Planning Center News

  • By Aaron Stewart

Lyrics, Chords and a Little More

First of all, let me start of by wishing you a happy new year! Now that the best and busiest season for churches is over and you can breathe again, we decided we should reward all your hard work with the first PCO update of 2011!

Lyrics & Chords 2.0

Planning Center’s built-in Chord Chart transposer (on any Song Arrangement page) has gotten a big update and has been renamed “Lyrics & Chords”. The obvious addition is extended support for lyrics. If you put in lyrics with chords, Planning Center will make a chord chart PDF and an optional lyrics only PDF. If you input lyrics without chords,  you’ll only get the lyrics PDF.

We’ve also rewritten our chord transposer to allow mid-song key changes and to permit any chord in any key.

In addition, we now support the Chord Pro format which allows you to attach chords directly to syllables for more consistent output. Type your chords between brackets right within the lyrics and use the new line preview to see exactly how it will print.

Planning Center also recognizes common song section headings and will apply special formatting. [Verse] or [Chorus] for example.

If you use our advanced “Attachment Types” feature, you can also link any attachment type with Planning Center’s new Lyrics PDF, Chord Chart PDF, or Capoed Chord Chart PDF. The site owner can do this from the site settings page by editing Attachment Types. This allows you to have the Capoed Chord charts, for example, only appear for people scheduled to the Acoustic Guitar position.

Song Sequence

For each song arrangement you can now specify a sequence which is visible from plan view and is a new print option. In plan and print view, many of the sequence sections are abbreviated (Verse 1 becomes V1). You can also add your own custom sections at the bottom of the list.

For any of you wanting to add the sequence to your custom reports, use item.arrangement.sequence, and use item.arrangement.lyrics to add the lyrics.

Sequences aren’t linked with our Lyrics & Chords feature, but we hope to do some fun things in the future. :)

A Little More

In the midst of all these other changes, we’ve also squeezed in 2 more. Until now, anywhere you did a search for a person, you had to had to type it “First Name, Last Name” or just “First Name”. Now you can also use “First Name Last Name” and find the person you are looking for even easier. We’ve also added the ability to filter by permissions from the main people page.

Our Team

And now an exciting announcement (for me at least) that has nothing to do with new features. I (Aaron) have been working part time for Planning Center since I helped Jeff start it over 5 years ago, but my full-time job was as the Music Director for Central Christian Church in Las Vegas. As of January 1, I’ve swapped those roles and am full time with PCO and part time with my church. It was a difficult decision, but I’m very excited to continue to be deeply involved in music ministry at Central, while being available to put more time and energy into the development of PCO.

Speaking of new team members, we are looking for an awesome Ruby & Javascript Developer, so if you want to join me and the rest of our amazing team, click the blog post for more info.

Only the Beginning

That about does it for now, but there is an even bigger update right around the corner that I can’t wait to roll out, just ask my friends Neo, Morpheus and Trinity. :)

2010 was a great year for us at PCO. We gained some great new team members, added tons of new features including Planning Center Music Stand with our first iPad app, and made Planning Center even more powerful and easy to use by redesigning half of the site. We love helping your ministry be on the cutting edge of technology & organization and look forward to pushing it even further in 2011!

Aaron Stewart
Product Manager
planningcenteronline.com

134 comments

Lachlan Grant #permalink

“That about does it for now, but there is an even bigger update right around the corner that I can’t wait to roll out, just ask my friends Neo, Morpheus and Trinity.”

Something about the new ‘Matrix’ beta…? =P

    ministrycentered #permalink

    :)

    anne schweitzer #permalink

    this is exciting – I am fairly new to the administration of the music ministry here at our church, but this upgrade informs me that there is A LOT left to learn about what PCO can do!! God’s blessings to you all!

    Lisa Murray #permalink

    I am very excited to learn all this wonderful new music upgrades.Looking very forward to working with all of you .May God Bless You All !!!

Cedric Israel #permalink

That is all very cool. Is there a way to show on video how these features work with making chord charts?

    C.J. maurer #permalink

    I would agree very cool, I just would like to see a tutorial that can walk me through the basics of the lyrics and chords. :)

Travis Jones #permalink

These updates make me very happy! Does that make me shallow?

