Planning Center Update: It’s About “Time”!

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:

new_block_out_datesUntil 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).

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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

Edit-CategoryYou 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!


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Text Messaging Changes

Hey PCO users! We have some very important information for you about text messaging through PCO. Up until today, we have been using TextMarks.com for sending out the automatic text messages. However, after over 12 hours of downtime today from TextMarks, we’ve decided to take the text messaging feature into our own hands. Here’s how it will affect you:

All current text message users: You must log in to your PCO account, go to ‘My Account’ in the top right corner of the screen, and then enable text messaging again. As of now, everyone’s has been cleared because of this switch. We do apologize for this inconvenience but we are trying to better your experience.  Now when you indicate that you want to enable text messaging, it will ask you for your carrier. You must indicate this in order to receive text messages. Once you’ve re-enabled and clicked ‘Save Person’ at the bottom, you’re all set to receive PCO text messages from here on out!

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All International PCO users: You can now have access to the text messaging option! Just log in, go to ‘My Account’ in the top right corner, and then enter in a mobile number (make sure to indicate that it’s mobile or it won’t work). After you’ve entered your number, click ‘Enable Text Messaging’ and indicate the carrier you have. You’ll be all set!

Thanks to all PCO users for your understanding with any inconveniences this may have caused. We wanted a more reliable texting process, so that is why we are going through this transition stage with this feature.

If you do not see your carrier or need help with our new text messaging support please e-mail support@ministrycentered.com.

Thank you and have a wonderful rest of your week!

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Our texting provider Textmarks is down

As of around 9:00pm on July 27, 2009 TextMarks.com, our texting provider, went down and they are still down as of the writing of this. We have not had any communication from them so we have decided to find a new provider. We are sorry for any inconvenience and will keep you updated as we find out more information.

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Mini-Update: New Mobile Site, New Filtering & More Storage Options

pco_blackberryHey everyone! Here we are again with another released update for you. This one is exciting as well!  Mostly because of the new mobile interface for more phones than just the iPhone!!!

New Mobile Site

Here at Ministry Centered Technologies we love our iPhones!!! We also realize that many of you guys love your Blackberrys, Palm Pres, Windows Mobile, Android and other phones. So we have finally updated our mobile site for people who use phones other than the iPhone!!! Planning Center Online will now offer support for you to go to the website on most mobile phones. This has been requested by many people and it’s finally here! Enjoy!

Also, we have added attachments to the mobile view of all Plans, Plan Items, Songs, Arrangements, Media & People. So if your phone supports download & viewing attachments you can do this via the mobile interface. MP3s must have the Allow Download option enabled for them to show up in the mobile interface.

We have many other ideas for the mobile interface that we want to implement but we want to release this first to make sure everything is working for everyone.

Extra File Storage

Now you can enable “Extra File Storage” which will allow you to upload over your current plans File Storage limit. You will be charged $5 per month per GB over your current plans file storage limit. For instance if you upload 500MB over your current plans storage limit then you will be charged $2.50 per month.

New FilteringPicture 1

When filtering through Custom Properties on the Songs, Media or People pages, we were running into a few things that we wanted to change so it would be even more user-friendly.

When you select multiple custom fields (for example, in my picture, Audio/Visual and Band are custom fields), before it would select people who had both an Audio/Visual AND a band property. Now, you can click on both of them if you want to and you can basically see everyone who is a part of either Audio/Visual OR Band.

Also, if you want to filter through custom options (for example, in the picture, Camera 1, Camera 2, Drums, etc are custom options) then you can click multiple custom options within the same custom field, and that will choose EITHER/OR as well. So, in this example you can now select all of your Camera 1 & Camera 2 people in one selection. We believe this will greatly improve filtering abilities!

More To Come!!!

We have several other small enhancements that we plan on releasing over the next couple of weeks so look for another update or two soon.

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Exciting Media Release

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. Picture 1

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 caPicture 5n 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 CommunityPicture 4 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 dPicture 6ifferent 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.

Video TutorialTutorial 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!

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New Look Becomes Permanent, New Email Look, Edit Scheduled Person Dialog, and Quick Links Change.

