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Category Archives: worshipplanning.com

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

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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database driving our software used an encoding that was considered “best practices” at the time but had fallen a little out of date recently.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!

Update v5.4.0 Text Notifications, Location Management, and SongSelect Integration Improvements

This morning, worshipplanning.com was updated to version 5.4.0, and we wanted to share some of the exciting details.

Text Notifications
worshipplanning.com has offered SMS text notifications for several years (you can learn more about how it works here), but now team leaders and account admins can enable SMS Text messaging on behalf of users.  Before this update, only the end user could enable text notifications by logging into their own WP account.  The was done to reduce the risk of people being unexpectedly charged for text messages.  Now that “unlimited” texts is much more popular, and it is easy for recipients to stop messages, we feel the benefits outweigh the risks.

User SMS Settings

When an appropriately-privileged planner adds or edits a user, they will be able to indicate which number(s) support text messaging by using the corresponding checkbox.  Once checked, and the country is selected, a new communication method will be set up for the user without any validation being required.

Also, any SMS text recipient can stop all text messages from WP by replying “STOP” to any message (and restart the flow of messages by  replying “START” to any message from WP).

SongSelect™ Integration Improvement
Like text notifications, SongSelect integration has been part of worshipplanning.com for a number of years.  The integration has been per planner, meaning that if Jim Planner and Jill Planner both wanted to use the SongSelect integration in WP, they had to each authorize that integration.

The update we rolled out with version 5.4.0 adds a “church level” integration, meaning that church account admins now have the option to authorize an integration for use by all planners.  Technically only security level 1 (Worship Editors) and up could use the church-level SongSelect integration, since security level 0 users (Ministry Planners) can’t edit the worship flow or song library.

If both a church and an individual are integrated, WP will use the individual’s integration.  This allows churches to track specific usage (on the SongSelect side) for individual SongSelect accounts.

SongSelect

More Location Settings
Also included in this update is greater management over your locations.  To start with, we’ve added a new “Locations Management” screen where admins can centrally add, delete and rename the various locations used by your church.

Next, we add “locations” as an attribute setting to your teams.  Perhaps you have a different worship team for each location.  You no longer have to shoehorn the name the location into the team name field, like “Worship Team – Downtown Campus”.

locations

And we’ve added a location filter on the team management page so that you can easily hide teams not at a specific location. By the the way, the location filter setting is remembered as you move about the site.  Finally, the People Scheduling page had its location filter upgraded in the following ways:

  1. Your filter setting will also show/hide teams based on their location settings, making it easier to figure out which teams are appropriate to schedule for that location.
  2. You can now filter by more than one location.  Perhaps you want to see the worship team schedule for this weekend, across two or three locations, at once.  Now you can.

We hope you find these updates useful in making your planning process simpler.  Our team continues to work on updates frequently asked for by customers.  And, as always, your feedback is welcome.

New Partnership with Church CO+OP

Church CO+OP Logo

We are thrilled to announce a new partnership with Church CO+OP (http://churchco-op.org), a Texas-based non-profit whose mission is to “connect churches and non-profit ministries with reputable vendors and resources to save time and money on products, services, and education.”

As an approved vendor, worshipplanning.com provides a discount on all subscription plans to the 2000+ members of the CO+OP.  Be sure to check out our vendor page.

More Info In Reminder Summaries

We just deployed an update that builds a little more on the email redesign we rolled out a couple weeks ago.  The Assignment Reminder Notification Summary email (sent for teams with this setting enabled) now contains the assignment status at the time the reminder is sent.  Check out the sample below.

If you’d like to learn how to enable these super helpful reminders (and the team leader summaries), watch the short video at the bottom of this blog.

 

Assignment Reminder Summary

 

 

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

5 Tools to Make Your Church Volunteers’ Lives Easier

If you’re like most churches, volunteers are a vital part of the various ministries that take place in the church. And, if you’re like most church leaders, you highly value your volunteers and want to make it as easy as possible for people in your church to volunteer. Here are 5 different tools that will make your church volunteers’ lives easier:

1. Worship Workshop in A Box from Paul Baloche – Here’s a great resource to help train your worship team! Paul Baloche and his band provide top-notch training for everything from music theory to singing to drumming.

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2. Canva – Most churches don’t have a graphic designer on staff, so this is a fantastic tool to help your volunteer graphic designers! They not only provide tutorials for beginners, so anyone can learn to design graphics, but they also provide a way to easily create beautiful presentations and documents. All for FREE!

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3. Proclaim – Here’s one for your media team! This church presentation software makes it very easy for your volunteer media team to collaborate on the Sunday media slides from anywhere. It all syncs in the cloud. The software also lets you record the sermon and make it available to the world right after service.

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4. Buffer – This one is a great find for your social media volunteers! It’s an app that allows you to easily schedule posts on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+. Your volunteers can add posts to the queue for the whole week, in one sitting.

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5. WorshipPlanning.com – And, of course, this is our favorite tool for church volunteers! (We might be a little biased.) It helps you plan your service with easy-to-use tools that build worship flows, schedule team members, fine tune details on musical selections from your personalized songs library, attach pertinent files, and maintain communication via your preferred channel. You can relax with WorshipPlanning.com because everyone is on the same page!

-Mark Logan

Humble Victors!

Worship Leader Editors Pick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For seven years (and running!) we’re honored to be selected and featured in Worship Leader Magazine’s 2014 Editor’s Pick Awards, under the Planning Software Category. Thank you to Worship Leader Magazine for this notable distinction.

 

Congratulations to all the Worship Leader victors! worshipplanning.com is humbled to be in your company.

 

Serving with you,

The crew at worshipplanning.com

New Partnership with South Carolina Baptist Convention

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WorshipPlanning.com is proud to announce our new partnership with South Carolina Baptist Convention (scbaptist.org). South Carolina Baptist Convention (SCBC) is a cooperative program-funded resource serving over 2,000 South Carolina Baptist churches and their work on a daily basis.

WorshipPlanning.com and SCBC will work together to extend WorshipPlanning.com‘s services to members of the SCBC. The partnership offers special benefits for SCBC member churches, including a 25% discount on subscriptions to WorshipPlanning.com.scbc and wp

“We’re excited how this alliance will bring a great offering to the members of the South Carolina Baptist Convention to help them better serve our Lord.” says Mark Powers, Director of the Worship & Music Office at SCBC.

For more information about the service offered under the partnership, go to sc.worshipplanning.com.

WorshipPlanning.com Announces Our Partnership with the North Carolina Baptists

renewing worship

In case you missed it…WorshipPlanning.com is proud to announce our new partnership with the North Carolina Baptists (ncbaptist.org).

North Carolina Baptists (NCB) is an affiliate of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSCNC). They work together with the Southern Baptist Convention to serve over 4,300 churches.

WorshipPlanning.com and NCB will work together to extend WorshipPlanning.com‘s services to members of the NCB.

The partnership offers special benefits for BSCNC member churches, including a 25% discount on subscriptions to WorshipPlanning.com.

For more information about the service offered under the partnership, go to nc.worshipplanning.com.

Serving with you.

Check out the quick virtual tour of WorshipPlanning.com: