How the board works
The stage board is a backstage screen that answers two questions at a glance: who is on which position for the service that is running, and where we are in the order of service right now. The serve team sets it up once a week; after that it runs itself. This page is the whole manual — read it top to bottom once, then use the list on the left to come back to a part.
What this is
There are three screens, all showing the same shared board:
The wall Board ↗ in the tab bar
The public display for the backstage monitor. No sign-in, nothing to press. It shows the team and the running order, counts down every item, and steps on its own. Between service days it shows a holding screen with the clock and the next service.
The admin this page
Where the board is built: the roster, who is on this week, the order of service, settings. Behind a sign-in, for editors. The Live tab is the wall plus controls.
The producer’s phone Producer ↗ in the tab bar
The running order sized for a phone, with big Prev / Hold / Next / Go Live buttons. For whoever is calling the service. Behind the same sign-in, for producers and editors.
Everything lives in one shared database in the cloud. Change something here and the wall, every phone and every other laptop show it within about a second. Nothing runs on any one computer — the building can be dark and the next service will still start itself on time.
Getting in
Anyone with the link can look at any of the three screens. To change anything, two things have to be true:
- You have an account. On the sign-in screen choose Create an account — your email and a password. There is a Forgot password link that emails a reset.
- Your email is on the list under Settings → Who can edit. An existing editor adds you there. Until then an account gets a polite “not on the editor list” screen and nothing more.
The list gives each person one of two roles:
| Role | Can | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Editor | Everything — roster, assignments, order of service, settings, the editor list, and running the service. | The serve team lead, whoever sets up the week. |
| Producer | Run the service only: Go Live, Next, Prev, Hold, jump to an item. Cannot change the board itself. | Whoever calls the service from the producer’s phone. |
| Nobody / signed out | Look. | The wall, and anyone curious. |
The pill in the top bar says which you are: Live · editing, Live · producer, or Live · view. If it says Offline, the page is showing its last good copy and nothing you do will save until it reconnects. You cannot remove your own row from the editor list, so the last editor can never lock everyone out by accident.
The week
A service week runs Thursday to Sunday and is named by its Thursday. The regular services are Thursday 7:00 and Sunday 8:30, 10:00, 11:30 and 1:00 (Settings → Service times). The board works out which week it is from the clock — nobody sets it — and rolls forward on its own the moment the week’s last service is over, about ten past two on a normal Sunday.
The pills in the top bar are this week’s services in the same states the running order uses for its items: a service that has run is struck through, the one running is red, the one the board is heading for is amber, the rest are waiting. A special service carries a dot. On this page a pill is also how you pick a service to look at or prep; on the wall and the producer’s phone they only show, and the clock chooses.
Every regular service shares one order of service for the week — they all run the same format — but each keeps its own people, because the 8:30 band is not the 1:00 band.
Finished weeks stay on the board for a while — two weeks by default, set under Settings → Data — so a team can be copied from a recent one. Older weeks are archived nightly, everything they had, and taken off the board. Standing services are never archived.
A normal week, step by step
Done once, early in the week, by an editor. Fifteen minutes when the plan is in Planning Center.
- Order of Service → Upload plan export. In Planning Center open the plan, choose Print, Standard Report, output Web Page, and save the page (⌘S). Upload that file. Review the list it found — items, lengths, who is up — and accept it. One file can set the whole week: the running order, the band and vocals, the pastors on each mic.
- Assign. Pick each service in turn and check the cards. Anything the import placed is already there; click a card to set or change a person. Copy assignments from… clones another service, which is usually the fastest way to fill Sunday.
- Live. Glance at the board beside the running order. It should read the way the printed board used to, with the right names in the right places and a total length that makes sense.
- Walk away. The wall starts each service at its time, steps through the items, and goes back to the holding screen afterwards. Nobody has to touch anything.
The wall
Open Board ↗ on the backstage machine and press F for full screen. That is the whole setup. It needs no sign-in, and it is a display: nothing on it moves the service, whoever happens to be signed in on that computer. While it holds, a small Admin ↗ in the top right opens this page in a new tab, so whoever sits down at the backstage machine can sign in and set up the week with the wall still there behind it.
