People Scheduling Made Easy
Does your drummer ever show up late (or not show up at all) on Sunday morning because he says he didn’t know he was scheduled?
If your church has a worship team, most likely there is someone in charge of scheduling and managing that team. Whether you have 5 people on the team or 50, having the right tool to coordinate and keep track of everyone’s schedules is a big task. WorshipPlanning.com is here to help!
With WorshipPlanning.com you can easily schedule your volunteers, not only for your worship team, but for any ministry in your church. And, we’ve made it super easy, so you can spend less time scheduling and more time investing in people. You can schedule individuals one at a time, or an entire team with a single click-and-drag.
Once scheduled, people are notified via email or text message, and are asked to respond to the “assignment”. This system ensures that YOU KNOW everybody knows what is expected of them. We also have video tutorials, so you can easily train others if/when you need to delegate the scheduling responsibility.
We are here to answer any questions you have about WorshipPlanning.com, so don’t hesitate to contact us! As far as what to do if your drummer comes late to soundcheck again this week…well, let’s save that for another post!
Your Visitor’s First 7 Minutes
I’ve heard about a recent study that showed that most visitors decide within the first 7 minutes of their initial visit, whether or not they will come back to your church. That’s starting from when they drive into your parking lot. If you’ve ever visited another church before, you can probably relate.
This is pretty significant. So, how you can use this information? In the next few weeks, try an experiment. Go to a worship service at your church with the point-of-view of the 1st time visitor. Better yet, convince someone you know who hasn’t been to your church to do it for you. Maybe give them a questionnaire to fill out.
As you drive into the parking lot what do you see? Does the parking lot look crowded? Unkept? Or even unsafe?
Are there any parking lot volunteers to help guide you? How far did you have to walk from your car to get to the church building?
When you get to the building is there anyone greeting you with a smile? Or, are the greeters too busy having a conversation amongst themselves? Or even worse, is there no one at the door?
Once you’re inside what do you see? What do you smell?
I recently heard that there are companies overseas that blow the smell of fresh, new cash into their vents and it actually increases the workers’ productivity. I am certainly not recommending blowing the smell of cash through the vents of your church, but we often dismiss the importance of smell. Yet, it is such a powerful sense that all of us have.
There are so many more questions we can pose. But, for the sake of keeping this from becoming a book, I would like to end with this thought:
When is the last time you got together as the church leadership team to discuss the first time visitor’s experience?
It is a valuable investment of our time and resources to do all that we can to make the first time visitor feel at home. Whether they are non-Christians or Christians looking for a new church home, God is giving your church the opportunity to reach out to them. And, we are called to be good stewards of that opportunity.
-article by guest blogger, Wisdom Moon
Wisdom is the Founder of AllAboutWorship.com
“For the Sake of the World” – New Video From Bethel Live
Here’s a new song from Bethel Live – “For The Sake of The World” featuring Brian Johnson. It is from their new album by the same title, releasing on October 2nd.
WorshipPlanning.com Update – New User/Song Info Windows, Helper Filtering and More!
We are excited to share with you that WP4.2 has been released, which includes these great features:
- Updated User Info window with an informative graph of serving history
- Updated Song Info window with a similar graph of performance history
- Easy search/filter tool for the Helpers page
- SongSelect search improvements
- More Songs in our “Top Songs” Library
New User Info Window
When you click on a person’s name in WP, a new window appears that provides an array of information and options. In addition to the standard contact info, we’ve added a tab to show the teams and skills of the person, as well as a nifty “Assignments” tab that shows…well, just have a look at the screenshot below.
The lower part of the screen that isn’t full shown is where all past assignments can be seen. There is lots of great info about the person that can be found with just a single click, from just about anywhere in the site!
New Song Info Window
When we created the User Info Window, we naturally thought how that same type of information would be very applicable to songs. Thus, the new Song Info Window was born! On this new dialog (which replaces the small pop-up menu that appeared when you clicked on a song title), we have all the possible song data you could want, PLUS another nifty graph of the song performance history.
When you click on the icon in the Assignments column, a small window opens that shows who was serving on worship flow sensitive teams for that service.
Searching/Filtering Helpers
Backed by popular demand, we’ve made the Helpers table much smarter. You can use the easy “filter” field to key in a few characters and the list of Helpers will automatically refresh to display matching results. Additionally, the column headers can be clicked for sorting.
We plan on applying this intelligence to other areas of the site, including the Planners and Teams pages.
SongSelect Search Improvements
Our SongSelect search window now allows you to enter the CCLI number for a song. It will be found and displayed more quickly than searching by key word.