You’ve made my day!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    If you’re shallow, then I am, too. :)

Karen McGough #permalink

Hello,

Love the updates as I have been putting my own sequencing in under the lyric and text notes box … so thank you for that!

I am using MusicStand as well in worship with my iPad and will look forward to the lyric only update.

One request from me … the iPad app for MusicStand REALLY needs the pinch and spread option … sometimes there is a chart that is difficult to read due to the size font that the original file was saved in … Thanks and God Bless!

Karen

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Glad you like the changes! As for your MusicStand request, we’re actually working on that already!

Brian Butcher #permalink

I love the new “song sequence” function. When I view it on my printed service schedule it abbreviates everything except instrumental. Can I change a setting to abbreviate instrumental when printing?

Thanks again for all your work in creating this ministry enabling tool!!!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    There’s no way for you to change it, but we are going to change that to abbreviate to Inst later tonight. Thanks for the suggestion!

bkwestman #permalink

This looks great! With the new lyrics feature, am I also able to now search songs by Lyrics? I would love to be able to find all the songs with the word “heaven”, for example.

Thanks!
Barry Westman

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We didn’t think to allow lyric search, but we think it’s a great idea and it will be available later tonight! Thanks for the suggestion!

Mark Henri #permalink

That was impressive. I dropped a chart in for Lead Me to the Cross that I’d done in a text editor (fixed pitch font) and it made a really nice version of it in PDF format. I liked the headers and additional information like BPM, Key, arrangement short hand.

Mary Ann Riedell #permalink

Have you considered using Jing to create mini slide shows for those of us that are visual learners? If you are not familiar with Jing, it allows you to talk behind slides or screen views. It works through most media players. We are using it at the community college level and the students are providing very favorable responses.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Thanks for the suggestion, we’ll look into that!

    Philip Stancil #permalink

    Another great Powerpoint alternative is SlideRocket.com. It provides for a very media-rich presentation platform.

Mark Henri #permalink

OK, I see an interesting thing when adding a chart. It only offers major keys. It would be nice to have minor keys offered. Of course, I’d love it if modal keys were offered (Dorian, Mixolydian, etc) because some of the songs we do use them (for example, Revelation Song which is in the key of C mixolydian that is, F/C). As it is, I would need to enter that song in F major even though it starts on C and looks like it’s in C. Does this make sense? Since I play guitar and sometimes improvise on the tunes, I need to know the actual modality of a song.

Jeff Brumley #permalink

Great new features. Well executed.

How difficult would it be to have page numbers on the charts?? Currently if we have a multi-page chart I have to write the page numbers on by hand. The headers look the same on each page so it’s very confusing for everybody…

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We’re working on adding on page numbers at this very moment. Thanks for the suggestion!

Aaron Doerr #permalink

Amazing! I won’t need to crack launch Sibelius for much anymore but really complicated charts and scores. You guys are an instrument God has used to release so many overwhelmed Worship Arts ministries. Thank you!

Aaron Doerr #permalink

Um. I just meant ‘launch’ in the last post. I was going to write ‘crack open Sibelius’, but decided to change it to ‘launch’. Forgot to delete ‘crack’. Not sure what a ‘crack launch’ is, but I can assure you I’ve never crack launched anything.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    I personally use Finale, so I always thought Sibelius users had to crack launch it. ;)

    Tony Johnson #permalink

    I was wondering if “crack launch” was some hacker affect on a program, lol. Thanks to the Aarons for a nice laugh.

Travis Jones #permalink

Question: I’ve been experimenting with a chart, and I like to use the “|” character to create bar lines. It works by putting it in brackets. The only issue I’m seeing is when I insert a bar mid-word it adds a space (which doesn’t happen when you just add a chord).

So when I do this:
As we humbly pro[|][G#m]claim, [|][B/D#]You are amazing [|][E2]God [|] [|]

I get this:
|G#m |B/D# |E2 | |
As we humbly pro claim, You are amazing God

Almost perfect … but I’d like for “proclaim” to not have a space in it.

    Travis Jones #permalink

    The formatting actually works in the chord chart editor (not in post above)

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Thanks for that suggestion. That’s happening because you have two tags next to each other. We’re working on a solution right now. Most likely you’ll need to add the bar line in the same bracket with the chord when you have them next to each other. [| F] Hopefully that will work by tomorrow.

Chase Gassaway #permalink

We write custom arrangements and charts for all of the songs we use. How can I keep the Planning Center version of the charts for showing up on the attachments? It is making things more confusing for my band. I just need to upload the attachments we use, nothing more or automatic.

AaronT #permalink

Love all the updates! Thank you!

Can I make one recommendation? When I go to edit “Lyrics and Chords,” the default key is A-flat. Can you make it so your default key is a key people actually use? ;) Like have the drop-down menu start with G! Little things like that make life so much easier

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Great suggestion! We just ran a query and found out that the most common key in PCO is actually G, so we’re going to do exactly what you’ve asked and default the chord charts to G. That should be changed by tomorrow. Thanks!

    Bill #permalink

    I’ll bet a keyboard player set the default to Ab :)

Jeff #permalink

Awesome, as always, guys. Can’t wait to see what’s next!

As a Planning Center Online user, there’s one thing I constantly wish I could do. While I’m scheduling music, I often need to ADD a key at the last minute. It would be great to be able to do that from the song information box on the Plan page, instead of drilling down to the song page, then to the arrangement page. You can currently CHANGE the key, but you can’t ADD a key.

FWIW…

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Thanks for the suggestion, that’s a great idea. We’ll definitely consider that for the future.

Roger #permalink

Love you guys! This is good stuff. I’ll begin utilizing these new features immediately!

Tim Vandlen #permalink

What would be the possibility of adding “Key Change” as a selection in the Sequence choices.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We’re considering allowing custom sections right now, and will probably add that soon. Thanks for the suggestion.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We’ve updated Song Sequences to allow custom sections. Enjoy!

Perry Ross #permalink

Love the new features. In the text on chart and lyrics, anything that is a contraction shows up with a weird code in place of the apostrophe. Is there something I am doing wrong?

Also it would be awesome to show page breaks when creating the chart so you know where the page ends on multiple page charts.

Thanks again!

Perry

J.J. #permalink

You guys are great! I love that you continually support the product. I love your announcements and the updates!

J.J. #permalink

Suggestions if I may (Tat is if I didn’t miss it):
Would it be possible to be able to print the sequence on the chord sheets (Maybe just under the header? Or what I generally do is put them at the very top right and have it go from top to bottom arraged vertically. That way while performing the music its easy to glance to where to go next. And it is out of the way at the top right, as few songs use that space, and the width of the sequence abbreviations would be only 4 char max (I think). And then with a light grey background… That would be amazing!

Just a thought.. THanks again you all are amazing!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Yeah, I think you just missed it. The sequence prints right under the header. Easiest fix ever. :)

Brian Osborne #permalink

Keep ‘em coming! PCO just keeps getting better and better :)

Thanks for all the hard work you put into it!

Cameron #permalink

Thank you for being a company that models what the church should do: continuously looking for ways to improve and be more effective. You took an already awesome product and made it even better. Thanks for your dedication.

Rick Biordi #permalink

Love it…Thanks! Keep up the great work!
God is Good!

Wayne #permalink

Are these new updates for all accounts or only for paid accounts? We have a free account and was finding it difficult to access the new sequence feature. Thanks.

Wayne

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    These features are available to all accounts. Make sure you are in a song arrangement (not just a song), because the song sequence feature is only available as part of song arrangements. If you have any questions, please feel free to email our support team at support@ministrycentered.com

Jonathan Mills #permalink

Hey Aaron:
Thanks for listening to our requests! We really appreciate your hard work as it makes our work more streamlined and efficient.
Jonathan
p.s. Still waiting for the Blackberry app. ;-)

Jon Carey #permalink

Love the new Sequencing feature… thanks for adding it!

Shaun Hughes #permalink

Any possibility in adding the ability to create custom sequence section names? Sometimes I find myself using names like Post-chorus, Pre-bridge, among other awkward titles.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We’re discussing adding that right now and it looks probable that we will soon. Thanks for the suggestion!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We’ve updated the Song Sequences to allow custom sections. Enjoy!

marina #permalink

These changes will rock my little “volunteer chart editor” world! Thanks so much!!

