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Category Archives: mobile

Multiple Accounts – Made Easy

Young family sitting on couch sharing a laptop.

Do you manage multiple WorshipPlanning.com accounts?  Perhaps you are a parent that manages your account as well as the accounts of your children that serve at church.  Or maybe you serve at more than one church that uses WorshipPlanning.com.  Either way, you’ll appreciate a recent update that makes it easier to get into the right WorshipPlanning account.

Here’s what you do:  First, ensure each account has the same primary email address and password (in the past WorshipPlanning did not allow this, but now it does).  You can change your primary email and password on the Profile page, which is under the “account” menu option when you log in.  Of course, the password should be something secure and not easy to guess.

With email addresses and passwords being the same across all accounts, the next time you log in you’ll be presented a list of accounts that match those credentials.  Just click the one you’d like to log into, and you’re on your way!

By the way, if you share an email address with someone else and need to prevent that person from accessing your account, simply make sure your password is different from the other account.

One last note, if you manage the account for another person, but that person wants to receive notifications at a different email address, you can add that email address as a secondary email.  That way, notifications will go to you and the person whose account you are managing.

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!

 

 

Email Redesign

You and your team members might noticed something a little different next time you receive an email notification fromworshipplanning.com.  This morning, we implemented a new design with the following benefits:

  • easier to read (simplier, more modern design)
  • lighter in payload
  • looks great on mobile and desktop email programs
  • more touch-friendly buttons and links

Additionally, if your church is a member of an organization that has partnered with worshipplanning.com, you’ll see the partnership logos in the banner section.

Here is an an example of the new look.  We welcome any feedback you have.

Schedule Assignment Email

WorshipPlanning.com Mobile Updates

Mobile Devices with WorshipPlanning.com Mobile

As promised, we are continuing to improve the WorshipPlanning.com Mobile (WPM) website, which you can access with your mobile browser at http://wplan.me.

Edit Worship Flow Element Screen on mobile device

The big feature we’ve (finally) added is the ability to add, edit, and delete worship flow elements on your mobile device.  Pretty much all the details you can add on the main WP site (save for the extra notes) you can specify on the mobile site…provided you have the right security level.

The other minor but still important enhancement we’ve made on the mobile site is that all connections between your device and our servers are now encrypted and secure.  This will make your on-the-go access to WP yet a little safer.

What’s next for the mobile site?  Well, we have a few more tweaks we want make on the worship flow (including showing more element details).  We also want to give more access to more information about the service, like rehearsals.  Our next big updated will likely be the ability to manage teams and schedule people to serve.

iPhone App Users – Meet WorshipPlanning.com Mobile

WorshipPlanning.com Mobile DevicesAfter much discussion among our team, we have decided the future of accessing WorshipPlanning.com on all mobile devices will be via the mobile website version of WP rather than a native app, like something from the App Store or Android Market. We are very excited about this decision because we truly believe it will offer the best user-experience for a broader range of mobile devices.

All you have to do is point your mobile device’s web browser to http://wplan.me, and sign in. Like the main website, there is nothing to install, authorize, or sync. You might even consider removing the WorshipPlanning.com app you installed from the App Store, since this new way of accessing it will give you more functionality with better performance.

Here are the specific reasons we think you’ll love the new mobile version:

1. HTML5 is as good as native apps – Unless you’re programming math- or graphics-intensive applications, the technology in modern mobile browsers (known as HTML5) allows developers to create interfaces as good as, or better than, native apps. In fact, the current mobile version of WorshipPlanning.com (we’ll call it WPM) actually does more and performs better than our iPhone app.

2. Shorter development cycles – Coding native apps for all the different smartphones out there requires specialized skill-sets and complex project coordination, costly from both time and financial perspectives. We already know how to code web pages and WPM is simply an extension of that knowledge. We can update WPM as fast as we can update the main WP website. The native iPhone app requires at least a week for Apple to approve each version update (no matter how small).

3. Instant updates – Just like the main site, when we do roll-out updates, you’ll see them instantly without having to wait for approval from Apple and then manually update the app on your device.

4. One app, many devices – WPM is smart enough to detect device attributes like screen size and OS type. This means we can make WPM show different features depending on the capabilities of your device….all from one site (one web address, one code base).

5. Launch WPM from a home screen icon, just like a native app – In just a few steps, you can create a shortcut to WPM from your home screen. After doing this, you’ll probably even forget that it isn’t actually a native app.