More “Top Songs” Entries
Since we rolled out our updated Top Songs list, (with Spotify and SongSelect links), we’ve been continuing to research and add more songs. The list is now over 500. That’s 500 of the most popular songs in WorshipPlanning.com that you and your team can easily:
- Stream the audio (with a free Spotify account)
- View/print the chord charts (with a SongSelect account)
- Watch/listen to the music video on YouTube
- Buy the MP3 from Amazon
- …all from your WorshipPlanning.com account!
Are You Too Satisfied?
In church ministry it is normal to have ups and downs. You may go through a seaon where the attendance is low, giving is even lower, and there are a lot of people going through crisis.
Sometimes you go through a season of celebration where you’re seeing a lot of new visitors, families growing, God blessing your finances, and every week you’re seeing people come to Christ. There is a lot of excitement in the air and it just seems like the Lord’s hand is on everything.
Hosea 13:4-5 say, “But I have been the Lord your God ever since you came out of Egypt. You shall acknowledge no God but me, no Savior except me. I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of burning heat.”
Verse 6 goes on to say, “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”
Often it is easy to call on God and fully depend on Him when your ministry is going through challenging times. Sometimes you just have no other choice BUT to cry out to God and put your trust in Him. However, as verse 6 talks about, when God blesses us and we have plenty, and we are satisfied, it is easy to fall into the trap of becoming proud and forgetting about God.
Not that God is not being preached at your church or that you’re not singing songs to God, but that in your heart, you’ve become satisfied and don’t feel that desperate need for Him. You get too busy doing the work of God that you neglect the presence of God. You start trusting in your church’s resources, rather than God’s hand.
Whatever season we may be in, in our personal lives and in ministry, in the high’s and the low’s, let us never become proud and forget God. May we always cling to God like He is the only One that matters, because He truly is.
Does Anything Else Matter? – Francis Chan (video)
His presence matters. Does anything else matter?
Some great thoughts from author and speaker, Francis Chan.
Version 4.1.4 – Security Change and MORE Spotify Updates
We hope you have been enjoying the new Spotify integration with WP! It truly is a powerful tool that gives you and your team free and instant access to streaming audio for many of your worship songs, without having to upload anything! If you haven’t tried Spotify, what are you waiting for? Learn more and create yourself a free account now! Just browse to Spotify.com.
With version 4.1.4 we’ve added even more awesome Spotify features that you will no doubt find indispensable. We’ve also made a very important security change regarding Helpers on Worship Flow Sensitive teams, so please be sure to read on.
More Spotify Integration
In just two weeks, we’ve taken access to Spotify songs to the next level in WP with Spotify Playlists and Spotify Searches. On the Worship Flow page (for both Planners and Helpers), we’ve added a 
Play Spotify Playlist link that will open your Spotify app and load your service’s worship songs (that have Spotify links) in a playlist. Access to the audio of your worship set list has never been easier…or free-er!
But wait, I know what you are thinking. “That’s great if I have the Spotify links. But I don’t, and it is kind of a pain to search Spotify for those songs to manually copy the Spotify link to my songs library.” Well, you will be thrilled to hear that we’ve made searching Spotify songs super easy!
Right in the Add/Edit Song window where you would normall see the Spotify URI/id field (on the Web tab), you can click the binoculars icon and “Find Spotify Track” window will open with a list of matching songs.
With that list of Spotify search results, simply click the Title you’d like to link to the song you are adding/editing. If you want to hear the song first, just click the little blue “Play” icon and your Spotify app should start playing the song.
Once you’ve selected the song, you’ll see the Spotify URI/id field is now populated. Be sure to save your changes!
Important Helper Security Change
With version 4.1.4, an important security change on WorshipPlanning.com has taken place and some of your Helper accounts could be affected. The change puts in to effect the “Worship Flow Sensitive” setting for each of your teams. For Helpers to see the worship flow related information (worship flow, service files, virtual stage, and printouts), they must be serving on a team that has the “Worship Flow Sensitive” setting enabled. If they are not, when they go to the worship flow related tabs in MyWP, they will see a message explaining why they can’t see the information there.
For smaller churches that don’t use the team features of WP, we are providing a small loophole. If a Helper is not a member of any team, he or she will still have access to worship flow related info.
To adjust this setting for a team, log in to WP and follow these steps:
- Go to People >> Teams
- Click on the name of the desired team that needs setting to be worship flow sensitive
- Click on the “Settings” tab
- Click the “Edit these Settings”
- Change the “Worship Flow Sensitive:” setting to be Yes and click the “Save” button.
The reason for this policy change is due to the fact that many churches are using WP to plan many of their Sunday morning ministries that aren’t directly related to the worship service flow (i.e. children’s ministry, parking team, coffee setup). Many churches have asked us to restrict those teams from accessing information not relevant to their ministry. Since we’ve had the “Worship Flow Sensitive” team setting in place for a while, hopefully your team is already configured properly. We are just now finally putting it into use.
If you have any questions or feedback about this change, please feel free to post a comment below. If you have technical support issues, please be sure to submit a support request.
