Attachement Types

Using attachment types is a great way to make the Planning Center Services experience great for your team.

Enabling this feature will allow you to hide certain files so that each team member only has access to what they need.

But be careful!

Sometimes this feature can cause people not to see the files they need.

This video will walk you through all those details and show you how to use Attachment Types to their fullest potential.

Transcript

Attachment types in Planning Center Services is a great way for you to manage files and make the Planning Center Services experience for your band and your teams the best it can be.

Attachment types allow you to hide certain files from people who don’t need to see them.

In this video, I’m gonna show you how attachment types work, how you can get them set up for your organization and issues that you might come across when using attachment types.

Okay, let’s get into it.

Hey everyone, I’m Joshua, I’m the creator of WorshipResources.church. We help you discover and learn how to use quality resources that will make your church better.

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Okay, let’s get into attachment types for Planning Center Services.

So the very first thing that we’re going to do is make sure that our attachment types are set up.

So under plans, I’m gonna click this gear at the top right and go to services settings. I’m gonna scroll down and I can see attachment types here. And I’m gonna make sure attachment types are enabled for the service that I’m using. We’re gonna use adult worship and they are enabled.

Okay, before we go on, I wanna make sure, you know attachment types should only be used for files that you don’t want certain people to see. So let’s say you have an orchestra and you have all kinds of PDFs for all of your orchestra, flute, oboe, saxophone, violin, etcetera.

Now, you probably don’t want your team to have to go through all of those files to find the file that’s right for them. For instance, the saxophone player shouldn’t have to go through all those files just to find his chart. So that’s where attachment types come in.

You can also use them for specific vocal parts, like if you have recordings for your soprano, alto and tenor parts, you can assign an attachment type to those files, so that they only see the part that they need.

Okay, so I’m here under attachment types, and I’m gonna add a new attachment type for saxophone and I’m gonna make an alias of sax, and I’m gonna click accept.

Okay, so now we have this new attachment type. So now I’m going to go to a song. And let’s look for How Great Is Our God. Hear’s How Great Is Our God, it’s already in our library. And I’m going to add the saxophone part to the key of A.

So here’s Tenor Sax, the key of A. If I click this pencil icon, I can see attachment types to selected.

So I’m gonna drop that down and I can see tenor and saxophone.

Attachment types work based on the name of the file. So if you have a file with the attachment type in the name… let’s say saxophone or a tenor, then it’s going to automatically assign that attachment type to that file.

So you can see that this file has tenor sax. But I don’t want the attachment type to go to my vocal tenor, so I’m going to uncheck that.

I only want it to go to people who are scheduled to play the saxophone. So I’m gonna click Save.

Okay, so now you have to assign the attachment type to the position.

Okay, so I’m gonna go up here to search and I’m gonna search for band and adult worship. Under positions, I’m gonna scroll down and I already have a position for Sax. And I can see attachment types are for Mix: horn, but I’m gonna click on that and I wanna add in the attachment type for saxophone that we just created.

Okay, so now when I go to the song, How Great Is Our God, and I look under the key of A, at tenor sax, I can see that the saxophone is…

Okay, let’s review. I created an attachment type called saxophone, and I gave it an alias, sax. I uploaded a file with the name saxophone in it, tenor sax, and I assigned the position, saxophone to the sax attachment type.

I hope you’re following me. [laughter]

Okay, so now I’m gonna go to plans. I’m gonna go to my most recent plan. And I’m gonna click N for needed positions. First, I’m gonna click teams, and then I’m gonna click the letter N on the keyboard for needed positions. And I’m going to add saxophone.

I need one person to play sax, I’m gonna press N again to get rid of that, and now I’m gonna click on needed positions. I haven’t ever assigned anyone to play sax, so I’m gonna search for Walter, our favorite guy. There he is, Walter Reed. And I’m going to add one.

So now Walter Reed has been scheduled as a sax player.

When Walter gets his Planning Center invite, he’s the only one that’s gonna be able to see the sax PDF. Because I assigned an attachment type to the position Sax. And Then I put Walter in that position. So now Walter is the only one who can see the saxophone PDF.

Unless of course you’re an administrator or your permissions allow you to see all files.

Okay, we’re gonna go to one more song, I’m gonna go back to songs, and I’m going to search for Because He Lives. Because He Lives [Amen], and you can see right here, under arrangement that we have an alto demo, a soprano demo and a tender demo.

I’ve set up attachment types for alto, tenor and soprano.

So when we upload a file that has alto, tenor or soprano in the file name, only those who are assigned to those positions will be able to see those files.

So I’m gonna click the pencil and I can see that there are three attachment types selected, Alto for vocal, Alto, keys and piano.

I have keys and piano selected because both of our keyboardists sing alto, and I want them to be able to access the Alto demo MP3.

Okay, just before we go, let’s talk about if you’re having issues with attachment types.

Sometimes if you have attachment types enabled, you accidentally upload a file that has an attachment type assigned to it, and then someone can’t access the file that they need.

When this happens, the easiest thing to do is to disable attachment types so that everyone can see all the files.

So if you go up to the gear icon, under plans, gear, services settings. Scroll down and then disable. And with one click of the mouse, that will fix your attachment types issue.

However, if you want to use attachment types, the way you can troubleshoot is to make sure they are enabled, just go to the song that someone is having trouble with, let’s say it’s At The Cross.

Mouse over and make sure that attachment types say none selected. None of the attachment types are selected for this file. Then click save.

Once you make sure that all of your files are correctly assigned to their correct attachment types, then you can tell your team… “Sorry about that, you should be able to see everything now.”

Believe me, I’ve had that issue happen more than one time.

Well, I hope this video was helpful to you learning how to use attachment types in Planning Center Services. If you have any questions, put them in the comments below, or maybe you’re using attachment types in a totally different way, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

If you haven’t yet, go ahead and like this video and click subscribe so you don’t miss any of the new content. And I’d love for you to visit WorshipResources.church today, where we help you discover and learn how to use quality resources that will make your church better.

Hey, thanks for watching everybody. I hope you have a great day. If I can help you with Planning Center in any way, just shoot me an email, joshua@worshipresources.church.