What it shows on a service day
- Three colour rows — Pastors & MCs (green), Band (amber), Vocals (blue) — with a photo, name and position for everyone on. Only positions somebody is actually filling are drawn, spread across the row, so a week with one electric guitar shows one electric guitar rather than a gap. The rows themselves never move.
- Who is up for the current item gets a red outline and an UP chip. The person giving the message carries a Message tag and goes leftmost in the pastors row.
- The running order down the right: what is on now and who is on it, the countdown for that item, what is next and who that puts up, a progress bar, running time against the plan (on time / 3:00 over / 1:00 early) and the projected end. Item times re-project off the real start, so once you are running they are the times that will actually happen.
- Before the service starts: Service starts in and a countdown. On a service day the board is up from midnight.
The holding screen
On a day with no service the wall does not show a team under a countdown with a day to run. It holds: the logo, the clock, and when the next service is (and its venue, for a special one), over the same background art. An optional line under it — Easter rehearsal Saturday 4:00 PM — is set in Settings → Display.
| When | The wall shows |
|---|---|
| Thursday, from midnight until the service is over | The board |
| Thursday night, Friday, Saturday | Holding screen |
| Sunday, from midnight until the 1:00 is over | The board |
| Sunday afternoon through Wednesday | Holding screen |
| Any day with a special service on it | The board, that day |
| No order of service uploaded for the next service | Holding screen, and it says so |
The look is set under Settings → Display: church name, logo, a background image that sits behind the whole board, and how much to dim it so names stay readable over busy artwork.
Running a service
The Live tab is the wall with controls, and the producer’s phone has the same controls in a bigger shape. Most weeks nobody uses them — see Auto-pilot — but this is what they do when you do.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Go Live | Starts the picked service now, from its first item. Only needed to start early or by hand; the auto-pilot starts it on time otherwise. |
| Stop (the same button while running) | Stops the service. If it was already past its scheduled start, it stays stopped — the auto-pilot will not restart it. A run-through stopped before the scheduled start leaves the real start alone. |
| Next / Prev | Step one item, right now. The item’s clock restarts from this moment. |
| Hold | Your hand on the board. The board stays on this item — auto-advance will not move it — while the clock keeps counting so the overrun is visible. It holds this item only: the next step of any kind releases it, so it can never be left on by accident and quietly stop a later item. |
| Auto | Auto-advance on or off: whether an item steps to the next when its time runs out. On by default. Editors only, because it is a setting rather than a move. |
| Click an item in the list | Jump straight to it. On this page and the phone; the wall’s list is not clickable. |
Keyboard, on this page: Space or → next, ← back, H hold, F full screen.
When a service runs long
Pastors go over. When they do, the next service still starts on time — what shrinks is the gap between them. The running order shows that gap as the turnaround: how long there is between this service’s projected end and the next one’s fixed start. Green over ten minutes, amber under ten, red under five, and if the overrun eats the whole gap it says so outright: Runs 9 min past the 11:30 AM start. The auto-pilot clears a finished service in time for the next one’s pre-roll, so an overrun cannot leave the wall stuck on a service that is already over.
Rehearsals and run-throughs
Press Go Live whenever you like to walk through the plan, then Stop. As long as the scheduled start has not come yet, the real start is untouched and will happen on time. If you stop a service after its start, that is a decision — it stays stopped until somebody presses Go Live.
Auto-pilot
Auto-pilot is what makes this a wall display rather than a control panel. It follows the clock: starts each service at its time, advances every item as its length runs out, and clears back down afterwards. It runs on the server, every fifteen seconds, whether or not any screen is on — and every open screen asks for it too, at the exact second an item ends, so the wall steps on the beat.
- A screen that comes on late picks up mid-plan. Open the wall at 8:47 and it is on the item the clock says, not the first one.
- The service time is the board’s time. Settings → Service times is when the running order starts on the board — ten minutes before the advertised time, to cover the pre-roll. If the first item is a five-minute countdown, the countdown starts then.
