Have you ever wished for an efficient way to plan worship services using your data in Realm? We understand ministries’ challenges in streamlining worship planning, including scheduling volunteers. That’s why we’re excited to introduce our latest integration between Realm and Planning Center Services!
Our integration with Planning Center Services provides a game-changing approach to worship planning, ensuring you can leverage the power of Realm while efficiently managing all the details of your worship services. This integration focuses on data consistency, allowing you to effortlessly transfer profile information from Realm to Planning Center, eliminating the hassle of double-entry.
Key Benefits for Your Ministry
Our integration allows a one-way sync of profile data in Realm to Planning Center People. Whether it’s syncing profiles from Volunteer Teams or a Groups Participant List, you can now add individuals to Planning Center for worship planning directly from Realm.
Effortless Transfer of Data: This integration allows for transferring important profile data, including contact name, phone number, email address, gender, and date of birth, to Planning Center People.
Automatic Sync: Enjoy the convenience of a one-way sync that pushes profile data from Realm to Planning Center every two hours, ensuring your information is always up-to-date.
Sync Details: From a list of individuals, you can view if they have been synced to Planning Center. When someone from your list is synced, Realm will not push their profile in Planning Center again, eliminating the risk of duplicate profile records in Planning Center.
Streamline Worship Planning: Create a cohesive solution for worship planning with the ability to schedule volunteers synced to Planning Center People.
Turning on the Realm and Planning Center Sync
To begin using the integration, you must have administrator rights in Realm. Here’s how you turn on the integration with Planning Center Services:
Log into Realm → From the Ministry Hub Menu, click Settings → Additional Features → Click Learn More next to Planning Center → Click Link a Planning Center Account.
Note that on this setup screen, you can view a video walking through the steps to link your Planning Center account.
Next, you will log into your Planning Center account. Once logged in, you’ll be asked to allow Planning Center People to obtain data from Realm. You are then redirected back to the Realm settings page for Planning Center.
Stop Syncs to Planning Center
If you ever desire to stop syncing profiles to Planning Center, you can do this by going to Settings → Additional Features → Planning Center → Edit Settings → Click on Stop Sync to Planning Center.
Manage Synced Profiles
You can manage all synced profiles from the following areas:
- Settings → Additional Features → Edit Settings → Manage Planning Center Sync Profiles
- Profiles → Synced To Planning Center
Each option will take you to the same list of sync profiles.
From this list of synced profiles, you can:
- View details about who’s been synced to Planning Center and the Date Last Synced.
- Manually search for profiles and add them to this list to be synced upon the next automatic push.
- Manually force profiles to be synced to Planning Center or stop the sync of a profile.
How to Sync Lists from Realm to Planning Center People for Worship Planning
Realm has a robust volunteer management tool that allows you to recruit, schedule, and communicate with your volunteers. But we’re taking it one step further with this new integration! Here’s how you can sync individuals from a Volunteer Team or Groups Participant List in Realm to Planning Center:
Volunteer Management Sync
To sync a volunteer team, you will need to:
Click on Volunteers in Realm → Serving Teams → Select a serving team → Roster → select all or specific individuals → Select Action → Edit Sync to Planning Center.
A pop-up will show you profiles that will be synced to Planning Center. Note that you can only sync 50 profiles with Planning Center.
On this screen, you will also see their current status (Not Synced) and what it will be once you click Make Change (Synced). After clicking on Make Change, you will get a confirmation of how many profiles will be synced to Planning Center.
If anyone on this list has already been synced to Planning Center People, you will see Before–Synced and After–Synced, and they will not be synced to Planning Center again.
A great thing about this integration is that as information on a profile in Realm is updated, the automatic sync to Planning Center, which automatically happens every two hours, pushes those updates to Planning Center People.
Stop Sync to Planning Center
The Stop Sync option allows you to stop sending updated information on a profile in Realm to Planning Center. For instance, if someone stops volunteering on your worship team, you may no longer want to sync their data to Planning Center and, therefore, may choose to stop the sync. The profile will remain in Planning Center, but Planning Center will no longer receive updates from Realm for that individual. You must go into your Planning Center People account to remove the profile from Planning Center.
Groups Participant List Sync
To sync a Group’s Participant List from Realm, you will need to:
Click on Groups from the Ministry Hub Menu → All Groups → select a group → Participants → select all or specific participants → Select an action → Edit Sync to Planning Center.
The exact steps for syncing profiles from Volunteer Teams in Realm will apply from here. You can see who has or has yet to be synced to Planning Center, Sync, or Stop Sync.
Unleash the Power of Realm and Planning Center Services Integration for Your Worship Planning
This powerful integration equips your ministry with streamlined worship planning that eliminates the hassle of double entry, giving you the tools to schedule volunteers and create worship plans seamlessl
About Lily Oliver
Lily joined the ACST team in 2020. She worked six years at a large church in Atlanta, GA, as the Business Systems Analyst. Lily understands the mission and challenges of the church. She spent her time in ministry utilizing Realm to help solve those challenges. She is passionate about helping our Ministry Partners leverage technology to fulfill their mission and grow their ministry impact.
