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May 27, 2020

What’s Next: Phasing Into Gathering Again

When it comes to church, "How do I limit attendance?" isn't a question we often (or ever) ask. We are much more likely to find ourselves saying, "The more the merrier!" or "Can I find you a seat?" But as we phase into gathering again, limiting attendance for social distancing is necessary for many of us. While some of you are trying to determine when and whether to gather, others may be figuring out how to gather. Today, we're sharing some of our best practices for facilitating smaller gatherin

Allie Rice

Product Manager

4 min read

Apr 13, 2020

Create New Opportunities for Community

I haven’t seen my small group friends in over a month. I miss them. Thankfully, we have our weekly video calls to catch up, pray, and talk about the sermon. It isn't the same, but it's good to have something. You and your church might be in the same boat—missing your people, and trying to figure out how to stay in touch as best you can. Nothing can replace being face-to-face, but community is still possible, and we want to show you how to lean on Groups to help your church find it. First, we’

Jeff Berg

4 min read

Apr 06, 2020

Announcing Group Messaging: It’s in beta!

Group Messaging is in public beta, which means your small groups can make the Church Center app their official center for communication. No more cycling between Facebook Messenger, the dreaded group text, and infinite email strings! Read in browser We know many of you have temporarily suspended weekend services due to COVID-19, and some of you are also under state-mandated shelter-in-place orders, making even small gatherings impossible. We

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

3 min read

Feb 28, 2019

Share Links as Resources

Part of leading a class or a study is making sure the group members have access to all the information they need to engage with the group. This is where the Resources tab in Groups comes in handy! Using the Resources tab, you can easily share a pdf of your weekly study questions or the class syllabus with members. On the other hand, sharing a link to outside resources, like articles or videos, has been a trickier task. But not anymore! Now, when you add a new resource, you can choose between u

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

1 min read

Nov 19, 2018

Updates to Event Reminders

Updates to Event Reminders Sometimes the people in your group need a gentle reminder (or two or five) about events. After all, life is crazy, and everyone occasionally forgets to put an event on the calendar. The goal of reminder emails and RSVP requests is to give group leaders a way to encourage members to stay connected. In the last few weeks, we’ve released four updates to the reminder feature to help you improve and customize your communication with members. Automatic Email Remind

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

3 min read

Sep 14, 2018

Share Public Pages with QR Codes

Sharing a direct link is the easiest way to get people to fill out a form, sign up for a group, or give to a specific fund. Sending a link via text or email isn’t always practical, though—sometimes you have to share links on your paper bulletin or announcement slides. Then the challenge becomes getting people to actually type those URLs into their browsers on the spot. We realized link-sharing might not be the best way for some churches to share public pages, so we created an alternative:

Jeff Berg

2 min read

Jun 18, 2018

Improve Your Group Planning with RSVP Requests

We know hosting and leading a group takes a lot of time and energy, and it’s frustrating if after investing so much into preparation, people forget to show up! Using the new event reminder feature in Groups you can keep the event on people’s radars, but wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly how many people are planning to come? You can! When you are ready to send out the event reminder you can choose to include a request for members to RSVP in the email. The new RSVP column on the

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

2 min read

May 01, 2018

A New Way to Manage Groups

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

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

3 min read

Apr 20, 2018

Free Event and Group Photos with Unsplash

Finding any image for your event or group is hard, and finding a quality photo is even more difficult! It’s amazing how something so simple can often take up so much of our time. To help speed up this process, we have added a little something to Registrations and Groups. Introducing our integration with Unsplash! Unsplash is a website where photographers upload their high quality work for anyone to use, for free! Now, through our integration with Registrations and Groups, you can get photo

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

2 min read

Apr 04, 2018

Groups Attendance Report

Hey there! My name is Jess; I have worked here at Planning Center for the last three years, and recently transitioned into the position of Product Manager for Groups! Our goal is for every Planning Center application to have the devoted time and attention of its own product manager. Giving now has the full attention of Jeremy, who managed both Giving and Groups, and Groups has mine. Today I am excited to announce a brand new feature, one we know you have been wanting for a while: Attendanc