- Nothing to run, nothing runs. A service with no order of service uploaded is passed over, and the holding screen says so.
- It is a switch. Settings → Display → Auto-pilot. Off, the board only moves when somebody presses something. Leave it on.
- It yields to a hand. Hold stops it advancing that item. Stop after the start stops it restarting that service. A Next or Prev is honoured and the clock continues from there.
- It can follow ProPresenter. When the ProPresenter bridge is running, the board moves when the operator puts the next thing up in ProPresenter — a song, the prayer or sermon slides, a speaker’s name graphic — and reads Following ProPresenter. The countdowns are still the Planning Center lengths; a song that runs long shows over and waits for ProPresenter. Items ProPresenter never shows (usually the salvation prayer and the benediction) move on by the clock. If the bridge stops, the board is back on its own clock within thirty seconds at most.
The producer’s phone
Producer ↗ is the running order for whoever is calling the service: what is on, who is on it, the countdown, what is next and who that puts up, the list, and four big buttons parked where a thumb already is. Sign in as a producer or an editor. On an iPhone, open it in Safari and use Share → Add to Home Screen; it then opens full-screen like an app. Turn the phone sideways and the “now” block and the list sit side by side.
The phone is on auto-pilot like the wall: its pills show what is scheduled and which service the clock is on, and are not for picking. Tap an item to jump to it. A standing special service is not on the phone unless it is running — it is started from this page.
Assign
Who is on which position, per service. Pick the week (the Thursday date), then a service chip; each chip shows how many positions are filled. Click a card to choose a person: the people who serve in that group are offered first, then Everyone else, with a search box; anyone already on another position in that service is marked. A position nobody fills is drawn here so you can fill it, and simply not drawn on the wall.
- Copy assignments from… clones another service’s team onto this one. Sunday teams repeat, so this is the usual path.
- Clear this service empties every position on it.
- + Special service adds a one-off service to this week — see Special services.
- A mic in the Pastors row can carry several people across a service, and each gets a card labelled with the mic. The speaker goes leftmost.
Roster
The people. Each has a display name (what the board shows — a first name usually), a full name (what the Planning Center import matches against), a photo, and the groups they serve in, which is what the Assign picker uses to offer the right people for a position.
Photos are kept whole at up to 2560 px — sharp on a 4K wall — and shared with every device. After choosing one, drag it to frame it, and zoom if needed: the editor shows the same photo in the wall’s three card shapes (wide for the Pastors row, tall for Band and Vocals), because a face centred in a tall tile can lose its forehead in a wide one. Nothing uploads until Save. A photo marked Low res in the roster is a small copy from an upload that failed — choose it again. Use a bright, straight-on shot, head and shoulders filling the frame; it has to read from across a dark room. Without a photo the card shows initials on a tinted panel.
Order of Service
Importing from Planning Center
- In Planning Center open the week’s plan and choose Print.
- Pick Standard Report. Tick Times, Songs/Items and Item Notes. Under Teams, Add… the Band, Vocals and Pastors/MC teams if you want positions to come through.
- Set the output to Web Page and save the page with ⌘S. (PDF, CSV, TSV, plain text, or the plan text pasted into the box all work for the running order alone; the web page is the one that also carries the team.)
- On this tab, Upload plan export and pick the file.
- Review. Everything it found is listed before anything changes: each item with its length and who it lights, and any positions it can fill. Positions are unticked by default, because every service already has real people on it. Accept, and it replaces the order of service.
