Planning Center Updates: What's New This Spring 2025?

May 2

Staying up to date with updates and new features in Planning Center plays an important role in the success of your church and ministry processes. New features bring new and exciting opportunities to your staff and teams. But often, a new feature or update can cause your processes to change, and your documentation or instructions must be updated. In these update articles, I’ll summarize the key updates released during the last quarter and highlight how these changes can benefit your church staff and congregation.

This quarter's updates involve various aspects of the Planning Center suite, from enhanced security measures and more granular control over permissions to improved communication tools and a more customizable user experience. Let's jump into what's new.

1. Communication Enhancements: Amplify Your Outreach

Text In Church Integration (February 21, 2025): This add-on allows you to send personalized text messages directly within Planning Center using a Text In Church account. This integration streamlines communication, making it easier to engage with congregants through their preferred channels. Text in Church joins Clearstream with a deep integration add-on in People to enhance your texting capabilities. (Read more here)
Scheduled Text Messages (February 25, 2025): You can now schedule text messages to be sent at optimal times using the built-in text options in People, providing timely communication without the need to send messages manually. This feature will be handy for reminders about events, classes or meetings. (Read more here)

2. Data Management Improvements: Streamline Your Records

Global Permissions Management (March 10, 2025): No more switching between apps to assign permissions! A centralized option to manage user permissions across all Planning Center applications directly from the user’s profile is now found under the Action menu. (Read more here)
Primary Address Column (March 4, 2025): The People quick lists now include a primary address column option, which provides staff with quick access to address information, which is essential for mailings and visits.(Read more here)
Improved Note Category Management (January 13, 2025): An update to permissions in note categories now allows for better management of note categories for Admins. (Read more here)

3. Event and Scheduling Features: Orchestrate with Ease

Keyboard Shortcuts for Calendar Power Users (March 6, 2025): The Introduction of keyboard shortcuts in Calendar makes for faster navigation and task completion within the app for staff managing events. (Read more here)
Start Week on Monday in Calendar (January 6, 2025): This update allows staff to customize the start of the week in Calendar, which will help you to sync with organizational preferences for event planning. (Read more here)
Redesigned tags page with Church Center filters in Calendar (February 24, 2025): Now, it's easier than ever to set up categories that help congregants find the events they're interested in and help admins see which tags are public-facing and which are not. (Read more here)

4. Child Check-In Enhancements: Nurture with Precision

Milestone Distribution (January 21, 2025): This update enables location options based on a child's developmental phase, allowing for age-appropriate classroom assignments and customized locations outside of age/grade options. One example is the scenario of crawlers vs. walkers as an infant milestone. (Read more here)

5. Confidentiality and Privacy: One to One Groups

Confidential Member Groups (February 25, 2025): Staff can now create confidential groups, ensuring sensitive member information is accessible only to admins and leaders, which is vital for support groups or counseling sessions. (Read more here)

6. Dashboard and Reporting: Visualize Your Impact

Shareable Dashboards (February 26, 2025): Custom dashboards can now be shared among staff, promoting transparency and collaborative analysis of church metrics. All metrics have now moved to the Home app. (Read more here)

7. Volunteer Coordination: Empower Your Team

More Control Over Songs & Media Permissions (March 10, 2025):Updated permissions in Services now allow for more granular control over access to songs and media, ensuring volunteers have the resources they need without compromising security. (Read more here)

These updates all aim to improve your team’s efficiency and effectiveness, enabling those teams to focus more on ministry and less on administrative tasks.

Stay up to date

We encourage you to check out these new features and improvements within your Planning Center account. To learn more about each update, refer to the official Planning Center What’s New page and the support documentation available on the Planning Center website. We’ll continue with quarterly updates to keep you informed on these updates within Planning Center.

Jason Silbernagel

Co-founder, Threefold Solutions

P.S. We assist with coaching, training, strategy, and support.

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