Josiah Oslund #permalink

I like that “Jingle Bells” is the song used in the sequences screenshot:).

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Haha, someone noticed! I use my church’s account for testing, so I needed to use a song that I was pretty sure no once cared about. :) Also, I knew there were no copyright issues, either.

Kevin Cooper #permalink

The new chart features look great! Just one thing, though…. It seems to generate the PDF with a single column even if I specify 2 columns.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Thanks for pointing that out, we’re working to fix it now.

chris #permalink

Hey guys – great new features. The song sequence bit is especially great in our context.

Question regarding that, though…once I’ve entered the sequence into the song arrangement, is there then a way to re-arrange the sequence when entering it into a plan? I didn’t see a way to do that, but perhaps have overlooked it.

(Example: If I want to just do a simple V, Ch, Ch arrangement, or just sing the chorus of a song, rather than the full on default sequence).

Thanks!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Glad you like it! Right now the only way to do this would be to create a new arrangement so you can make a new sequence. We want to allow sequence overrides in the future, but that is going to require some interface and database tweaks that will require quite a bit of thought. Thanks for the suggestion!

Donald Van Slyke #permalink

The Sequence notes don’t appear in our modified custom reports or on the service flow cover sheet. I’m sure there is some code I need to add to the custom report so that it prints the sequence along with the other notes.

Thanks for these additions!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    You will need to add {{ item.arrangement.sequence }} where you want the sequence in your custom reports. As far as the cover page, we’ll work on adding that in there.

Jameson #permalink

These look like great features! But how about something as simple as being able to view “Sent” mail? When’s that roll out?

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Viewing sent mail is on our list of feature requests but requires some big behind the scene changes to the way we send emails. I’m not sure when this will be available, but probably not any time soon. For now, I’m sure you know, but if you remember anyone you sent the email to you can see it in their received email box.

Brett #permalink

These are some great updates! Thanks for your hard work!

One question, when there is a part between a chorus & a verse, I usually call that a “turn”. Which sequence label would be the equivalent of that? Can you add “turn” to the choices?

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We’re probably going to add the ability to add custom sections pretty soon. Thanks for the suggestion!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    You can now add custom sequence sections!

Daniel Cowan #permalink

Hey! I’m so thrilled with all the PCO has done and is doing.

Is it just me, or has the new Lyrics and Chords editor started rendering apostrophes strangely?

I’m getting

Letâ€TMs.join.in.with.the.sound
Câ€TMmon.letâ€TMs.sing.it.out

in my PDF (NOT in the editor, just when I open (download) the PDF.

-Daniel

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    The apostrophe issue should be fixed by tomorrow. Thanks for the heads up!

Kevin #permalink

I love the new chord chart creation feature, but it seems to insert an additional space between lines that really eats up the real estate on the page quickly. Any way to make it single spaced by default? That way if we want more space we can insert a return.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Thanks for pointing that out, we’ll be removing that today.

Dane #permalink

I don’t know much about the Chord Pro format but I would love to see a distinction for lines of non-lyric text to be added. In the past my church has used all caps to fool the utility into thinking it was chords therefore achieving a bold distinction. But what about another type of bracket or semicolon to create a line of italicized text?

Furthermore, it would be helpful to have a check box to include or restrict this non lyric text from lyric print outs (we find out lyric printouts are actually more helpful for our video team than our vocalists, but folks should be able to choose.)

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Thanks for the suggestions. As far as bold and italic text, you can enclose text in tags to make bold or italics.
    This text will be bold
    This text will be italic

    Unfortunately, there is a bug in the system today that disabled that feature, but we we’re working on a fix right now. I’ll also see if there is a way to add the other stuff you requested, but I’m not sure.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    well, it seems the blog actually made the text bold instead of showing you the example. :) What you do is start with an open . Then put any text you want bolded or italicized. Then close the tag with .

    So without the spaces (hopefully this works)
    text in bold

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    okay, one last try!