What the import reads, and what the export needs for each (the same guide sits under the upload button):
| It reads | From |
|---|---|
| Items and lengths | Every plan row. One with no length is flagged in the review so you can set it — the board steps straight past a 0:00 item. Song keys come from the title badge. |
| Band and vocals | The team list: each scheduled person is placed by what their position means (Electric Guitar 2 → Elec 2, BGV → VOX, Keys → Keys) and matched to the roster by name. Declined people are skipped; unconfirmed ones marked. |
| Pastors and MCs, per service | The section headings, with the mic in brackets and a day or service split: CLOSING- Thursday Pastor Tate- Sunday- Pastor Tate 1-2- Pastor Howie 3-4 (MC2). Every item under the heading lights that person in those services. The MESSAGE heading’s name becomes the speaker. |
| Song leads | LEAD: Alana or LEAD: Alana & Charli in the song’s description. Leader, Vocal, WL, Co-lead read the same. |
| Anyone else up on an item | A line in the item’s description starting UP: — groups, positions or people, comma separated: UP: Vocals, MC 2. Worship team or everyone means band and vocals. |
The Live plan link field at the top takes the Planning Center plan’s web address, saved for everyone, so anyone on the team can jump to it from here. The board still takes its order of service from the import — Planning Center does not let a browser read a plan directly.
Editing by hand
The table under the import is the order of service itself. Every cell edits in place: the title, the type (pre-service, worship, media, host/MC, message — it colours the item), who is up, and the length. Start times are worked out from the picked service’s start, so they change when a length does. Drag the ⠿ handle to reorder, + Add item for a new one, and the × removes one. The heading says whose order of service you are looking at: the week’s, or a special service’s own.
Who is up
Every item carries a flag: who the board lights while it runs. The Who cell opens a picker. Groups (everyone in Vocals) and single positions are one tick each, and ticks add up — the benediction can light MC 2 and every vocalist.
A shared mic in the Pastors row is a grid of the people on it against the five services, because that is where the answer changes through the day: the same closing is one pastor’s on Thursday and at the 8:30 and 10:00, and another’s at the 11:30 and 1:00. A cell is only offered where that person is actually on the mic that service. A whole row ticked means wherever they are on that mic, so the flag follows them if Assign later adds them to one more service; a partial row pins the exact services.
On the message item the grid gains a Speaker column. The person ticked carries the Message tag on the wall and goes leftmost in the pastors row. Tick two when the preacher changes through the day; each service shows whichever of them is actually up in it. With nobody ticked anywhere, the first person the message item names is the speaker.
Special services
The regular services repeat every week. A special service is one date — Easter at another venue, a Friday worship night with a guest speaker — with its own order of service and its own people. Add one on Assign (+ Special service) or under Settings → Special services: a name, a date, the time the board starts counting, a venue if it has one, and which regular services it stands in for that week. Easter is the whole church in one room: tick all five and that week is Easter alone. A Friday night alongside the weekend: tick none.
Once it exists it is one more service in its week, everywhere: a pill in the bar with a dot, a chip on Assign, its own import target on Order of Service (pick it, then import — same export, same rules), and the auto-pilot starts, advances and clears it from its date and time like any other. The wall shows the board on its day.
The standing one: Special Event
A standing special service has no date — tick No set date on the form. It keeps a team and an order of service across weeks and is the template for anything the calendar did not plan: a memorial, a guest night, a conference session. It never runs on its own and is not on the wall or the producer’s phone unless it is running. Two ways to use it:
- Schedule… it (Settings → Special services, or the button beside the Assign chips when it is picked). That makes a dated special service for the night with the template’s team and order of service copied over, and from there the auto-pilot runs it like any other. The template is untouched.
- Or pick it on this page and press Go Live by hand, for something happening right now.
