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Oct 28, 2020

The New Plan Page

If you’ve been using Services since the beginning, learning one thing at a time and becoming an expert has been a snap. If you’ve just started using it 14 years in, then um...maybe not so much — there’s a lot there! But how do you redesign a page that started your company and that millions are not only familiar with but have come to rely on heavily? Well, you do it slowly and carefully, with just a li—ttle bit of fear. 😬 We started with the following goals to make the page: * Familiar, insp

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

6 min read

Mar 05, 2020

Pro Tips for Easter Prep

Easter is just around the corner, but it’s never too late to plan—even one step towards getting organized can make a huge difference! This post is a collection of some of our best-practices and pro tips as you prepare for what might be one of your busiest and most important Sundays of the year. No matter what area of ministry or what stage of planning you’re in, there is something here to help make your Easter Sunday a success. Create a unique Easter service plan In some ways, planning for

Jeff Berg

6 min read

Nov 19, 2019

Templates, Times, and Other Transformed Tools

We've improved all the popups for keeping track of service and rehearsal times, importing templates, using auto-schedule, and sending out plan emails to make these planning tasks go faster!

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

4 min read

Sep 20, 2019

Dark Mode For Services Mobile Apps

Services version 4 for iOS and Android was just released, bringing with it an option to switch to a completely different look...dark mode!

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

Jun 11, 2019

The New Songs Page

Having an organized song library that can be searched by almost any criteria can help you plan worship sets more effectively, and the main Songs page has been completely redone to take that to a new level. It is now easier to add new songs through the popular recordings search, find existing songs with new filtering features, and keep them organized with bulk editing. Add New Songs When it's time to add a new song, you can now search by Popular Recordings (powered by RehearsalMix), All Songs

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

3 min read

Apr 30, 2019

The New Plans Tab

Last October we announced that the Plans tab would be splitting into two pages. My Schedule was released a couple months ago as a page where all users manage their personal schedule. Today the Plans page itself was updated and improves the experience of finding any plan. This page isn't as different as many of our other new pages have been, but there's a lot of polish and few new things. Here's what's new! Plans Calendar The calendar on the left of the page is a completely different calendar

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

4 min read

Apr 10, 2019

Volunteer Care and Coordination for Children’s Ministry

Volunteers are often the front line of children’s ministry—the people on the ground welcoming families at check-in stations, leading craft time, answering tough questions, and cleaning caked Goldfish crackers out of the carpet after snack time. Finding people willing to do this work, scheduling and communicating with teams, and equipping them to serve well is hard. This post outlines some best practices for how you can use Planning Center People and Services to care for and coordinate your volu

Jeff Berg

6 min read

Jan 21, 2019

The New My Schedule Tab & Household Scheduling

We are excited to announce a new My Schedule page: the home of your pending plans, confirmed plans, signup sheets, and more. Until now the Plans page on the web included a My Schedule section for everyone, and an All Plans section for people with higher permissions. Now those sections are split into two separate pages. By moving My Schedule to its own page, there's room for some great new tools, including the ability to manage the schedules of your entire household, see a list of all your upcom

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

4 min read

Sep 06, 2018

How to Create a Volunteer Pipeline

Once your volunteers are in Services and you have them organized into teams, communicating and coordinating with them is easy… but how do you find volunteers? How do you move people through the application and training process before assigning them to a team? In this video, Matthew shares how you can use our free application, People, to create a volunteer pipeline. If you want to get started, go into Services and click the logo in the top left hand corner and find Peop

Jeff Berg

3 min read

Jul 10, 2018

Service Type Wizard

The first thing to do when you set up a new Services account is to create a Service Type. Once you understand what a Service Type is, it makes perfect sense, but at the start the term can be confusing. The new Add Service Type Wizard gives first-time users the context they need to get started and power-users the tools to create Service Types faster than ever. If you are an Administrator for a Folder you can find the Wizard by clicking the + Service Type button. The Wizard will walk you thr

