It has been about 8 months since we have launched Planning Center Online and I am amazed to see God working so powerfully through my life and through this company. We launched at the Purpose Driven Worship Conference and since then we have had over 1000 churches sign up! And the reaction that I am getting from everyone has been nothing but positive. Thank you so much, I really appreciate every single one of you guys and I hope that my work is enabling you to be able to do more effective ministry. But with all of this success comes some necessary change.
For the past 6 years I have worked as the Director of Creative Technologies at Southwest Community Church in Indian Wells, CA. It has been a great learning experience, a lot of fun and I have had the best co-workers! But exactly 6-months after the initial release of Planning Center Online I submitted my resignation so that I may fully focus my attention on Planning Center Online. Now to help my church transition I have gone down to a part-time employee for a couple of months so that we can work on implementing some new systems so, for now, I am working at Southwest Tuesdays & Thursdays and spending the rest of my time on Planning Center Online.
With this new time I hope to be able to get caught up on some accounting (yeah taxes) and documentation. ;-) You should also see regular updates to the site about once a month accompanied by a Planning Center Update, which I will again be mailing to the administrators of all accounts. Well, with all of that out of the way onto the updates:
Matrix
Added Hide Songs
Added Hide Other Items
Will not create a new row unless item shows up in more than two plans
Custom Properties
Now each Custom Property can be assigned to a Ministry Group
Custom Properties now have a separate management page
Plans
Added Ministry Frequency of "None"
Added Ability to specify times for a scheduled person
Added ability to add up to 10 plans at once
Attachments
Added Ability for viewers to click on a song name and stream song when Protect MP3s enabled
Added Ability to stream Scorch files
Songs
Added CCLI Reporting (enabled from the "my account" page)
Added ability to remove used songs or to just hide them
In the next week I will be adding some more tutorial videos about these new features and also creating a 15-20 "starter" video that should help people who are brand new to Planning Center Online.
Again I want to thank you for being with me this last year and if you have any questions or comments please feel free to e-mail me at jeff@ministrycentered.com.
In Him,
Jeff Berg Owner/Developer Ministry Centered Technologies