Settings
| Section | What is there |
|---|---|
| Service times | The regular services, every week: name, day, and the time the running order starts on the board (ten minutes before the advertised time, for the pre-roll). |
| Special services | Every one-off service from this week on, and the standing template. Add, edit, Schedule…, remove. |
| Positions | The rows and the positions in them. Rename one, add one, drop one you never fill. Row order here is row order on the board. Extra positions cost nothing on the weeks they go unused, because the wall does not draw an empty one — so add the fourth pastor or the sixth vocal here and leave it empty on ordinary weeks. |
| Display | Church name and logo. The background image behind the board and how much to dim it. Highlight who is up (the red outline and UP chip). Auto-pilot. The holding screen message. |
| Who can edit | The list of editors and producers, by email, with a role each. Add a volunteer here; no one else needs to be involved. |
| Data | Past weeks kept on the board — how many finished weeks stay live to copy from (two by default; Planning Center keeps every order of service for good); older ones are archived nightly and cleared from the board. Export everything downloads the whole board as one file; Import replaces the shared board with one. A backup, and the way to move to a fresh setup. |
| About this version | The version and when it was built. If the wall and this page ever disagree, one of them needs a reload. |
When something looks wrong
| You see | What it means, and what to do |
|---|---|
| The wall is blank, or only a corner of the board shows | The page did not finish loading. Reload it (⌘R, or F5) and press F for full screen again. |
| The wall and the admin disagree | One of them is on an older version. Reload both; Settings → About shows the version on each. |
| Live · view in the top bar and nothing saves | You are not signed in, or your email is not on the editor list. Sign in; if that is not it, an editor adds you under Settings → Who can edit. |
| Signing in says Too many sign-in attempts from this network | The sign-in server allows the whole building a set number of attempts every few minutes, and something there has used them up — usually a copy of the board left open with a sign-in that has since expired. Wait a minute and try again. If it keeps happening, close every open copy of the board on the computers in the room and open them fresh. |
| Offline in the top bar | The connection dropped. The page keeps showing its last good copy and counting; changes will not save until it comes back. Check the wifi. |
| The countdown to the service ran out and went negative | The service did not start. Either auto-pilot is off (Settings → Display), or there is no order of service for it (the holding screen would say so). Press Go Live to run it now. |
| Stopped above the running order | Somebody pressed Stop after the service started, so it stays stopped on purpose. Go Live to run it. |
| The board is holding on a day you expected the team | The next service has no order of service uploaded, or it is not today. The board shows from midnight on the day of the next service that has a plan. |
| An item never steps | Its length is 0:00, or Hold is on (the state reads HELD), or Auto is off. Check the length on Order of Service; press Next to release a hold. |
| Following ProPresenter | The ProPresenter bridge is moving the board: it steps when the operator puts the next song or section up. Normal when the bridge is running. |
| An item is over its time and the board isn’t moving on | With the ProPresenter bridge running, that is on purpose: the board waits for ProPresenter to start the next part. Once the operator puts it up, the board moves. The producer can also step it by hand. |
| The reset email never arrives | Give it a minute and check spam. It comes from noreply@mhmproductions.com. |
| A person will not import | Their name in Planning Center does not match the roster. Set the full name on the Roster tab to match, and import again. |
Something else, or something broken? Press Report a problem — top right here, at the foot of the producer page. Say what happened and how urgent it is, add a screenshot if it helps, and it goes straight to Matt at MHM Productions with the version, the page and where the board was at that moment attached. Blocking a service right now flags his inbox as urgent. The button is only there while you are signed in.
Shortcuts & words
| F | Full screen (any page). On the wall this is wall mode: the date scales up and the board fills the screen. |
| Space → | Next item (admin and producer, when signed in to run the service) |
| ← | Previous item |
| H | Hold / release |
| Esc | Close a dialog |
- Position
- A seat on the board — Drums, MC 2, VOX 3. Set up under Settings → Positions.
- Group
- A row of positions: Pastors & MCs, Band, Vocals. A person serves in one or more.
- Assignment
- A person on a position for one service of one week.
- Order of service / plan
- The list of items and lengths a service runs through. One per week for the regular services; a special service has its own.
- Item
- One line of the plan with a length, a type, and who is up.
- Up
- Lit on the wall for the current item — the red outline and chip.
- Live
- A service is running: the board is counting through its plan.
- Hold
- Stay on this item until the next step, whatever the clock says.
- Auto-pilot
- The clock starting, stepping and clearing the service on its own.
- Holding screen
- What the wall shows on a day with no service.
- Special service
- A one-date service with its own plan and people. A standing one has no date and is the template.
- Turnaround
- The gap between this service’s projected end and the next one’s fixed start.
- Editor / producer
- The two roles on the list: one builds the board, the other runs the service.
Designed and built by MHM Productions for The Well.