    <b> This text in bold </b>

Dane #permalink

Occasionally we add a chord in parenthesis to signify a bass or keys only movement. We also use these to distinguish when a chord is used perhaps only on the third repeat of a verse. We also use it to show that the last chord of a section is the same chord as the first of the next section and they happen in the same place in time (this really helps when sections of the song recur in a different order and those chords are needed in both sections)

When on either side of a chord, could parenthesis not break that chord’s status? Currently a chord in parenthesis will not appear blue in the preview and loses it’s bold quality in the pdf output.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Thanks for the suggestion. Because some more complex chords can actually use parenthesis, it makes it harder for us to account for them using the scenario you brought up. But if you put spaces before and after the chord name between the parenthesis, it will work. [( C#m )] That will make the chord recognize and be bolded.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    You should be able to use your parenthesis normally now!

Dane #permalink

We’re loving the precision of the chord placement, but I’m getting extra (empty) lines after each line of text in the PDF output. Am I doing something wrong?

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Nope, you’re doing everything right, it was just an oversight on our part. We’ll have that fixed very soon. Thanks for pointing it out!

Cathy Wilson #permalink

Question; when getting a notification about a vocal scheduling and you decline; But then 1 week later your schedule frees up and you are available for the vocal date in question. How do you back to PCO and change the decline to accept? It seems that I cannot go back on the calendar to dates that I am not scheduled to do a vocal. Help please. Thank you.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    The only way to do this is to manually email your ministry leader to let them know you are available. Planning Center doesn’t allow changed from decline to accept in case that position had already been filled.

Jeff B #permalink

Any suggestions on how to do slash chords? I’ve tried
[G][/][B] and [ G / B ]. The first has no spaces (good) but breaks up the words underneath; the second keeps the words but adds spaces.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Well, they should have been working, but I think we forgot to include that in the new ChordPro format. We’ll fix it sometime today and you will be able to use [G/B]. Thanks for pointing that out!

Lindsay Ward #permalink

Thanks for the sequences – it’s something I asked for a while ago, that we could store the sequence with the song so it gets remembered properly. I’d love to see more options for that, though – mainly to fit with a church’s existing protocols (like PC for Pre Chorus) and trying to fit the sequences in a shorter amount of space (ike PC instead of PreC, and the option to remove the commas, and put in repeats like B*3 instead of B, B, B). Here’s a full song example:
Current: V1, V2, PreC, C, V3, V4, PreC, C, B, B, B, C, C
Desired: V1 V2 PC C V3 V4 PC C B*3 C*2

As you can see, the desired sequence list is shorter (fits on the page without line breaks) and contains no less information.

My original suggestion was just that you have a custom text field that is stored with the song and copies to the plans, but is then editable on the plans (maintaining the ‘master’ with the song). That would solve my problem and the one asked about earlier for custom sequences without having to create other arrangements. I think this would still be possible and good to do as well as upgrading the sequence idea, which I understand will be tied to other functionality.
Thanks!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Thanks for the comments. We are definitely trying to improve our sequence functionality and appreciate the ideas!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    You can now add custom sequence settings and should be able to do most of what you were wanting. We still hope to add plan sequence overrides in the future.

    Lindsay Ward #permalink

    Thanks for adding the custom sequence items. I can now replace PreC with PC, but none of the other changes are possible – e.g. no commas or multiples like B*3 (unless I make one sequence item called “B*3″, which doesn’t seem ideal).
    Are there plans for more flexibility along these lines?

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We do have plans for more flexibility in the future, but I don’t have any specifics yet. By the way, I believe we changed the default abbreviation of pre-chorus to be PC, so that should work.

Rick #permalink

Um, yeah… so my visual arts team is going to love you guys. They’ve been complaining about the pesky chords in chord charts getting in their way of copy and paste set up in ProPresenter. :)

Rick #permalink

I’m having trouble transposing mp3 files now… is that feature down for any specific reason?

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    I just tested the mp3 player and it seems to be working. If you are having problems, feel free to email support@ministrycentered.com

    Rick #permalink

    I Attached an mp3 file to a “Key” of a song, then there’s supposed to be a “wheel” button that pops up that enables me to transpose the audio file to another key. That is not popping up for me though.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    4 icons should popup when you hover over an mp3 attached to a key. A listen icon, the transpose gear, the edit pencil, and the delete x. If those icons aren’t showing up for you, please email support@ministrycentered.com

Laura Commins #permalink

I love the new song sequence option. Is there a way to add the term TA or Turnaround to the list? Other then that everything is great!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We’re working on giving you a way to add any of your own custom sections. Thanks for the suggestion!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We’ve just added the ability to add custom sequence sections!