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

4 min read

Nov 01, 2017

Filter in Groups for People Lists

Today we've added bunch of powerful new Groups filters to Planning Center People lists. Create new lists based on group membership, attendance, join dates, and application dates. The resulting list of people can be attached to Workflows, Actions, and Automations. A new class of Groups functionality has just opened up. Create Your Groups Lists Let's touch briefly on each filter: * Member - This filter existed before, but you'll notice it has a bunch of new options for limiting o

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

4 min read

Oct 06, 2017

Open Signups for Groups

When it comes to small groups, joining a group usually means gaining access to some potentially sensitive information, like meeting locations and fellow member contact data. That's why, as a default, Groups requires an administrator or a leader to review a membership request and decide whether to add someone to the group. However, there are other groups in your church that are open to anyone who wants to join, like classes, where the membership process is less like an application and more lik

Jeff Berg

2 min read

Jun 05, 2017

Archiving Groups

Today, we're excited about the release of an important new feature in Planning Center Groups: the ability to archive groups when they're disbanded or no longer in session. We've noticed Groups is often being used for classes and seasonal groups which rotate membership on a regular basis. When the class or the quarter has ended, this new feature will let you close down the group while leaving membership records, event history, and attendance data intact. How Archiving Works On the grou

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

Feb 28, 2017

Email Formatting in Groups

Today we released a rich-text editor in Planning Center Groups! It's available to administrators (on the admin side of Groups) and for group leaders (when they log in to their Group's page). Here's what it looks like: Recipients will get a nicely formatted email that looks like this: Enjoy! ~ Team Groups

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

1 min read

Jan 12, 2017

One-click Calendar Subscriptions

Today we have a small update to the calendar subscription options for Planning Center Groups. When clicking "Subscribe to calendar" button on group pages, you'll see new options for Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, and Outlook.com. If you're on a Windows computer, the first option will be Microsoft Outlook (the desktop application). On an Mac, that option will change to to Apple Calendar. In the example below, I'll show how to subscribe to my group's calendar in Google Calendar and the

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

1 min read

Dec 09, 2016

Planning Center Groups, Reporting for Duty!

When you log in to the administrative side of Planning Center Groups today, you'll find a new tab: Reports! High level reports are available on both the group type view and on the individual group view. Let's dive in! As an example, I'll take a look at the Small Groups group type and then a single small group. Reports for group types. At the top, we have some basic statistics about the current state of small groups at my church. 1. Health Stats - In addition to the number of gr

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

4 min read

Aug 21, 2016

Introducing Eventful Groups

Today, we have some tasty new updates to Planning Center Groups. This week it's all about events! Repeating events Repeating events are here! Now you can schedule events to repeat every week, every-other-week*, every month, or every year. When editing a repeating event, you can delete or make changes to a single occurrence without affecting the rest in the series. Repeating events are available to anyone editing events: that means administrators on the admin side of Groups or group le

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

Jun 29, 2016

Launching Planning Center Groups

Today we're launching Planning Center Groups - the newest member of the Planning Center family. Groups is an application for streamlining the way you organize, manage, and support all the groups within your church. Last month we showed a sneak peek but today the wrapping comes off. Built for small groups. And big groups. Or any group. When we first started dreaming of this application, we had small groups in mind. Most churches, large or small, have some sort of small group ministr

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

Jun 01, 2016

Get a Groups Sneak Peek

Talk to customers. Sketch. Design. Code. Test. Repeat. This has been our life the past 6 months as we've been building Planning Center Groups. We wanted to pause for a quick sneak peek as we're about a month away from launching Groups. If you know anything about Planning Center Online, you know that the first version of an application is hardly the last. Actually, we don't even really have versions for most of our software. It's just constant, relentless improvement and a continuous dialog wi

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

4 min read