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Blog

Aug 15, 2016

The New Song Pages

For 10 years, Planning Center has been helping worship leaders plan and organize songs. As we move into the next decade, it's time to modernize the Song pages and make them more powerful for existing users while simplifying the layout to be cleaner and easier for new users. New Unified Layout We've combined what used to be two (or more) pages into one main page with song details always visible in the header, and all your arrangements visible as tabs on the side. To keep

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

8 min read

Jan 11, 2016

Campuses & Time Zones

If you are a church with campuses in multiple time zones, then you'll be excited about this new feature! Before today, your account could have 1 time zone. This was never an issue when looking at your plans or responding to requests. However, each user has the option to subscribe to their Planning Center schedule so they can see it in their own calendar program and if the they live in a different time zone, the times in that calendar feed would be wrong. This made PCO Calendar Feeds useless f

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

Dec 08, 2015

New Profile Page & Improved Teams

Our first full page for Services Evergreen is here! What is Services Evergreen, you ask? In short, it's a year-long project where we update every page in PCO Services, one page at a time, and give it a modern, simplified design, while adding some of the most requested features. You can learn more about Services Evergreen in this blog post. The profile page was one of the most cluttered pages, so we decided it was a great place to start. It's now organized into tabs and should be much easier t

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

9 min read

Nov 24, 2015

Services Evergreen

Well, I think it's time to take the wraps off a huge new project that will take Planning Center Services to the next level. We could call it something like Services version 3, but since PCO Services is constantly being updated, that doesn't really communicate it well. So instead, our code name for it is Services "Evergreen". (Other code names like Emerald City & Kermit's Revenge were rejected.) Ancient History First, a little backstory. PCO Services is approaching its 10-year anniversary.

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

4 min read

Oct 28, 2015

Blockouts Bonanza!

Today we're releasing a boatload of beautiful blockout-based features. A completely new blockout process on the web helps any user input their blockout dates much more easily. In addition, we've added new repeating options, a blockout request email that Team Leaders can send to their teams, and the option for Team Leaders to receive blockout notifications when their team members blockout dates. Adding Blockouts When we set out to refine the blockout experience, our first goal was t

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

6 min read

Jul 02, 2015

Team Leaders

We're excited to announce our newest feature, Team Leaders! There are quite a few benefits, but one of the main reasons we did this was to fulfill a longstanding feature request. Many people have wanted a way for multiple people to be notified when each person accepts or declines a scheduling request, and Team Leaders makes that possible. Adding Team Leaders When editing your Teams, you'll find a new Team Leaders tab. If your Team previously had a person set as the "Default Replies To

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

5 min read

Jun 10, 2015

New Audio Player for Android & iOS

One of the most popular uses for our mobile app for Services is rehearsing music, specifically listening to songs. We're always looking for ways to improve the experience, and since we use these apps ourselves for our own churches, we know the joys and frustrations first hand. As a result, we've updated Services for Android & iOS with a completely new media player that has lots of features designed specifically to help church musicians learn their music most effectively. Full Screen Player &

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

5 min read

May 13, 2015

Chordacopia! Full-Screen Chord Editor & Quick Transpose

Today we released a slew of new music features that work together in perfect harmony. If you create chord charts within PCO Services, want a way to transpose from anywhere, prefer number or numeral charts, or want a more powerful way to download songbooks for each plan, then read on! Full Screen Chord Editor PCO Services has had a lyrics & chord editor that transposed text based chord charts from the very beginning (almost 9 years now!) When you add a key, you get your chord chart in tha

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

5 min read

Apr 16, 2015

New Last Scheduled Date Options

Today we've got lots of new options all centered around Last Scheduled dates. It's often helpful to see the most recent time (even in the future) that a person is scheduled to serve. Many schedulers like to make sure they rotate people somewhat evenly, so seeing this date helps them schedule people who haven't served for the longest time. PCO Services has shown you this last scheduled date for a while, and has even let you change the scope of that date to your entire church, a folder, or a sp

