How to use Planning Center Groups Sync

Please note:This article describes how Joyned/Planning Center Groups syncing will function once sync has been activated. For information about how to prepare your organisation for a Planning Center Groups Sync, see this page.

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How does Planning Center Groups Sync work?

Planning Center Groups Sync creates a private chat Community on Joyned for each Group in your Planning Center organisation and automatically keeps its details and member list in sync. This should make the practical process of adding someone to your group as simple as inviting them on Joyned, and will allow anyone in your group to invite new members. 

Once the sync has been activated, any new members added to the Joyned chat Community will be asked to consent to their information being shared to Planning Center. 

Any group changes made on Joyned will be instantly updated on Planning Center. However, due to technical restrictions within Planning Center’s platform, changes made on Planning Center may not be instantly updated within Joyned. So if you don’t see your Planning Center changes reflected in Joyned right away, check back in a few hours. 

How does membership syncing work? 

The sync function matches people up using their email addresses. 

This means that if you add an existing group member to Joyned and their email address does not match the one listed on Planning Center, it will create a duplicate member. For information on how to remove duplicates, click here. 

If you’ve created a group member in Planning Center and they have not received a Joyned invitation within a few hours, make sure their email address is correct in Planning Center. Once their email address has been updated, a Joyned invitation will be sent to the new email address within a few hours. Otherwise, you can always invite them to your chat group directly within Joyned, but please note that this will create a duplicate member within your Planning Center group, which you will then need to remove.  

Updating group details

All group information (including the group name, description, and events schedule) can be updated within Planning Center. These updates will then be automatically reflected on Joyned within a few hours. 

It’s not currently possible to edit group details or delete your group’s Community within the Joyned app, so these changes must be made on Planning Center. 

Deleting or archiving a group

If you want to delete or archive a group, you will need to do so within Planning Center. Once a group has been deleted/archived, it will be automatically removed from Joyned within a few hours.  

It’s not currently possible to archive or delete a synced group Community within the Joyned app, so these changes must be made on Planning Center. 

Adding or removing group members via Planning Center

All members added to Planning Center will automatically be invited to join the group’s chat Community on Joyned. If the "confirm removal" sync option is not set and they decline the Joyned invitation, or if it expires (after 21 days), they will be removed from the group members list on Planning Center. 

Members may be deleted at any time from either the Planning Center member list or from the Joyned Community by a group leader/owner. If a member is deleted who has not yet accepted their Joyned invitation, the pending invitation will also be deleted at this time. 

To add/delete members within the Joyned app, see this article. 

Permissions syncing

In a Planning Center Groups Joyned chat, optionally any member can invite people to the group, but only the community owner can delete or adjust the permissions of other group members (the default can optionally be changed for all synced communities). 

Group permissions are also synced – i.e. if someone is a group “Leader” on Planning Center, they will be a group “Owner” on Joyned. The Community Owner can also assign Joyned's standard permission levels to other Community members at any time.

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