Jarret Heaston #permalink

A couple of questions…

I haven’t read all of the posts above, so forgive me if you have already addressed these things.

#1 – Is it possible to edit the header so that the copyright info doesn’t just stop and give you a (…)?

#2 is there any way to make the chords a different color so that they are easier to identify?

Thanks!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Sorry about that copyright info, I’ll look into that. As far as chord colors go, they can’t be in color, but they’re in bold to help distinguish them. Thanks for the suggestions.

Lynn Gordon #permalink

Would you please post a tutorial on how to use the Lyrics and Chords?
I’m used to typing them out myself….would love to have a timesaver!
thanx! ><

Matthew Starner #permalink

I love the new changes – actually, I’ve loved all the changes along the way too!

I do have a request: I love the option to print lyrics. However, when I print my PDFs, I get both lyrics and chord charts. Is there a way to tell the system to print lyrics if a singer is printing the PDFs or chords if it’s an instrumentalist? Most of my people use the “Print PDFs” function and I can see them getting frustrated with double copies of everything. It could be as simple as a function of the roles – for instance, when creating a new role, there could be a check box asking if this role needs chords or lyrics. If there is a person scheduled for both an instrument and a vocal part (a guitar player who sings, for example) the instrument part would override the vocal part as far as the PDFs. Just a thought – I’m sure there’s a better/easier way.

Keep up the great work!!

Brad Overton #permalink

Currently when you print a plan, songs print blue and items print black. Any way to be able to select color fonts for items (like red)? We could use it to highlight items that are different from the normal flow of a service or transition points of the service that would help you be able to quickly look at the schedule on stage and find your spot.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    There’s no way to do that other than creating a custom report and changing the CSS to specify colors. If you decide you need to do that, you can email support@ministrycentered.com if you need help.

Joel #permalink

In two column mode I used to be able to do a manual column break with PAGE_BREAK, but now it does an actual page break. Is there a way to add a manual column break?

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    We are working on adding COLUMN_BREAK that will give you this functionality back. Sorry it broke!

Kevin #permalink

There seems to be some sort of glitch. I input the chord chart for The Museum’s “My Help Comes From the Lord” which is in the lovely key of Gb! However, the capo 2 and capo 4 charts are not transposing correctly. In many places, the enharmonic equivalent is used which is really confusing (ie. Db instead of C# in the key of E). Anyone else running into this?

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    I’m not sure what’s going on there but I’d love to check it out. I tried to find your account but it seems like you have many. Can you email support@ministrycentered.com and let me know your organization ID (located at the very bottom of any plan in light gray) and copy this message?

Rick Bird #permalink

Great updates! One question though, how can I get the song sequence to show up in PCO Live? We used to put our sequences in an item note and have that item set to show as a column and that seems to make the item also to show in PCO Live, but sequences don’t seem to show up, it would be REALLY helpful for everyone using Live to see the sequence.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    I’ll add that to our list of things to add. Thanks for the suggestion!

mathew #permalink

WOW! Great Stuff! I have been longing for these features!

Tony Johnson #permalink

Great stuff- I haven’t used PCO in quite awhile, so forgive me if I’ve forgotten or missed something. Would be nice to be able look at a song and assign it to a plan from that song’s page.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    You can’t do that yet, but there will be an upgrade in the next couple of weeks that will accomplish that same thing, just in a different way.

Trevor Stinson #permalink

Any plans for customizability regarding how the song orders display? I have a strong preference for using simply “P” for pre-choruses. It saves space and is less confusing than “PC”. (e.g., V, PC, C, C—there are three “C”s, but only two choruses. V, P, C, C is easier to read)

I would also like to be able to remove the space in “V 1″, “V 2″, “V 3″. Once again, it’s a waste of room that only makes the order more difficult to read.

I do appreciate this update, as it will save time once I’ve updated the database. I’m just hoping to make the feature display something a little closer to what I had been typing or copying into the notes field each week.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    You can’t change the display properties of any of the predefined settings, but if you want new sections, you can add new sections and just call them the abbreviations you want…PC for example.