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

Mar 31, 2015

Add Arrangements & Keys from iOS

Services for iOS has been updated to version 2.8 with some great new features. Editors and Admins can now add and edit arrangements and keys and even import SongSelect files in the process. Plus, Viewers now see times they are not scheduled to in gray. Arrangements & Keys Editors can finally add and edit Arrangements & Keys. Florists and Locksmiths rejoice! Oops, different kind of arrangements and keys. Nevertheless, you don't have to be on the website to add a new key to a song arrangem

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

3 min read

Mar 02, 2015

Linking Split Teams with Other Times

Last year we released a new scheduling feature called Split Teams. Split Teams is a scheduling tool for when you have more than one service time and your teams are different for each. For example, if your 9am Greeters are different than your 11am Greeters, Split Teams is a great way to set that up. Until now though, Split Teams were only compatible with Service Times. That's mostly been fine, because that's its primary use, but sometimes you have rehearsals or other times that are also different

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

Jan 29, 2015

Arrangements, Keys, Permalinks & More

Over the last month or so we've released some smaller and medium-sized new features, and it's time we detailed them together in one place. The biggest thing is that when you add new arrangements or keys to your songs, you have a lot more options, including the ability to import SongSelect and PraiseCharts files for the main key and alternate keys! We've also given you a new way to link to your shared plans, and made some visual tweaks to make it easier to see split teams and temporary positions.

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

6 min read

Nov 12, 2014

Services LIVE 3.0

Services LIVE is an entire app built into your PCO Services account that you run during your service. If you've planned your service items, put in notes and entered in item lengths, LIVE steps you through that information one item at a time so you and your team can see what's happening now, what's coming up next, record the actual timing of each item, chat with your team & much more. We've completely redesigned LIVE for version 3 and packed in a ton of great new features. If you use LIVE regu

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

7 min read

Jul 29, 2014

Drag & Drop Uploads

Drop everything and rejoice, because the drag of having to use Flash for uploading files has been vanquished! We've just given our file uploader a big update that no longer requires you to have the Adobe Flash plugin to upload files, and adds some nifty improvements in the process. Uploading from the Attachments Box When you click 'add an attachment', the top Upload tab has a new design that makes it clear how to upload your files. You can click the button to choose a file from you

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

3 min read

May 30, 2014

Split Teams

A couple weeks ago we published a blog post describing lots of smaller new features we've released recently. We alluded to a big new feature that was coming soon, and I'm thrilled to announce its arrival! Split Teams is a new way to configure your teams to schedule different people at each service time. For example, if you have a 9am and 11am service, but you schedule different Greeters for each time, you can split your First Impressions team to easily see which Greeters are scheduled for each

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

5 min read

May 09, 2014

New Feature Roundup

If you've used PCO Services for a while, you know we like to continually improve it by adding new features. You might have also noticed that we haven't added any big features recently. We do have a big feature that is really close to completion, but we've also been hard at work on some other things, too. For one, we've just finished a major upgrade to our west coast servers that sets us up for future features and keep things snappy for our ever-increasing number of users (especially now that we'

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

5 min read

Apr 07, 2014

Email Deliverability

We've recently had some reports of emails sent from PCO Services that weren't getting to users, even though the app was successfully sending them. After some investigation, we realized that because of the way we were sending emails (which we've done for years), Yahoo had recently decided that all email sent from PCO was bad and just wouldn't deliver it. The good news is that we have resolved this issue and all new emails should be deliverable now. For some more background information, read on.

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

3 min read

Feb 12, 2014

Family Scheduling

When we first launched Planning Center Online in 2006, I don't think that even we knew all of the things that it would grow to be used for; we just wanted something that would help us to get away from spreadsheets and difficult scheduling scenarios for our worship teams. But once other ministries saw its capabilities, PCO Services grew to be a scheduling tool that could be used for lots of different scheduling needs, not just for the worship team. In 2011 we added the ability for people to sp

Reagan Helms

Community Support Lead

4 min read

Feb 03, 2014

File License Tracking

Staying legal with copyrights and licenses has always been a challenge. Luckily, with blanket licenses like the Rehearsal License by CCLI, and the Performance License by Christian Copyright Solutions, you pay one fee and get licenses for tons of songs. Those licenses cover pretty specific usage though. Just because you have a license to give rehearsal audio to your team doesn't mean you have a license to distribute purchased chord charts to them. If you use chord charts by SongSelect, they're

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

5 min read

Jan 23, 2014