Planning Center

Connecting Planning Center brings your Planning Center Services and People into WorshipMetrics and keeps them up to date. The import only reads from Planning Center; nothing in Planning Center is ever changed.

Where to find it

Go to Settings > Planning Center (in the Integrations group). It works the same in the web app and in Tech Manager, because the connection lives in the cloud.

Connect Planning Center

1. In Planning Center, create a Personal Access Token at api.planningcenteronline.com (the Personal Access Tokens section). Copy its App ID and Secret.
2. In WorshipMetrics, go to Settings > Planning Center.
3. Paste the App ID and the Secret.
4. Click Connect & import.

You see "Connected as (your Planning Center account). Importing your Services now…". The first import starts straight away; plans appear in Plan > Services as they land, and the card counts what has come over.

What comes over

• Services: every Planning Center service type becomes a Service here, in the same folders, with its plans, order-of-service items (headers included) and times. Songs in a plan arrive as items in its Order; your Planning Center song library is not imported.
• People: everyone active in Planning Center People, with contact info, household, birthday and photo. People you already added here by hand are matched by email instead of being duplicated.
• Scheduling: serving teams and positions, who can serve where, who is scheduled on each plan with their confirmed, pending or declined status, open positions (imported, but not shown on the plan screens; see "Open positions from Planning Center"), and blockout dates.
• History: a one-time background import of all your past plans and who served on each. The card shows "History import running in the background" with a count; it is safe to leave and picks up where it stopped.

How syncing works

1. After the first import, WorshipMetrics checks Planning Center again every few minutes by itself. Blockout dates refresh about once an hour.
2. To check now, go to Settings > Planning Center and click Sync now.
3. Click Full re-import to fetch every plan again even if Planning Center says it has not changed.

The card shows when it last synced. Each check looks at each Service's newest plans; older plans come in through the history import.

Choose which Services to import

1. Go to Settings > Planning Center.
2. In What to import, untick a Service to stop importing it.
3. Read Stop importing this Service? and click Stop importing. Its imported plans are deleted from WorshipMetrics, except any plan holding your own work (slides, cues, notes, attendance, run history and so on), which is kept.
4. Tick it again any time to import it again.
5. Click Import all, including future ones to go back to importing every Service, including ones you add in Planning Center later.

Editing imported plans and people

• Plans and items: a change you make here stays until that same detail is changed in Planning Center; then Planning Center's version replaces it. Items you add yourself to an imported plan are kept.
• People: when a person is changed in Planning Center, their name and contact details here are replaced with Planning Center's. If you archive an imported person here, they stay archived until they change in Planning Center.
• Someone removed or deactivated in Planning Center is archived here if they have any history in WorshipMetrics, and removed if not.
• Serving answers: requests imported from Planning Center are answered in Planning Center. On People > My Schedule they show Answer this in Planning Center instead of Accept and Decline, because an answer given here would never reach Planning Center.

Open positions from Planning Center

Planning Center's open positions are imported, but WorshipMetrics does not show them. On a plan imported from Planning Center, a position that came from Planning Center shows only the people Planning Center scheduled: no "N needed" count on the plan's Teams tab or in the Matrix, no needed number to change, and the Matrix never calls that week full. On Plan > Services the plan's chip says "N scheduled" instead of Team full (or only "N not notified" while someone you scheduled in WorshipMetrics hasn't been told yet), and Needs attention leaves those positions out. Check Planning Center for its open positions. Teams and positions you create in WorshipMetrics keep their counts, even on an imported plan.

Emails and imported people

The import never emails anyone, and WorshipMetrics never emails anyone about an assignment Planning Center made. Whoever scheduled the person sends the emails:

• An assignment imported from Planning Center is marked Scheduled in Planning Center (a small PCO mark on a plan's Teams tab and in the Matrix; the full label on People > My Schedule and a person's profile). Planning Center sends its request, reminders and changes; WorshipMetrics sends none of them.
• An assignment you make in WorshipMetrics gets WorshipMetrics' request email when someone presses Send on the plan's Teams tab or in the Matrix, and reminder emails once the person accepts (if they have an email address), even when the person and the plan came from Planning Center.

Settings > Planning Center says the same thing in one line. There is no setting for it: the rule follows each assignment.

Move your scheduling into WorshipMetrics

There is nothing to switch on. Stop scheduling those plans in Planning Center and schedule people here instead, from the plan's Teams tab or the Matrix. Assignments made here get a WorshipMetrics request when you press Send, then reminders; anything still scheduled in Planning Center keeps its PCO mark and stays Planning Center's to answer and remind.

To stop WorshipMetrics reminders for the people scheduled here, go to Settings > Organization, turn off Send serve reminders in Serve reminders, and click Save reminder settings. For one person, untick Email under Reach them by on their Serving tab in People > People.

Disconnect Planning Center

1. Go to Settings > Planning Center and click Disconnect.
2. Confirm Disconnect.

The stored token is deleted and syncing stops. Everything already imported stays in WorshipMetrics, and Planning Center is not touched. Anyone in your church can disconnect.

Remove imported data

This deletes what the import brought in. Only the church owner can do it.

1. Go to Settings > Planning Center and find Remove imported data.
2. Click Remove service data (plans, service types, teams and their schedule), Remove people data (people and households) or Remove all data.
3. Read the list of what will be deleted and what will be kept.
4. Type the phrase exactly, in capitals: REMOVE SERVICE DATA, REMOVE PEOPLE DATA or REMOVE ALL PCO DATA. Then click the button.

Anything you created here yourself is not touched. Imported plans holding your own work, and imported people who have signed in or whom you keep records about, are kept and unlinked from Planning Center. Every removal also disconnects Planning Center. This cannot be undone.

Troubleshooting

Problems with the Planning Center connection:

"Stored connection can't be used"

The saved token can no longer be read. Click Disconnect, then connect again with a new App ID and Secret.

"Last sync reported: …"

Planning Center refused or failed part of the last check. Make sure the token still exists in Planning Center, then click Sync now.

A Service or plan is missing

Check that the Service is ticked in What to import. Older plans arrive with the history import, which can take a while. Try Full re-import.

"Only the church owner can remove imported data"

Removing data is limited to the church owner. Anyone can Disconnect, which stops syncing and keeps the data.

"Nothing was removed — the confirmation phrase did not match."

Type the phrase exactly as shown, in capital letters.

The remove buttons are greyed out

An import is running; wait for it to finish, or it would import the data again. A button is also greyed out when there is nothing of that kind left.

Good to know

• Imported plans show a PCO badge in Plan > Services.
• Fix duplicate people in Planning Center while connected. Two imported people are never flagged as duplicates here.