Coordinate your services more effectively by using chat to communicate with your teams. Start a chat to stay in touch or communicate about specific plan details!
Tip
In addition to the Services mobile app, Services teams can chat using the Church Center mobile app or the toolbar in any Planning Center product they can access.
Anyone with Services scheduler permissions or higher can start a conversation with any team. Everyone else will only see the chat icon once they’ve been added to a conversation and can only contribute to those conversations.
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Team members can see their current team's chat.
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Only those scheduled for a plan can see a plan's conversation.
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If someone has a prepared notification or declined a request to serve, they will be excluded from plan chats.
Important
Children under 13 years old cannot see the chat icon or receive chat notifications. For more information, see the Planning Center privacy policy.
You can start a conversation in the Services mobile app from any screen or within a plan.
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Select the 💬 chat icon at the top of the screen.
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If you have multiple accounts linked, tap the church's name at the top of the screen and select which church you want to chat with from the dropdown.
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Tap New Conversation to start a chat.
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Select which teams you want to converse with from the teams you lead. Select More teams to choose a team you don't lead.
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(Optional) If there are future plans for the team(s), use the toggle to filter by plan to choose a specific plan.
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Tap Start conversation.
To start a chat with your team(s) directly from a plan:
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Select a plan from your My Schedule page or from the Plans tab (if you have access).
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Select the Teams tab.
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Tap the 💬 Chat button.
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If you only lead one team on this plan, you'll go directly to an empty chat for that team. Tap Send a message to start the conversation.
If you lead multiple teams on this plan, you'll go to the New Conversation page. You can adjust which teams to include by tapping on a team name and selecting the checkboxes on the next page. All of the teams you lead will be selected by default.
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Once you've selected the team(s) you want to include, tap Done in the top right.
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Tap Start conversation.
Filter your chat view to focus on particular conversations.
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On the Chat page, tap the filter button in the top left.
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Select one of the four filter options:
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Choose All my teams & plans to include conversations for all your teams and plans.
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Choose All my groups to include conversations for all your groups.
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Select a team to filter to conversations for that selected team.
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Select a group to filter to conversations for that particular group.
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Depending on your role, you can rename, freeze, mute, and delete a conversation from the Conversation details.
Select a conversation from the Chat page and tap its name at the top to manage it.
People with scheduler permissions or above can manage conversations they've created with other teams or conversations created by someone else. Here are the ways a conversation can be managed:
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Tap a conversation's name to edit it.
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Select the Mute toggle under Settings to mute the conversation for yourself.
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View who is involved in the conversation by team or plan.
Important
If there are children 13 or under on the team, leaders will see a reminder that those children will not see the chat. They will see those names on the list for reference only. Scheduled viewers will not see the names or reminders about these children.
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Swipe left on a conversation on the Chat page and mute it or mark it as unread.
Team leaders and conversation owners can manage conversations in the following ways:
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Tap a conversation's name to edit it.
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Select the Freeze toggle under Settings to freeze the conversation. When a conversation is frozen, only leaders can reply, but anyone can still react to it.
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Select the Mute toggle under Settings to mute the conversation for yourself.
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Choose Delete conversation to permanently delete the conversation for everyone.
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View who is involved in the conversation by team or plan.
Important
If there are children 13 or under on the team, leaders will see a reminder that those children will not see the chat. They will see those names on the list for reference only. Scheduled viewers do not see the names or reminders about these children.
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Swipe left on a conversation on the Chat page to mute it or mark it as unread.
Chat participants who are not scheduler level or above can manage conversations for themselves in the following ways:
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Select the Mute toggle under Settings to mute the conversation.
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View who is involved in the conversation by team or plan.
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Swipe left on a conversation on the Chat page to mute it for yourself or mark it as unread.
Reply, copy, or react to each message. You can also edit and delete your own messages.
Important
Anyone can edit or delete messages that they create. To moderate and protect team members, team leaders and conversation owners can also delete messages that others post.
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Hold down a message to select an emoji or edit, copy, or delete the message.
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Tap the ⊕ plus icon to use your device's camera or to select an image from your photo library.
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Select the ⚡️ lightning bolt icon to search for a GIF to share in your chat.
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Tap the reactions on the top corner of a message to see a summary of the emoji reactions.