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!Picture 2

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.

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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.

Picture 5Quick 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.

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Mini Update Release: Adding Items, Subscribing to Comments, and Positions Drop-Down Box.

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:

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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 topicture-4 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:

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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!

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Community Page, New Look, Comments, and Songs Page Additions!

Hello PCO users! Here we are once again with another update to enhance your use of Planning Center. As you may have noticed, we are updating whenever we have new features ready, instead of on a quarterly basis- so that is why you may notice that the updates seem to be more frequent lately. Here are the four newest things that you need to know about:

1. Community Page

Editors and administrators will now see a Community (songs) tab. The community page itself has several features: Hot Songs for the month, links to buy versions of a song onpicture-2 AmazonMp3 and iTunes, a place for you to link to charts, a discussion area, and recommended songs which will show you what other people have used with this song! We really believe that this is going to broaden the horizons for PCO users and create more of a community between you and other churches. We also realize that this page is not fully complete, but we think it is a great start!

2. New Look for PCO (BETA)

We are now allowing you to preview the new look for PCO. To do this, simply click on the bar on your page that allows you to see the npicture-3ew design. For now, you can go back to the older design. This comes with no structural changes, but just a new interface. Please let us know what you think! We are really excited to get this finished and pushed out as the new theme for PCO!

3. Comments on Plan Items

You are now able to comment on plan items in your account. To do this, simply click on the little bubble next to an item, and leave yopicture-4ur comment. This is designed for you and your worship team or worship leaders to be able to communicate about different things that are happening within your plan.

4. Songs Page Additions

A few things are new about the songs page. The first is that when you click on ‘add a song’, you will see a place for either the CCLI number picture-6or the title of the song. As you type, Planning Center searches the community for that title or CCLI number and imports the rest of the data for you. The next new feature is on the individual song pages. Here you will see related songs, community song information (with links!), and a section for notes.

We do hope you enjoy these new releases! Let us know what you think- we always enjoy hearing feedback from you!

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Do you have coding skills? Come work for us!!!

We are looking for a person with great programming skills & decent design skills.  This person would be a lead programmer for one of the many projects we have going on here at Ministry Centered Technologies.  We want someone who would be able to help take our applications to the next level in functionality and usability. Our websites use a combination of many technologies and we are looking for someone who is able to adapt easily to new technologies but who is currently an expert with Ruby On Rails, CSS, Javascript (Prototype & JQuery) and Photoshop.

The position will be fully equipped to do the job at hand with an iPhone, MacBook Pro & and all software needed. We offer a competitive salary with full benefits package including medical & dental.We would prefer for this position to work out of our fun corporate offices in beautiful La Quinta, CA but we will also accept resumes from applicants who wish to telecomute. Relocation assistance will be provided.

If you are interested & passionate about making churches more efficient through software you can send your resumé to jobs@ministrycentered.com. Please make sure your resumé is in to us by March 31st and all resumés will be kept confidential.

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New Custom People Reports

For the last week or two, we’ve been working away at our next Planning Center feature release that we are incredibly excited about. Without giving away too much, we’re adding some new innovative tools to help you better organize your content and simplify discovering new content. But I’m not going to get into that right now, I just wanted to whet your appetite a little. :)

Somehow in the middle of working on that, Jeff got inspired to release Custom People Reports today. If you are used to working with Custom Plan & Matrix Reports, you can now use the same tools to create reports using any people you’ve added. We’ve created 3 reports to start you off.

Directory gives you a printable list of of your people with their picture, email & phone numbers. You can easily show their addresses, birthday, anniversary or notes by creating your own report based on Directory, and setting those print options to ‘true’ at the top of the report.

Block-Out-Dates gives you a list of people who have entered block-out-dates, and shows you the information related to those dates.

And finally, People Grouped By Property shows you all the people assigned to the custom properties you are currently filtering to. You can easily change this to show all your people and ignore your current filter settings.

You’ll find these new reports at the top of the main people page when you click the new “print” button. We hope you find this new capability useful and come up with some great reports of your own!

Stay tuned for some really exciting things to come!

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