Blog

Category Archives: worshipplanning.com

Who Is Actually Viewing the Worship Plans?

Man with guitar in front of computer

You’ve prayed, planned, and shared the worship flow with your team in WorshipPlanning.com.  But now you want to know who is actually looking at the plans ahead of time.  Hopefully it is evident by how prepared your team members are when rehearsal comes.  But there certainly are times when you’d like more concrete information before rehearsal.  Well, now you can know. Right on the worship flow editor page in your WorshipPlanning account there is a “view count” that looks like this:

Screenshot of view count on the worship flow page.

When you click on the icon, it shows you a list of the viewers.  This more-detailed information is only available to those with the ability to edit the worship flow.

Notice at the top of the window there is an option to be notified the first time a person views the worship flow.  Notifications can be sent via email or text.  We have more information about all this in an article on our Support Center, including when we don’t count views.  Be sure to check it out!

Get Feedback with “Likes”

As a small feedback mechanism, we’ve added the ability for your team members to “like” a worship flow that you’ve shared with them. The “thumbs up” icon on the worship flow page shows the number of likes for that service

You, as well as anyone else that can see the worship flow, can see who else has liked the flow. Exactly how this feature is used is up to you. For example, it could be a great way for your team to a give you an acknowledgement that they have everything they need and have begun practicing.

Merry Christmas!

We just wanted to take a quick moment to wish you a Merry Christmas, and to say Thank You! God blesses your congregation every week through you. And there is no doubt that through you God blesses us, as well.

Our prayer is that no matter how busy the Christmas season may be, none of us lose focus of Jesus.

Merry Christmas!
-tom and the worshipplanning.com team

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.

Integration with LifeWay Worship

 

LifeWay Worship and WorshipPlanning

We are excited to partner with the great folks at LifeWay Worship, in a manner that greatly benefits you. For those not familiar, LifeWayWorship.com is a fantastic musical resource with a full array of assets from instrumental parts to accompaniment tracks and media. By creating a free account in LifeWayWorship.com, you can search, purchase, and download song assets to help you and your team prepare for worship.

The developers at LifeWayWorship.com and WorshipPlanning.com worked hard to connect our two powerful online resources.  Prior to this integration, it was a multi-step process to get music assets from your LifeWay Worship account into your WorshipPlanning.com account, and then out to your team members.  But now, it’s as easy as clicking “Send to WorshipPlanning.com” in your LifeWay Worship account.

Send Music to WorshipPlanning.com

For the “Send to WorshipPlanning.com” options to be available, you must first authorize LifeWay Worship to connect to your WorshipPlanning account.  But once that is initially done, the authorization will be remembered.

When music files are sent to your WorshipPlanning account, they are either adding to an existing song as a new “arrangement”(if the song exists), or a new song is created in your library where the files will be attached.  Once the files are there, the process of sharing that information is the same as any other song in your Songs library.  Just include the song in your worship flow plans, and your team members will have easy access to the LifeWay Worship files.

ProTip: You can designate each file to be associated with one or more specific “roles”, which will make it even easier for your musicians and vocalist to find the right files for them.  Check out our support article on how to do this.

 

 

 

New Feature: Song Arrangements

Arrangements Icon

Song Arrangements

 

For years, churches using WorshipPlanning.com had to create a separate song in their library to accommodate various arrangements.  With the release this morning of version 5.6 (a free and automatic update for all users), handing song arrangements has become much easier and organized.  Plus, we gave the Song Details and Song Edit pages a nice facelift.

First, let’s take a look at the new Edit Song window.  The fields above the row of tabs are song data that apply to any

Edit Song Dialogand all arrangements (including the “default arrangement), which every song as.  Just click in these fields to edit them.  We also added a couple new fields like “Artist” and “Meter”.  Now notice the new green “arrangements” tab on the left.  When clicked, it will expand from the left edge to allow you to add, delete, rename, and select arrangements.  As you select different arrangements, the information below the tabs changes to show you info specific for that arrangement.  By the way, when you create a new arrangement, it starts with all the data from the “Default Arrangement”.