Many developers are moving away from native apps in favor of web-based mobile apps for the reasons we’ve described above (among others). The technology is here to make this a seamless experience for users. We loved being able to say we have a native iPhone app; but we believe our mobile users will be much better served with the new web-based mobile app of WorshipPlanning.com.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post a comment or contact us via our support site: http://support.worshipplanning.com

SongSelect Integration and WPMobile Updates

SongSelect by CCLI

A few weeks ago, CCLI enabled a technology that allows services like WorshipPlanning.com to integrate directly with their SongSelect service.  This means is that SongSelect account holders will be able to search and import SongSelect songs right from your WorshipPlanning.com account.  You’ll even be able to import the chord sheet (if available) directly, in the key of your choice.

The SongSelect integration features is in active development here at WP, and we hope to have it ready for you by the end of October.

WP Mobile Update

WP Mobile ReorderWe recently made an exciting first step with the WP Mobile site (WPM) that’s in the direction I know many Planners have been wanting WPM to go.  If you are a worship editor (security level 1) or higher, you can now change the worship flow order.  This may seem small, but believe me when I say that adding and editing worship flow elements is not too far behind.  And shortly after that will be the ability to manage team schedules.

For those of you using the native iPhone app, we strongly encourage you to try the mobile site.  Most people agree it performs much better, and it already has more functionality (including the ability to scrub through MP3s and view PDFs).  You can easily access the mobile site by pointing your device to http://wplan.me. (accessing this link with your computer will take you to the main WP site, so feel free to use it on your desktop/laptop as well!)

Updated Audio Player

Updated Audio GUI

We are excited to tell you that the audio player in WorshipPlanning.com has been updated (finally!) with an interface that is much more useful.  The biggest feature improvement is the added scrub bar.  And a less-obvious feature that you’ll soon reap the benefits of is that this new player supports several different audio formats.  We’ve got a little more work to do before that is ready, but it is coming.

This new audio player was actually first implemented in our new mobile app, which is currently accessible to Android and iPhone/iPod/iPad devices (see our blog post for more details).  In fact, we recently updated the mobile app player to fix a known scrub bar issue for Android devices.

Happy listening!

WorshipPlanning.com Mobile – Public Beta Now Live

WorshipPlanning.com Mobile App

WorshipPlanning.com Mobile (WPM) is a mobile version of WorshipPlanning.com for Android and Apple devices.  Many of the functions you can do in MyWP can also be done in WPM, with more functionality on the way.  WPM differs from the native iPhone app in several ways:

  1. Performance is much improved.
  2. The audio player is more functional, and other types of attachments (including PDFs) can be accessed.
  3. It runs in the mobile browser, as opposed to an app that needs to be installed (though we plan on making WPM be the update to the native app).

Ready to give at a try?  On your mobile device, point your mobile web browser to: http://m.worshipplanning.com (NOTE: If you go to this web address on a regular computer, you’ll be redirected to the main WP site.)

Keep in mind, since this is a pre-release (beta) version you may encounter some bugs.  Feel free to report them via our support center.  We are already aware that the scrub bar (audio fast forward and rewind) does not function properly for Android devices.

WorshipPlanning.com Mobile

WP Mobile

The wait will soon be over, smartphone fans.  In just a few weeks, we expect to roll out a version of WorshipPlanning.com that is designed to run in the mobile browser of most fairly-current smartphones on the market.  The initial functionality will be similar to the current iPhone app, but  more responsive and polished.  Here are some reasons we are really excited about this mobile web version:

  • Android owners will finally have mobile access to their WorshipPlanning.com data, with the ability to respond to assignments, view service and song details, access contact info, and listen to audio.
  • iOS owners will be able see an improved audio player, be able to open PDFs, and submit notes with their assignment responses.
  • We will be able to develop and deploy more functionality much more easily (read “a lot quicker”) than before.  If you, the user community, like how the mobile web version works, we should be able to easily leverage what we’ve done to make device-specific apps (including tablet apps!).
So, keep an eye on our blog, tweets, and facebook updates!

iPhone App – Finally!

WorshipPlanning.com iPhone AppThe big news we have been waiting for has finally arrive. The WP iPhone app was approved by Apple this afternoon, and we are delighted! It is now available in the App Store (just search for “Worship Planning”). Once installed, you may notice the version number on the splash screen to be 0.9rc2. If we had our druthers, it would have said version 1.0. But the source code is virtually identical. In the confusion to get Apple to approve our app (see our June 15th blog post), this 0.9rc2 version was submitted instead of version 1.0. Again, they both contain the exact same code, just a different version number.

What you can expect from this app is functionality similar to MyWP. Future releases will certainly contain functionality that more closely resembles the main site. But for this release we wanted an app that had features used by both Planners and Helpers.

So, feel free t

o install and give it a try. We look forward to your feedback to help shape the future releases. And, as always, if you have any questions or issues, feel free to give us a call (1-877-399-3342) or send us an email (support[at]worshipplanning.com).