I was just made an administrator—now what?
With great power comes great responsibility! Take a little time to get familiar with things now; it will save you and your volunteers time in the future.
This guide provides an overview of the main concepts to help you have a better understanding of what you are doing when you actually start setting things up.
Create a service
Service types and plans organize information for any services or events happening at your church.
A service type contains related plans, which usually happen weekly. Service types also contain teams and templates related to its plans.
A plan is where you store all the details about a particular service. It can include service times, rehearsal times, the teams you've scheduled for that service, and all the items happening in that service.
When you create a new service type, you'll be guided through a wizard, which will also help you create the first plan for that service type.
Set up the order of service
Songs and media need to be added to your Services library before you can use them in a plan. You can then add songs, media, and other items to the plan in the order they will occur in the service.
Check out this article to learn more about how to set up your order of service!
Schedule your teams
Volunteers serve together on teams, so it's best to schedule teams to serve all at once.
If you're taking over a new account, you may need to clean up previous teams.
Important
If you have scheduler permissions, you can only email or schedule teams for which you are a team leader.
The Scheduling your teams article walks you through the most commonly used process for creating and scheduling teams.
Create a team. Teams belong to service types, so when you create a team, you can schedule those team members to any plan in a service type.
Set up scheduling templates that you can use to schedule team members who serve together regularly. For example, you could have a template with teams that serve the 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month, and another template for 2nd and 4th Sundays.
Schedule people to plans. Import your templates to the plans that you want to schedule people to. If you have open needed positions after importing the template, add people to those needed positions.
Send notifications. Email people that you've scheduled to notify them of their assignments.
Tip
Use the matrix to schedule more than one week at a time.
Get help and support
Any time you have questions, Planning Center's support team is here to help! Use the ? question mark icon in the toolbar to open the Help and support sidebar.
From here you can:
Search online documentation for an instant answer to your question. The toolbar also suggests help articles based on the page you are currently viewing.
Access getting started resources or jump into Planning Center University (PCU). You can also connect with other Planning Center customers in the customer communities and see what's new by checking out the changelog.
Connect with a support agent for one-on-one help. You can email them directly from the toolbar, or schedule a phone call if you prefer.
Depending on which Planning Center product you're using, you can also contact support directly from the corresponding mobile app:
Services/People: Tap your profile icon in the top right, then tap Help to access help articles or open a ticket with support.
Check-Ins: Tap the ⚙️ settings icon in the bottom right, then tap Contact Support to open a ticket with support.
Music Stand: Tap the menu icon (three horizontal lines) in the top left, then tap Help to access help articles or open a ticket with support.
Organization administrator requests
The following Support requests can only be made by organization administrators:
Data removal or corrections you can't make yourself (undo old CSV imports, iCal imports, etc)
Gain access to anything that was created and managed by someone else in the account
Restore or fully delete a canceled account
Request access to Giving (if there are currently no Giving administrators in the account)