 

Selecting Arrangement In Worship FlowWhen adding songs to your worship flow, the arrangement selection comes after you’ve add the song.  Once the song is added, if you need to select an arrangement other than the default, click the arrangement icon next to the name song name.  This is also how you can add a new arrangement on-the-fly, if you need.

 

 

 

 

 

The selected arrangement name will show in the worship flow directly under the song title (including in MyWP and all printouts).  If the “default arrangement” is selected, no arrangement name will show.Arrangement Selected

 

For those wanting to clean up separate songs that need to be moved into an arrangement “family”, we’ve added a way to merge songs on the Songs Library page.  Simply click the checkboxes next to the songs you wish to merge, then go to the actions menu option and select “merge songs”.  You’ll be given further instructions at that point.

We hope you enjoy this new feature and look forward to any feedback you’d like to share!

 

Church Community Builder Integration

WorshipPlanning-CCB-Gears

WorshipPlanning.com now synchronizes data with Church Community Builder, a leader in online church management software. This means you no longer have the hassle of duplicate data entry (or worse, missing or obsolete data one system).  Setup is easy, the 2-way synchronization is automatic, and there is no extra charge for this functionality that “just works”.

What data is synchronized?

For the first phase of integration, user data is synchronized.  This includes their name, email address, phone numbers, and birth date. From within WorshipPlanning.com, you can create new users by importing one or more people from your CCB account.  If the person exists in WP but not CCB, you can instruct WP to create that user as a new person in CCB.  And if they exist in both systems, it’s easy to “link” them (individually or in bulk).

Once people are linked between the two systems, any changes to their info (name, email, etc.) in either system will magically be updated in the other system.

Will more data be synchronized in future phases of integration?

Yes!  We are working on deeper integrations that will allow information related to groups and serving to update across systems, all to help reduce your administrative workload and provide you better reporting.

Get Started Right Now!

If you have accounts with Church Community Builder and WorshipPlanning.com, you and integrate right now (no extra charge).  Just follow the integration guide.  If you don’t have an account in either or both systems, use the links below to get started.

WorshipPlanning.com – Info PageSign-up Page –  Free 30-day trial (no credit card required).

Church Community Builder – Info PageTalk to their sales team

Release 5.4.5.5 Details

Happy Easter! This morning, we updated WorshipPlanning.com to version 5.4.5.5.  You can find the release notes on our support site, but we wanted to highlight a few of the features in this blog post.

 

OnSong Logo

When you update to version 1.99993 of OnSong, you’ll have access to our latest integration.  With this, you’ll be able to import worship-related files from WorshipPlanning.com right into your OnSong app, where you can then annotate, transpose, rehearse, and even perform.  We’ll be promoting this integration in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for it.  In the meantime, be sure you check out all that OnSong can do!

 

Last Performed Indicator – Event Flow Page

Last Performed ScreenshotIn the previous release, we added the Last Performed column to the Songs Library page.  With this release, we added this same information right on the event flow page.  The color coded bubbles let you see in a glance when the last time the song was performed.

Red – performed in last 2 weeks
Yellow – performed in last 2 months
Green – performed in last 6 months
Blue – performed more than 6 months ago

Hover over the black “?” icon above the filter field to get a reminder of what the colors mean.  Right now, this date is across all locations.  But we may had the ability to narrow the scope to just a single location.

 

 

YouTube Playlists

YouTube Playlist ScreenshotYouTube links have been a song detail for years (and we even populate our “top songs” list with them).  Today, we make it easier for worship teams to rehearse using a YouTube Playlist link.  The link has been added to the same places that the MP3 and Spotify playlist links were, including Event Flow page accessible by your team when they log in.

 

 

That’s the list of main features for this release.  But stay tuned for another release coming soon!

 

worshipplanning.com + Proclaim, from START-to-FINISH, and BEYOND!

