middle) where he planned out five of his upcoming worship services in minutes. Ok…back to work on the next version of Planning Center, we have some pretty cool things planned!

Thanks!

Jeff Berg (left)
Owner/Developer
Ministry Centered Technologies