Happy Summer! We're in the middle of adding some big new features but we wanted to give you something new in the meantime. With our recent iTunes and AmazonMP3 integration, linking to purchasable versions of songs has become much easier. The other largest source of links people have been using is for videos on YouTube.
Many people link to song videos for rehearsal purposes, videos of their live services for review, or instructional videos. Whatever your purpose, we've added a great new YouTube tab to our "Add an Attachment" box that will allow you to search and link to a video on YouTube. When users click on the link, the video will play right from within Planning Center. In addition, if you add a YouTube attachment to an item on your Media page, the thumbnail image will be shown with that Media item.
All existing YouTube links will automatically be playable right from within Planning Center, so there's no need to take any action to gain this enhanced functionality. If you would still like more control over YouTube links, like custom naming of the links or setting attachment types, you can continue to add them the old way by copying and pasting the link into the "Link To" attachment tab, though once you add them, they'll be treated as new YouTube links with integrated previews!
In other news, we'll be at the National Worship Leader Conference next month in Leawood, Kansas, so if you're attending make sure to come by our booth and say hi! If you're not attending yet, it's not too late to register! It's an awesome conference for Worship Leaders, and they just happen to use our other great product, Smart Events, for their registrations!
We hope the new YouTube integration speeds up your workflow and that you have a great summer! Remember to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on the current news.