From Start to Finish and Beyond

It is now even easier to create presentations slides for your worship flow details.  After having become acquainted with Proclaim Church Presentation Software some months ago, worshipplanning.com reviewed and shared with our community the significance of this valuable resource. And now we are excited to announce and present worshipplanning.com’s integration with Proclaim!

From Faithlife, the makers of Logos Bible Software, Proclaim launched its presentation software in 2012 with the concept of making worship presentations a team effort that is centralized in the cloud. Proclaim’s user base extends beyond the sanctuary computer, and its collaboration capabilities allow continuous workflow possibilities.

Those of you not familiar with Proclaim will be enthused to hear about this compelling product, and the numerous features it offers making service presentation preparation vastly easier.

With the new opportunity of worshipplanning.com and Proclaim working together, your service will effortlessly flow from START (organizing and planning) to FINISH (production and presentation), and BEYOND with seamless publishing of your service, digital message and sharable media! worshipplanning.com and Proclaim platforms will interact seamlessly by way of a one-time authorization of your worshipplanning.com credentials into Proclaim. worshipplanning.com users will be able to easily import the set list, lyrics, and even song-mapping, allowing Proclaim to turn out the appropriate lyrics to various slides, all while maintaining the theme of your presentation.

For example, let’s say you’ve created a worship flow that looks like this:  

Worship Flow in WorshipPlanning.com

With just a couple of clicks in Proclaim, your songs would be imported directly from worshipplanning.com, in the right order, with the right song mapping, and matching the presentation theme you had already defined in Proclaim for this service.  Notice how the songs lyrics are automatically split onto different slides.

Proclaim Interface

 

Win a Year of WorshipPlanning.com and Proclaim

To help promote the program, worshipplanning.com users will be invited to follow us on a virtual Faithlife group called, “WorshipPlanning”. If you’re not familiar with Faithlife, it’s like a Facebook for churches and much more! On the WorshipPlanning Faithlife group you will be able to read and share tips, questions, product information, and announcements from Proclaim and worshipplanning.com.

By joining our WorshipPlanning Faithlife group (which is free) you will be asked a few questions and entered into our Premier Giveaway Package* to win a free year of worshipplanning.com and a free year of Proclaim! Earn a additional chances to win by simply inviting a friend (or two, or ten!) to join the group.

worshipplanning.com users who sign up for a free trial of Proclaim can also enter to win our Ultimate Giveaway Package**, including a free year of worshipplanning.com, a free year of Proclaim, and access to Proclaim’s Pro Media library!

How do I win?

  1. For a chance to win the Premier Giveaway Package
    join the WorshipPlanning group on Faithlife! Invite friends and increase your chances!
  2. For a chance to win the Ultimate Giveaway Package
    sign up for a free trial of Proclaim!

Learn more about worshipplanning.com / Proclaim integration.

Learn more about Proclaim or Faithlife.

*Premier Giveaway Package includes: (1) free year of our worshipplanning.com Bronze level plan, and (1) free year of Proclaim’s Basic plan. Prize package value exceeds $380, depending on congregation size.

**Ultimate Giveaway Package includes: (1) free year of our worshipplanning.com Silver level plan, (1) free year of Proclaim’s Pro plan, and access to Proclaim’s Pro Media library. Prize package value exceeds $660, depending on congregation size.

Enter now through February for your chance to win. One winner will be chosen at random for each package giveaway. Winners will be chosen in early March. .

 

Merry Christmas

Christmas Card

 

2016 has been a crazy year for most of the world.  But our Lord is unchanging and provides a constant source of hope and love, despite the circumstances. We know many of you work hard during this (and every) season to reflect that constant hope and love at your church and in your community. Our prayer this Christmas is that you will experience the hope and love of Jesus, not just by being a reflection of Him, but by encountering Him.  And I think I speak for all parishioners around the world in saying: Thank you for being the light of Jesus!

Merry Christmas, from our family to yours.

-tom and the worshipplanning.com team

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