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

Jun 27, 2018

Bundled Scheduling & Notification Emails

The more emails a person receives, the more likely they are to ignore them. Today's update reduces the number of emails we send by bundling similar messages together! The three types of emails that are now consistently bundled are Scheduling Requests, Blockout Notifications, and Accepted Request Notifications. Scheduling Requests When a scheduler adds team members to a plan, the final step is usually sending out Scheduling Request emails. We recommend assembling your schedule for a couple

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

4 min read

Jun 27, 2018

Navigate Faster with Improved Universal Search

Learning to use the / key for Universal Search, will help you become even more productive than you already are, but moving fast isn’t the only reason to use it. Universal Search is the best way to navigate to almost any page in Services: use it to find Songs, Media, Teams, and Positions, in addition to People! Instead of clicking through the many pages in Services, you can click the search icon, or just tap the / key and find exactly what or who you are looking for withi

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

May 14, 2018

Add Files from Services Mobile 3.5

Last week we released Services 3.5 for iOS and Android, which now includes the ability to attach files to Songs and Media from your mobile device! You can upload your own files or link to files on the internet. We've also added the ability to edit or delete existing files. Add Files You can now attach files to Songs or Media from within the app, or when viewing supported files in other apps, using the Share button. From the Services App From within the Services app, navigate to a s

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

3 min read

Mar 14, 2018

Service Types and Reports

Service Types are one of the key organizational units in Planning Center Services: the container for your plans (usually weekly), teams, and templates. We’ve consolidated multiple popups into a new Service Type page, making each feature easier to find and use. Plus, we’re throwing in some new and updated reports we think you will love. Settings The settings tab contains most of the options in the previous Edit Service Type popup, with the addition of Files and Notes, which were in oth

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

6 min read

Mar 09, 2018

Planning Center API v1 Deprecation

Planning Center Services internal apps and some of the web-app's new pages have moved to version 2 of our API, so we are starting the process of deprecating the original API v1. Summary This message is important for those who have received and used a Planning Center v1 API key: if you have an application in production using the original PCO API, please transition to the new version by Feb 11, 2019. If you have an installable app you cannot update for your users for free, please email us w

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

Jan 25, 2018

The New Team Pages

Managing and Communicating with Teams is one of the primary uses of Planning Center Services. Today we’re excited to unveil a completely new and streamlined way to manage your Teams and their members. The Team Pages The most visible change is that instead of three separate popup modals, Teams are now managed from one single page. The tabs at the top allow you to switch from the Settings tab, where you change Team settings, to the Members tab, where you manage the people on yo

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

7 min read

Nov 27, 2017

Adding Plans Supersized

Adding new plans is one of the most important parts of Planning Center Services, but it hasn't always been clear what dates and times would automatically be added to those plans. With the new Add Plans popup, not only is there more clarity, there are additional options for which times and templates will be added, making it easier than ever to add your normal plans or special event plans like Christmas and Easter. Date Preview The first thing you might notice is that you can actually get a

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

3 min read

Apr 27, 2017

New Household Scheduling Preferences

Until now, you could go to your profile and indicate you want to be scheduled with a family member, or that you prefer to not be scheduled with them. However, this was only ever considered from within the exact same service. If you were both being scheduled within the Traditional Service, you were good to go. But if you were scheduled to Traditional Service, and your spouse served in the Nursery, it wouldn't actually show any conflicts. Now it can! The old options that included simply "wh

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

Dec 23, 2016

Very Merry Media Updates

You asked for a winter coat for Christmas, but you didn't want to miss out on prime coat-wearing season, so you opened it a month ago. That's kind of what happened with our new Media pages and player. Now that Christmas is basically here, it's time to officially introduce them, even though you've probably already seen them. But don't worry, we've put an extra special gift in your stocking that we've saved as a surprise until now! I guess you will just have to keep reading to find out what it is

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

6 min read

Nov 15, 2016

Scheduling Options United at Last

There have always been many ways to schedule people to your plans. Today we've made some changes that bring most of these options into one place, making it much easier to access and understand your scheduling options. We're also putting a bigger emphasis on importing templates, both in the plan, and now in the Matrix, since that's usually the best way to start scheduling. Teams First, we've renamed the entire people section from "Scheduled People" to "Teams." We did keep (Scheduled People

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

4 min read