GC Office

Planning Center is our main church database with different modules for tracking attendance and giving, event registrations, church calendar and more. People is at the core of Planning Center, tying all of the different modules together.

***NOTE: If you have a personal log-in for Planning Center, when you are done using Planning Center for the day remember to Log Out. Everyone who needs access should have their own login information.

When using People it is very important that items are entered accurately, using correct spelling and punctuation. Transposing a number or misspelling an email could mean that we lose contact with a person.

Here are some basic functions of Planning Center People:

To search for a person use the magnifying glass in the top right of the screen. This will open the search box. Enter the first couple letters of their first name, then a space, then the first couple letters of their last name and wait for their name to pop up. If they don’t appear check to see if something is misspelled.

People Overview: https://pcopeople.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/360000037388-Getting-Started#

How to Add a Person: https://pcopeople.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204462540

Lists are groups of people based on certain attributes. We have shared a few lists with you to get started. These won’t be editable except by the person who created them, however you can duplicate a list and then change the rules if you aren’t getting the desired result, or create your own!

Use Lists to Find Groups of People: https://pcopeople.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204462530

Workflows are a series of steps to help us communicate with people, ensuring that no one slips through the cracks. If you need to regularly communicate a message to a group of people or an individual, workflows are great for organizing.

Clicking the Workflows tab will show all of the cards that have been assigned to you across various workflows. From there you can

After completing the action listed on the card you can add a note and the complete the step to send them to the next place in the workflow.

Here is more detail about how to use Workflows: https://pcopeople.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/212268708

Using the Schedule a Meeting link above will take you over to Jeff’s “calendar”. He has listed multiple free times each week when he can take meetings. Ideally people would schedule meetings during those times, but often people have work schedules or other needs that make that inconvenient.

When someone calls in to schedule a meeting please start by offering one of these times:

These options will appear on the calendar if available, if not they will not appear.

If someone needs to schedule a time outside of those hours, get their email address and a couple of times they are available, plus an idea of what the meeting is about and Jeff will reach out to them.

Text in Church and MailChimp do most of the heavy lifting in our communications strategy. Text in Church allows us to send group text messages to a select group of people and also can perform automations that walk people through a process. Our guest follow up automation has more than 10 contact points and runs in the background for a month after someone attends our church.

How to Add People and Send a Message:

https://help.textinchurch.com/en/articles/657361-1-text-in-church-overview-video

People Overview (Especially the videos “People Overview”, “Adding a New Person”, and “Editing a Contact”)

https://help.textinchurch.com/en/articles/644143-2-people-overview-and-tutorial-videos

Messaging Overview:

https://help.textinchurch.com/en/articles/644330-4-messages-overview-and-tutorial-videos

Attendance Information is collected by the Sound Person and recorded on a sheet to the right of the sound and lighting board.

When you have the Attendance Number go to https://check-ins.planningcenteronline.com/events

Click Sunday Mornings, navigate to the correct date and then select Headcounts in the Left Column. Enter the Number in the Adult Srvc box.

MailChimp and Text in Church do most of the heavy lifting in our communications strategy. MailChimp allows us to create beautiful custom emails that attract attention and drive next steps. These emails can be automated, and email addresses can be collected by creating a landing page.

To get started go to: https://us2.admin.mailchimp.com/campaigns/

Find the most recent GC Weekly email and click the arrow next to the View Report button. Select the option to Replicate.

On the next page under the Content section click “Edit Design”

Make changes by clicking on a section which opens it in the right column. Pastor Jeff will send you a note for the introduction. After editing click Continue in the top right of the screen.

In the Content section there is a link to Send a Test Email. Please have someone double check the email for spelling errors and correct information!

When everything looks good click Schedule in the top right and set the date for Thursday at 3:00pm.

The Next Steps Launcher is a way for us to streamline information on a Sunday Morning. It allows us to direct everyone to the same URL (gcmoseslake.org/next) and provides a list of links that make it easy for people to submit prayer requests, give online or register for an event.

To add or delete items from the Next Steps Launcher, follow the directions here: https://n2help.nucleus.church/article/341-step-1-build-your-launcher