Spotify is the registered trade mark of the Spotify Group.
Spotify Integration is Here!
We are excited to announce that version 4.1.3 of WorshipPlanning.com has been released, which includes integration with Spotify! For those of you wondering exactly what Spotify is, it is a free music streaming service that provides on-demand access to over 16 million songs. That’s right, 16 million songs, on demand, for free. You can learn more about it (and sign up for a free account) here: http://www.spotify.com/us/about/what/
We at WorshipPlanning.com are big fans of Spotify, and thought it would be a huge benefit to worship teams if they could easily access Spotify songs right from WP! Many of you are already familiar with the links to the YouTube music video and Amazon MP3 purchases pages. We have extended these resources of songs to include links to Spotify for on-demand streaming. So you really don’t have to do anything special to start seeing the Spotify links. But in the event you don’t, or if you are curious for more integration details, read on.
Top Songs List
Many of you have seen, Planners can add songs to their library by browsing our Top Songs list (around 350 songs). We have updated our top songs list and are in the process of expending it to 1000 songs. For most of those songs, we’ve found the Spotify link and included it with the Top Songs information. Keep in mind that as you add a song manually, WP tries to match your song title against our Top Songs list and gives you the option to automatically add data we’ve collected about each song (author, copyright info, YouTube/Amazon info, and now the Spotify link).
SongSelect Songs
If you’ve taken advantage of our SongSelect integration, many of those songs in your library are already link to Spotify and ready for you to use, right now!
Manually Adding or Editing Songs
The places where you add or edit song details has a “web” tab that contains the Stream Web Address and Purchase Web Address fields for you to specify where your team can go to watch the YouTube music video or purchase the MP3. It is on this tab we’ve added a field for the Spotify link.
It’s easy to get a Spotify link by right-clicking on a particular song in Spotify and selecting the Copy Spotify URI option. Then just paste it into the appropriate field in the Add/Edit Song window. But remember: This link will usually be automatically fill if you select one of the songs matched from our Top Songs list.
Not Ready for Spotify in WP Just Yet?
If for some reason you’d rather not have these Spotify links showing up in your church’s WP account, you can turn this feature off in the Church Settings page. With security level 3 (account admin), go to Account >> Church Account Settings >> Edit This Info button. It is a setting at the bottom.
Thoughts? Feedback? HELP!
Feel free to post a comment on any feedback you might have. If you need a hand with anything, feel free to log a support ticket with us over at our Customer Support Center.
Happy listening!!
Spotify is the registered trade mark of the Spotify Group.
Spring Cleaning and General Improvements
While it may seem like things have been a little quiet on the blog, we’ve been quite busy taking care of a few housekeeping items. Boring as they may seem, they actually have great benefit to you the customer. First of all, last week we migrated the site to a new architecture that is designed to run much faster and scale much better. The growth we have experienced over the past year has been fantastic and this architecture change is necessary to keep things running smoothly.
For those curious, the new architecture is called a “Hybrid” environment that allows the WorshipPlanning.com database to run on dedicated hardware, while the website itself is served from virtual servers called Cloud servers. If you are a real geek like we are, you can read more about the exact environment on Rackspace’s website. And by the way, in this new environment we are able to better track server and site performance. The great news is that it takes our servers (on average) less than half a second to serve up most pages.
Error Tracking
Another environment enhancement that will be of indirect (although very positive) benefit to you is new error tracking. It used to be that errors encountered by users on the site required you to manually submit them. We’ve enhanced the system such that any site errors are automatically reported directly to us with a plethora of information (and often, you won’t even notice the error). We are putting a priority on fixing the cause of the errors, which is much easier with the new automatic information we get. Our goal is a 100% error free site, and we really aren’t that far from it.
Password Improvements
A few weeks ago we updated the site with a new way to handle password storage, password resets, and user authentication. Your passwords have always been secure sitting in our database behind our hardened firewall. But we’ve taken the added measure of one-way encrypting your passwords so that they cannot be decrypted and viewed by us (or anyone else, for that matter). As a result, we’ve updated the way we handle requests from people that have forgotten or never received their password. Instead of sending you the password we have on file for you (which we can’t do anymore due to the encryption), we send you a special “reset password” link to the email address you have associated with your account. The link is unique and expires after a certain amount of time. On the reset page you are prompted to enter a new password (twice, for confirmation). And of course, that new password is encrypted before it is stored in our database. As a side note, passwords are now case-sensitive.
Future Enhancements
We are working on some really cool stuff that should be ready for you before fall. Keep an eye on our blog, twitter, and facebook accounts for updates! Also, you might see an opportunity to take a survey or two for a chance to win an iTunes gift card. Watch for any messages about this on the home page of your account.
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worshipplanning.com is a cloud-based software that makes it easy to organize your service.