Elvanto has taken their volunteer management and church roster system and taken it to an entirely new level.
With their newest features, they’ve moved from being a “pretty decent player” to a “major player”.
They’ve been working hard the past few months and it shows.
On the surface, it simply looks like they gave it a face-lift. After all, they’ve added more color and made it easy on the eyes, but there’s much richer changes when you dig a little deeper.
One of the big Elvanto updates can be seen immediately on the blue sidebar. When you’re viewing the roster, editing a service, or a song, it contains links to important features such as links, files and notes.
I really like what they’ve done with the songs:
Well basically in the old system, you added a song. That worked fine but what if you wanted to play the song in a different key or just play certain parts of the song? You’d have to upload different files and write notes to explain everything.
Well with arrangements, you can now split your songs up.
Basically how it works now is you add a song and fill in simple details such as the title and artist.
Then you create an arrangement which includes the length, BPM, keys and more. You can also copy and paste the lyrics and add chords which can with a couple of clicks be printed off into PDF files and even transpose the lyrics!
That’s slick.
They’ve also added Service Plans:
A Service Plan is basically an outline or flow of the service. You can enter in items (such as ‘preaching’ or ‘offering’) and set a duration for each item.
When you view the Service Plan for a service, it will then automatically figure out what time items will take place based on the start time of the service and the duration of each item.
You can add items, headings and songs. You can add a description for each item, write notes for specific departments and positions, upload files and write comments to keep everyone in the loop.
In the near future we plan to create a live version of the service plans so that you can have a person on an iPhone, iPad or computer controlling a service while it is running. It will have features like a timer and a live chat for different team to communicate.
Did you catch that? iPad and iPhone integration. Love it.
Here’s a video to pass-on to your team:
http://vimeo.com/elvanto/interface-update
They’ve also added tabs to make navigation easier. Here are a few other tweaks:
- Members have been renamed to Volunteers.
- Printing services has been totally redone.
- You can now print of runsheets which you can use while running a service and more.
- Edit multiple services has also had an overhaul. We’ve improved loading (especially when editing lots of services) and improved the design and layout to make life a whole lot easier.
- Volunteer Groups (formally Member Groups) has had a few new options added so you can have more control over what your volunteers can access.
- Mobile version has been updated to suit service plans.
- And more!
As you can see, Elvanto has turned into a very powerful system. If you’re already running it, I’m sure you’re tickled to see how expanded it’s becoming. If you’re not running this, you should take a serious look at it.
This is definitely a tool that overwhelms a Creative Arts Pastor, Worship Leader, etc … so as the “Church IT Guy”, it’s up to you to inform and execute this type of tool.
[via Elvanto]
Steven Beyer says
Just curious, but what is the difference between Elvanto and Planning Center?
Eric Dye says
I wish I new exactly. Jay Caruso did a review on it last summer. Check it out here.
Also, I’m sure you could contact Jay, and he would answer any questions for you.
🙂
Murray says
We have been using Elvanto for almost a year now and love it. It has been great to see and grow with it. There are some great features and we look forward to some other great features that are coming soon. Ben is doing an awesome job. We are at 100 users and are almost ready to upgrade to the next level.
It may be great to do a comparative for Planning Center and Elvanto. There are certainly some great features in both.
Jai says
We’ve been using Elvanto since the start of the year. Like any of the systems out there it does take time to get set it up, but the great thing is how user friendly Elvanto is. As already stated its a simple and powerful tool that has made organising volunteers so much easier and everyones favourite part of this program is it compatibility with mobiles.
Good work Ben and the Team at Elvanto!!! You have turned a lot of hard labour into a few easy clicks 🙂
Eric Dye says
That’s great! I love hearing from those who have really put this stuff to the test. Your input and insight is very valuable. Thank you! 🙂
Elias Dantas says
We’ve been using Elvanto for 3 weeks now, and we are loving it. The ease of access for the songs saves us half an hour of making copies at the beginning of practice. The integration and ability to see who will be present is also letting us be ready much sooner in the week.
Other groups in our church are thinking of using it in order to help them maintain their schedules and lesson plans.
Eric Dye says
Awesome! I love hearing about this stuff from those who are really putting it to the test.
Thanks for taking the time to share!