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Before I tell you what's new, let me make sure you know what it is! Planning Center LIVE allows you to step through your plans in real time during your service, displaying the current item, description and notes with a timer counting down to the next item. Anyone with access to your plan can load LIVE and see the current status of your service. LIVE records the actual time taken for each element to review later, lets you chat with other users viewing your service and simultaneously watch the progress of a plan in another ministry.

When we added the Planning Center LIVE feature over 5 years ago, we never could have guessed how much use it would get. We figured just a couple of our larger churches who do multiple venues would use it. We were wrong! We have tons of churches using LIVE so we decided a long time ago it was time to redo it.  To do that we needed to change the whole technology stack underneath it. We have spent a lot of time on refining the look and functionality of this part of Planning Center and testing the new technology to make sure it works great. Here is what is new:

New Design

All 7 of our themes including the lowered third views to overlay on video have been completely redesigned.

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Support for iPad & Mobile Phones (iPhone, Android & Pre)

Finally!! The old version of LIVE used Adobe Flash for its real time communication but the new version has removed that requirement. We have also made specific changes to LIVE to make it work perfectly on the iPad and most modern mobile phones including iPhone, Android & Pre.

Watch Several Other Plans

In the previous version you could choose one other service also running LIVE and see its progress. Now you can watch as many services as your screen size allows.

See Who Is Online

Now you can see who is in your church’s Planning Center LIVE Chat Room with you. People who login to LIVE with the chat disabled will not be included in this list.

Pre-service Countdown

Even before you click to start your service, the LIVE countdown clock will be counting down the minutes and seconds until your scheduled start time.

We hope you enjoy this new version of Planning Center LIVE as much as we do! If you are using LIVE at your church, please send us pictures!

Jeff