Blog

Shortcut, New Features, Hardware Upgrades

In this blog:

  • Navigation shortcut that could save you time
  • New Team Assignment feature coming soon
  • Hardware upgrades in the next month

It has been about three weeks since we launched version 3.5. Feedback continues to be very positive. Most people feel the updates are great enhancements, and are equally excited about the new features we have planned. A couple folks reported they continue to use the old site. When asked why, some have said that things require “more clicks” to get to. An example often given is that it takes several more clicks to switch from one service flow to another. For those in agreement, let me share with you the quick way to switch between services that is as fast as the old version. When you login to WP and look at the service flow page, find the date/time field above the tabs. Notice the blue down arrow? That arrow (and the entire date/time field) is clickable and will reveal dates/times/locations of other services in a dropdown menu. So, with just 2 clicks, you can access other services.

Several churches have asked for the ability to schedule an entire team of people all at once for a service, rather than one person at a time. It is a simple concept that is a little more complicated to implement. Currently in WP, for a person to be scheduled for a service, he or she must be assigned a role for that service. So, to assign all members of a team to a service in one fell swoop, there must be defined a role that each person will have for that assignment. We are currently developing both the ability to define a “default role” for each person on a team, and the ability to assign an entire team to a service. Our goal is to have WP updated with this feature in the first couple weeks of November.

In early November, we will be upgrading our server hardware. This upgrade will not only provide us better performance in the short term, but also allow us to easily scale as we continue to grow. We will provide more details on planned downtime once we nail down a specific upgrade date.

Version 3.5 is Live

This week marks a pretty big week for WorshipPlanning.com. Early Monday morning version 3.5 graduated from beta release. This is the biggest update WP has undergone since we first went live in 2003. Feedback has been positive over the past few days, though there have been some usage questions by those familiar with the previous version. As we address these questions, we will make the them and their answers available in our new Support Center. Our goal is to make this transition to the new design as smooth and exciting (in a good way) as possible. But there are bound to be some small bumps and hiccups along the way.

To help make the update smooth, we encourage you to give us feedback. Our team is already working on the next minor update…and if you have an enhancement (or fix) you think we need, please let us know!. Just use the “Feedback” link on the page related to your feedback, or simply use support/contact page(s) to let us know. Of course, you can call us as well.

Version 3.5 includes many new features, and a pretty thorough list can be found in earlier blog entries. But we do want to hit on two that were added to version 3.5 just this week.

Key Transposing
If you have put the chords in with the lyrics in your song details, you can now transpose the chords to a new key with just a click. For the time-being, we have a place this tool on the “Lyrics Only” printout of the song details. So to get to it, click on the song (popping up the song details window), then click on the Lyrics Only link in the upper right side of the page. You do have to have the correct original key of the song for this tool to work correctly.

We plan on implement this feature in a more accessible way, but we want to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how.

Support Center
Though there is not much out there right now, the new Support Center will be a place for you to get your WP questions answered and issues resolved. We have plans for video tutorials, FAQ pages, a knowledge base, and a place for you to submit and track issues in the form of “tickets”. Ironically, this is a site we hope you never have to use. But we know that when you need help, the last thing you want is more frustrations trying to get it. Our Support Center will help get your issues resolved fast.