A few weeks ago we announced that group leaders are now able to log into the administrative side of Planning Center Groups in order to take advantage of the new Attendance Report. This was the first step in giving group leaders more powerful tools to help manage their groups.
Today we are excited to officially start transitioning leaders from managing their groups on Church Center to Planning Center.
Why are we making this change?
Planning Center and Church Center are not the same thing, but they are connected!
Planning Center is the administrative side of our seven applications. When you log in to create or edit an event, schedule a volunteer, create a new profile, or any other administrative task in one of our applications, you are logging into Planning Center.
Church Center is the public-facing side of our applications, where members of your church go to sign up for a group or event, or donate to your church. The only actions on Church Center are related to personal participation in the church, not administrative tasks. The exception to this rule was that group leaders managed their groups on Church Center.
By transitioning group leaders to Planning Center, we hope to eliminate some confusion about where group leaders are supposed to manage their groups, and open the doors for many more new and exciting features!
What you need to do!
The next time your group leaders log into Church Center we will let them know there is new place where they can manage their groups. If a group leader has already created a password, we will direct them to log into Planning Center. If a group leader does not have a password yet, we will send them through the steps they need to take to create a password and get logged in!
Once a group leader has logged into Planning Center, we will send them a welcome email with all the information they need to make this switch from Church Center as smooth as possible.
We understand this is going to be a transition, and we want you and your church to ease into this new workflow when you are ready. For the next month you and your group leaders can dismiss the notifications we put on Church Center and continue managing groups as you are currently. After this month, we will begin completely removing the ability to manage groups on Church Center, so the sooner you and your group leaders create a password and log into Planning Center the better.
We are excited about this new direction for Groups, there are many new features waiting for you right around the corner!
