Planning Center

Connect a church's Planning Center to post Services teams and People updates into channels, and show its calendar in Missived. Missived only reads Planning Center.

Before you start

• Plans. Available on the Ministry and Business plans. Self-hosted servers have every feature on.
• Who. The Manage integrations permission (Owners, Admins, or a custom role that grants it).
• One Planning Center per org.
• A Planning Center account that can see the church's Services, People and Calendar. What Missived can see is exactly what that account can see.

Missived never changes a plan, a person or an event in Planning Center.

Connect

Open Org Settings → Integrations → Planning Center, then use one of these:

• Connect with Planning Center. Sign in to Planning Center and allow access. You come back to the Integrations page, connected. This button appears only when the server's operator has registered a Planning Center application; on the hosted service, ask us at [email protected] if you don't see it.
• Use a personal access token instead. Always available. Signed in to Planning Center as the account above, open https://api.planningcenteronline.com/personal_access_tokens, make a token, and paste its Application ID and Secret, then choose Connect.

The connection line then says Connected, how you connected, and who connected it. If Services or Calendar says the account can't see it, give the account access in Planning Center and try again.

On a phone you can see what's connected; connecting and changing posts is done on a computer.

Post Services teams

Choose Post Services teams and fill in:

Choose Start posting. The current week's teams post at once.

Each plan gets one card, headed "Who's serving …" with the service type and the plan's title: who's serving in which team and position, who has confirmed (✓) and who hasn't yet (?), the service and rehearsal times in the church's time zone, and a link to the plan. Its footer sums it up, for example Planning Center Services · 12 confirmed · 3 not yet · 1 position open.

When the team changes, a reply goes in that card's thread (+ Eve (Keys), ✓ Sam (Vocals) confirmed, ✗ Jo (Drums) declined). Before the first service, the reminder lists who still hasn't confirmed and how many positions are open.

Post People updates

Choose Post People updates and pick:

• New people added to Planning Center: posts "New in Planning Center: name".
• Who joins or leaves these lists (up to 5), such as Volunteers or Small group leaders.
• Posts into and an optional Name.

A list's first read is the starting point; changes after that are posted. Planning Center refreshes smart lists on its own schedule. Lists over 1,000 people are watched for their first 1,000.

Only names are posted: never emails, phone numbers, addresses or birthdays. Pick a channel the right people can see.

Church calendar

Under Church calendar, tick Show Planning Center Calendar events in Events, My Calendar and calendar subscriptions. The church's approved events then appear, read-only:

• in Shifts → Events, marked "From Planning Center";
• in everyone's My Calendar;
• in the Events calendar subscription (Google, Outlook, Apple).

Only events published to Church Center is on by default, so room bookings and staff-only events stay in Planning Center. Untick it to include every approved event. Pending or rejected event requests never show. Sync now reads the calendar at once.

How fast changes arrive

• With webhooks: when the server's operator has turned them on and the server can be reached from the internet, Planning Center tells Missived about changes and they show within seconds. Everything is also checked hourly.
• Without: Services and People posts are checked every 15 minutes, and the calendar every 30.

The Integrations page says which applies, for example "Changes arrive within seconds (Planning Center webhooks), and everything is also checked hourly."

Manage your posts

Each set of posts comes from its own bot and has Pause / Resume, Check now, Edit and Remove. Recent checks shows what each check did and what it posted. An org can have up to 10 sets of posts.

Disconnect stops everything, forgets the credentials, and removes the calendar events from Missived. Messages already posted stay.

Every change appears in the org's Audit log, without credentials or names.

What data moves

• To Planning Center: only read requests for the service types, plans, teams, lists, people and calendar events your posts use. Nothing about your Missived members is sent. With webhooks on, Missived subscribes to only the events its posts need; the subscriptions show under the connecting account in Planning Center.
• Stored in Missived: the token or sign-in credentials (encrypted; never shown again, logged or audited); what each set of posts remembers between checks, such as the last team of each plan and the members of each list (encrypted, because it names people); and the approved calendar events while the calendar is on.
• Posted: names, teams, positions and confirmation status, and event details. Never contact details or birthdays.

Limits

• One Planning Center per org; up to 10 sets of posts.
• Services: up to 10 service types per set, 1 to 14 days ahead, a reminder 0 to 72 hours before.
• People: up to 5 lists, each watched for its first 1,000 people.
• Missived stays inside Planning Center's own rate limit and backs off when Planning Center asks it to.

Troubleshooting