Communication is core to building relationships and running effective teams. That’s why we want to bring the conversation to where you are already doing ministry — all over Planning Center!
We recently brought chat to the Services mobile app so you can get your teams on the same page and talk about specific plans. We also added a ton of new features to chat for Groups on Church Center.
Now you can also chat with your groups, teams, and plan members from anywhere in Planning Center on the web!
How does it work?
Click on the fancy new chat icon in the toolbar.
In this drawer, you can see all your conversations with your groups, teams, and service plans. Conversations from the Services mobile app and Church Center app will be included here!
You can click on any of them to jump into the conversation, read messages and respond. Chat communications from here will send push notifications to the Services and Church Center apps respectively to keep the conversations connected.
Just like the Services and Church Center mobile apps, the chat experience on the web has a ton of features to keep people engaged and connected, including:
- Read status: Visual indicators to tell you how many people have seen and read your messages.
- Typing indicators: A great way to see who is actively typing in the conversation.
- Video sharing: Upload videos from your device to share (currently has a 50MB limit).
- Link previews: Links from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other providers get great inline previews. Additionally, you can play songs from Spotify links directly in the conversation!
- GIFs: With the Giphy integration, you can share all those funny 🤪 and serious 😑 memes to make the conversation more fun!
Who can chat?
New Services conversations can be created by those with scheduler or higher permissions. New groups conversations can currently only be created from the Church Center app (group leaders and members), but will be coming here to the Planning Center toolbar soon. Everyone else will only see chat in the toolbar once they’ve been added to a conversation or can start new conversations. Per our privacy policy, children under 13 will not be able to read or participate in any conversations.
Why is this in beta?
Chat across all Planning Center is brand new, and we have some additional features and polish we are still working on. This includes: Creating new group chat conversations, some message read indicators/interactions, and more! We’d also love as much feedback as possible on what’s working vs. what could be improved while we are in this beta phase.
It’s chat-tastic!
💙 Planning Center