Trevor Stinson #permalink

Two more questions:

1. How can we set display properties for custom song sections (such as Chorus = C, soft Chorus – C*)?
2. Can we delete custom song sections?

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    You can’t change the display properties of any of the predefined settings, but if you want new sections, you can add them in as the abbreviation. So just add a section called sC if you need that.

Jason Chollar #permalink

Any chance of MS Trebuchet Font being added?
I have hundreds of chordcharts in this font and they don’t line up in other fonts.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Sorry, we can’t add any fonts that aren’t available on all computers. One of the few limitations of web technology.

Gideon Breidegam #permalink

The html tags for bold and italics seem to turn off in the lyric sheets as soon as they encounter a bracket(e.g. when I put a chord in the middle of a word), and as well they don’t seem to continue past the first line they are used in. is there any way to resolve this?
It says in the blog post you can use bracketed tags for Verse/Chorus etc. for formatting as well, but I don’t seem to be able to get this to work, which is why I was trying the html formatting. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks for everything, this is a wonderful addition.

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    That sounds like it might be a bug on our end. If you email support@ministrycentered.com with this information and tell us what song and arrangement you are working on, we’d be happy to look at it and see if we can fix it for you.

    Gideon Breidegam #permalink

    Actually, I realized that it seems to be more of a problem in the preview formatting than in the final pdf output from the lyrics & chords.

Ken Granger #permalink

Love the updates! In my eagerness to experiment with them, I created a couple of custom sections and now would like to change the names. Doesn’t look like I can do that or delete them, either. Will this be an option or is it already and I’m missing it?

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    You can delete section from your sequence by hovering over them and clicking the red x, or by dragging them out of the box. Once there are no more of that custom section, if you refresh the page, your custom sections will be gone, but you do have to refresh. Unfortunately, you can’t change the names of your sections, but you can delete them and make new ones. I’m glad you are liking it!

Tony #permalink

Hey, I’ve been using planning center for over a year and it’s overall marvelous! However, the new chord chart format is creating some problems for me when it comes to identifying chord quality. For instance, when I input a Cma7 for a C major seven chord or Cmi, which is the best way to denote a minor chord, the chord comes out as not bold, and then doesn’t transpose to other keys since it is not recognized as a chord. The old format dealt with these symbols perfectly, which is why I was surprised when opening up Charts that used to be correct and now aren’t!

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    Sorry about that. We’re looking into it for you. I know you have a lot of charts already complete, but in the meantime, you can use Maj or min.

Ken Granger #permalink

Ah, I see. Thanks.

Roxanne #permalink

Hi everyone!

When we orginally started using PCO, we set it up as Berthoud Worship. We have now changed it to Grace Place Worship.
The problem that I am having is, that only people that have been enabled as a Scheduler and above, can see Future Plans, (which in their personal page will show when they are scheduled). As an Adminstrator, I can see everything of course. So I looked at Future Plans in each person’s personal page, and it says Berthoud Worship. Does that have anything to do with them not being able to see Future Plans? Is there a way to change it to Grace Place Worship if so. My main objective is so everyone can see when they are scheduled for the quarter.

It would be great to have a calendar that goes out at least a quarter inside PCO. I’m I missing it? Or if that is not possible, at least on their personal page. Right now, when I look at the calendar, even as an Adminstrator, I see about a month in advance of when I am scheduled, a quarter would be great at a glance.:)

You guys have made our lives as worship leaders and schedulers, sooo much easier! Thank you!!!

Roxanne

    Aaron Stewart #permalink

    It looks like you have a folder in your account called “Future Plans” and inside that folder is a service type called “Berthoud Worship”. The name of that service is not what is causing you any problems, but you can easily change it by editing the properties of that service type. Here’s an article from our help about editing service type properties. http://help.planningcenteronline.com/spaces/planning-center/manuals/planning-center/lessons/6983-Editing-Or-Deleting-A-Service

    I’m not sure about what you are talking about when you say future plans. Is that the folder you’ve made, or just plans in the future. If you’d like more help, please email us at support@ministrycentered.com and let us know more specifically what the problem is. Who is a specific person who can’t see something, and what exactly is it you think they should be seeing.