Blog

Truly Full of Thanks

Gears Meshing

This past year has been incredible, and unlike any other year in my 40+ on this earth.  As some of you know, early this year I chose to follow a crystal-clear calling of God to leave my full time job and really pour my efforts into WorshipPlanning.com.  Helping churches though WorshipPlanning.com has been a passion of mine since it was first launched over 13 years ago.  But not until February 17th of this year had I felt led to step out of the boat, among the wind and waves, and walk toward Jesus in this manner.

Since then, not a day goes by that I don’t reflect on that decision.  And the reason is, I am so incredibly thankful, everyday, for this opportunity God has given me.  The road hasn’t been straight, easy, and worry-free.  But one thing is for sure: This is exactly where I am supposed to be, right now.  Knowing this feels amazing, and can be described with an illustration of gears.  When gears mesh correctly, the system is in sync and movement progresses as it should.  The gears may be working hard, but they are working together.

This Thanksgiving, I am especially thankful for God providing the opportunity to serve Him in this capacity, and allowing me to hear his voice along the way.  I’m also very thankful for the many wonderful people that God used to provide encouragement.  This includes my courageous family, the incredible people here at WorshipPlanning.com, the amazing ministries and churches that we serve, and my F3Nation brothers that offer perpetual encouragement and accountability.

I sincerely hope you and your family have an blessed Thanksgiving, and a spirit-filled holiday season.

-tom

New “Self Sign-up” For Your Team Members

The v5.4.3 update that recently came out includes a highly requested feature called “Self Sign-up”.   When you enable this for your team, your team members will be able to find and sign up for available roles, on their own, without you having to individually schedule them.  They just log in to MyWP (or access the WorshipPlanning.com mobile web app) and select the “Sign Up” link.  They will then see a list of available roles scheduled for your team, and click the “Sign-up and Accept” button.

Sign Up and Accept

 

They can also do the same on the mobile web app by pointing their mobile device to http://m.worshipplanning.com (http://wplan.me will get them there also).  If they are on a team that has “Self Sign-up” turned on, they will see a new “Sign-Up to Serve” menu option on the main page.  Once they select the desired available role, they’ll simply need to confirm:

Mobile Self Sign-up

We’ve created a brief video for team leaders and account administrators that shows how to enable and use this feature.  It’s easy to get configure, and even easier to for your team members to use!

 

 

Emoji and Non-Latin Characters Now Supported

Smileythumbs-up-sign
When worshipplanning.com launched in 2003, emoji didn’t exist. Instead, Internet users made use of ASCII characters to create “emoticons”.  The database driving our software used an encoding that was considered “best practices” at the time but had fallen a little out of date recently.  This past weekend, we performed a significant update to that database that provides support of “extended” character sets, including emoji, non-Latin-based characters, and “special” characters often used in desktop applications (like fancy quotes or dashes).  So, let your creative emoji juices flow and tell your international friends that worshipplanning.com is now extended-character friendly!