Evan Lemmons

As more people in your church find their way into Resources and start creating new events, many may not realize the immense organizational capabilities of tags. Or even worse, they forget to add tags altogether, which prevents their event from showing up when using filters on the Calendar.

Not using tags creates a problem for your facilities director or event administrator who then have to dig through untagged events to plan their work. Staying organized is a team effort and Resources is here to help you define for your church what information is pertinent to planning events.

Starting today, you will have more control over 

 your Resources account is organized by Tags. On the Tags page, you can now mark specific 

 as being required whenever someone creates an event. This will prevent anyone from adding a new event to the calendar until they’ve selected a tag from the required group.

For example, if your church has multiple campuses, you should create a 

 tag group for each location. By making the 

 group required, you can ensure that all new events will have to select a 

 tag before moving forward, which means your campus-specific teams can 

The more tag groups you require for events, the more clarity you can provide to people looking at the calendar at a glance. For example, you could ask event planners to clarify who is involved with an event by requiring 

 tag groups as well. Now you could see at a glance that this “Community Outreach” event is being hosted by the Youth Ministry and will need help from the Audio team to pull it off.

Once you have tags dialed into your organization's structure the filter becomes an incredibly powerful tool which allows you to see events from a high-level, or to zoom in for specifics. Now anyone checking out the calendar can easily find what is important to them.

Tags and filters together are the cornerstone of the event management side of Resources. This new feature is dedicated to helping your church reinforce that and stay better organized in the process. Not to mention, it sets you up for all of the great tag-related features we have planned!

Keep your Resources account more organized by marking specific tag groups as being required whenever someone creates a new event. 

Required Tag Groups

Hey there! My name is Evan Lemmons, the new Product Manager of Resources! I joined the Planning Center team earlier this year and I’m here to break our team’s silence with some exciting news!

The first step to successful event planning is to establish 

 the event is happening. Before you can figure out who is doing what, in which room, and with what resources, 

Since Resources first launched in 2013, the most requested feature from our churches is a calendar-centric system for organizing event logistics. 

Today, we are announcing the release of two features—Tags and a new Calendar—designed to make it easier for your staff to find event details.

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 out of the sidebar and put it front-and-center so you can immediately see everything going on at your church. 

 are the colorful collection of words on the left and the official way to categorize your events in Resources (replacing Folders).

It will take some time to adjust to the new structure, which is why we are going to give you a few weeks to learn from 

, ask our support team questions, and transition when you feel confident. We will permanently move every account over to Tags and the Calendar in January 2019.

In the meantime, here are some of the benefits of transitioning!

Some people need the big picture of all event activity at the church, but most just want to quickly find information about the events 

are designed to allow everyone on your team to see as much or as little as they want about what is happening at the church.

You can also layer these filters on top of each other for an even more detailed view of the calendar. For example, you can look at all of your events for which you are the 

We haven’t made any major changes (yet) to 

, but both benefit from the filtering updates to the Calendar! Events that match the filters you select on the Calendar will also be included in your reports and shared calendars.

You can find out most of the details you need directly from the Calendar without having to go to the individual event page. Click on any Calendar event to see the time, how often the event occurs, and a list of all the tags attached to it.

That’s all for now, but I can promise you, this is just the beginning—we are already building new features to continue helping you streamline your event planning with clear communication.

We released two new features designed to make it easy for your staff to organize and find event details in Resources—Tags and a new Calendar. 

Remodeling Resources&#58; Tags and Calendar

Remodeling Resources: Tags and Calendar

Jeff Berg

If you work in student ministry you probably have a diverse job description—from sermon writing and student counseling to camp planning and van cleaning. You juggle all these responsibilities because you want your students to feel welcomed and wanted by both you and God.

But sometimes all that craziness means missed opportunities.

Planning Center has a number of tools designed to help you capture every opportunity to connect with students. Here are 

 ways you can start creating a system to make sure you don't lose anyone in the crowd:

 It is time to start having students check in!

Most of the students in your group probably have smart phones, so create a 

 where students can check in by scanning 

If they don’t have smartphones for a mobile pass, no problem, they can just type their numbers in to the system. When students check in each week you’ll see who is consistently showing up and who is falling away and needs to be contacted.

In a room packed with students who need your time, it’s easy to overlook a few. To make sure no one falls through the cracks and 

 student is reached, you can create a system using our 

 to notify you when someone new checks in and be reminded to contact them later.

 feature you can pull a report of every student who checks in to your event for the first time, and automatically add them to a 

, which you and your team can use to go through your follow-up steps.

Students aren’t always comfortable sharing prayer requests in a group setting, so create a safe place for them to share privately using another feature in People: 

. The form can automatically email requests to you and your team and add them to a workflow so you can follow up with each student individually.

Encourage students to strengthen their relationships with one another and stay connected throughout the week! Use 

 to give your groups a central place to find information! Once you set up a group, leaders can take attendance and share study materials directly with the group.

 One of the ways you can get kids connected and committed is giving them the opportunity to serve! Use 

 to give students a place to express interest in volunteering and funnel them into your training 

. Once you have your volunteers, you can start using 

 as your home base for scheduling, service planning, and rehearsing tools for your band.

You can communicate with students using the 

 to send push notifications about scheduling, share chord charts, videos, and more!

Don’t make parents work too hard to get their kids involved in church. 

 is a way for you to give parents easy online sign up for events, like winter camp, and still manage all of the complex event-planning details. You can inform parents via email, accept online and in-person payments, offer scholarships, and let them purchase extra activities or merchandise all in the same application!

If you want to explore these tools for yourself, you can can try all of our applications free for 30 days!

If you have any questions, click the “?” in the top right hand corner of the application to access all of our 

Here are six ways you can use Planning Center to help you capture every opportunity to connect with students and make sure no one gets lost in the crowd. 

Event Planning

Required Tag Groups

Remodeling Resources: Tags and Calendar

How to use Planning Center for Youth Ministry