Song Manager is a good looking tool that meets a more specific need – organising songs and developing set lists. Here’s an introduction:
Obviously Song Manager doesn’t share the same functionality as Elvanto or Planning Center Online, but if your church doesn’t need help with rostering, but does need help with getting your music team/s organised, this could be a handy tool for you.
Using Song Manager is pretty straightforward.
Step 1. Create a database of all songs, and apply tags (e.g. praise, Jesus, confession, etc).
Step 2. For each song, you can add author details, copyright details, the key and lyrics and chords.
Step 3. You can then create a set list from any of the songs in the collection:
Step 4. Then, you can export the list in 4 different formats – for PowerPoint, PDF, Song Sheets and ProPresenter slides:
It is primarily a tool for managing music and assisting musicians, and doesn’t include the additional rostering functionality that you’ll find with Elvanto and Planning Center Online.
Some of the extra features SongBook brings to the table are:
2650 songs already loaded and ready to use,
the ability to generate PowerPoint slides,
view songs by service (e.g. Sundays at 9.45am), and how many times the song has been sung in a given time period,
the ability to create user accounts (e.g. for musicians and worship leaders at church)
It’s also possible to add in other elements to a set – i.e. you could use SongBook to create a basic service structure for your services:
SongBook costs US$15 per month (i.e. $180 per year) for fewer than 200 people. See the pricing for other account structures.
If you use SongBook I’d be keen (and so would other readers) to hear of your experience.
I’d go out on a very short limb and contend that many churches are like mine – using Excel spreadsheets for their roster. I’ve been reviewing a number of different rostering tools, but I’ve also thrown Google Docs into the mix. Google Docs offers a more ‘share-friendly’ version of a spreadsheet that I thought might work for churches.
The way I envisage Google Docs working goes something like this:
Step 1. Set up the roster in Google Docs.
Step 2. If you like, you could add multiple sheets (e.g. with the contact details of the people in the roster so they can organise their own swaps).
Step 3. Share the roster with other people. Google Docs makes this easy, and allows you to create different levels of access – e.g. people can edit or view the roster. The people you share the roster with don’t need a Google account to access it.
Step 4. You can set-up notifications to let you know when changes are made to the roster. Also, as the roster administrator, you can easily send out an email to all the people on the roster (e.g. if there’s been a change).
Obviously this tool doesn’t come close to the functionality of Elvanto or Planning Center Online, but for more basic needs (or for churches with no budget), this could do the trick.
The Google Docs Template Gallery has hundreds of roster templates, but I couldn’t find any specific to church. Perhaps if your church has a good template you could upload it and share it with others!
The review of church rostering tools continues – today it’s Elvanto. Here’s a quick video to give you an introduction:
There are a couple of things I like about Elvanto:
How easy it is for people to accept/decline a rostering:
How easy it is for people to submit details of their unavailability:
I also like the ability when creating a song to add it to the ‘songs to learn’ list:
I had three small issues.
The first relates to timings – and it’s a small gripe. Service ‘call times’ (e.g. the time of Bible reading in the service) can only be set at 5 minute intervals. Most of our songs, welcome, even Bible readings would go for less than 5 minutes, which makes the timings a bit inaccurate.
To be fair, the service order functionality will soon be revolutionised. I contacted Ben from Elvanto and he explained:
“In regards to creating an order for a service, at the moment this is not a feature within elvanto. However, it is something I am planning to implement very soon. I am hoping sometime in August to have this complete. It will allow you to add the order of a service and also access it via an iPhone, iPad, Laptop or Computer during a service replacing the need for runsheets. I’m really excited about this.”
The second relates to the ‘print service’ function. There’s a link to ‘print service’, but the page that prints doesn’t include details of anyone serving on that service:
Thirdly, when I logged-in as a person I’d rostered, I could that I was rostered onto the service, but I couldn’t see what I was rostered on for:
Compared with Planning Center Online, Elvanto has less features, but is also less complex to use. However, for most rostering and service building purposes, Elvanto ticks the right boxes.
If you use Elvanto, I’d be keen (and so would other readers) to hear of your experiences.
As I’ve been looking at, and tweeting about tools to help with rostering, I keep hearing good things about Planning Center Online. Both PCO and Elvanto have the most professional (read: attractive and accessible) websites of the tools I’ve been reviewing, so I’ve been keen to check it out.
There are a lot of impressive features included in Planning Center Online. I could write about them, but this introductory video will give you a good feel for how PCO could be used to help streamline service planning and scheduling at your church:
One of the key features that I’ve been looking for in a service building/roster application is the ability to easily schedule people to particular roles within a service. Currently this is a very time consuming process. PCO has some good tools to help with this process:
For a system like this to work, it needs to be easy to use – not just for the administrators, but also for the people being rostered on! PCO has put together a video tutorial to help volunteers learn how to use it:
As an iPhone user – and with an increasing number of people at church with iPhones – I like the fact that there is an iPhone app to access Planning Center Online, on the go. Plus (and this really is a luxury!), they’ve got a tool to enable you to use your iPhone or iPad as a music stand. You can also check out this app at the iTunes store.
In terms of pricing, there are four different accounts to choose from, starting at US$14 a month. For a church like mine, with 5 service types, we’d be looking at $US49 a month. Obviously it’s more expensive than an Excel spreadsheet, but there could be significant time savings if this were adopted and used to its full capacity. A free, 30-day trial is offered to give you a taste of the product.
This really does look like an impressive product.
If you use Planning Center Online I’d be keen (and so would other readers) to hear of your experience.
I don’t have a PC so I can’t trial this application out. However, according to its website, SmartRoster allows you to:
Define your Events – repeating daily, weekly, monthly, annually or at adhoc intervals
Define your Roles – linking them to events and setting their properties such as how many people for each role/event combination are required
Enter your People – setting their absences, preferred serving frequencies, and relationships, preferred events, and possible roles – or import them using the powerful import function
Create association preferences, such as who prefers (or must) be scheduled together or apart
Schedule them manually using the powerful and intuitive drag and drop interface
Finally hit the AutoFill key and watch as SmartRoster fills all the remaining vacant slots, and optimises the schedule according to your preferences
Create reports using many different built-in formats, using SmartRoster’s own viewer to see the output before printing, exporting to MS Word®, adobe pdf format (great forpublishing on your web site), or even as tab-delimited data into virtually any other program
Distribute your reports via email – SmartRoster was the first such program to be able to automatically create personalised reports (with a person’s name highlighted) and forward to each person’s email address
Create daily individualized email reminders of who is required in which duties
Automatically share your data over a LAN or by internet-connected PCs at completely different locations – even across the world!
In terms of pricing, there are numerous pricing options, but to give you an idea, a 5-user pack is AU$295.
