Load the service your church planned in ChurchCast, the team on duty, the songs, the Bible readings and the announcements, without typing any of it again.

Present › Service Plan shows the service your church planned in ChurchCast and turns it into the things RheoCast needs: songs in the setlist, Bible readings in the Schedule queue, announcements and the sermon title as overlays.

The plan is made once, by the church admin, in ChurchCast. The operator loads it here.

What it is

In ChurchCast, an admin builds a service plan for a date: the team on duty with their roles (Preacher, Worship Leader, Scripture Reader, and whatever else your church uses), and the order of service item by item, songs, scriptures, announcements, the sermon, prayer, offering. When it is ready they publish it.

RheoCast reads the published plan and gives you one action per item, so the setlist, the verse queue and the overlays are built from the plan instead of by hand.

Two things to know before anything else:

Plans are read only in RheoCast. Nothing you do in the Service Plan sub-tab changes the plan. Corrections are made in ChurchCast and appear here the next time you refresh.
Only published plans are shown. A plan still in draft is invisible to RheoCast, so an unfinished order of service can never reach the screen.

Before you start

Two things have to be true.

1. Your church's ChurchCast plan is Professional or above

Service plans are part of ChurchCast's Professional, Professional Plus and Enterprise plans. On Basic or Basic Plus there is nothing for RheoCast to read, and the Service Plan sub-tab says so rather than sitting empty.

2. RheoCast is connected to ChurchCast with a key that can read service plans

Open Settings → Account and look at the ChurchCast row. It is on the church's own account, so a machine signed in for a branch does not show it.

If your RheoCast subscription came with a ChurchCast bundle, the connection is already made and the row says it is managed by ChurchCast. There is nothing to do.
Otherwise a ChurchCast super admin creates the key: in the ChurchCast admin, open API Keys and press Connect RheoCast. Paste the key into the ChurchCast row in Settings.

The Connect RheoCast button issues a key with permission to read service plans, and keys that came with a ChurchCast bundle were given that permission too. A key somebody made by hand before this feature existed may not have it, and the Service Plan sub-tab says so; see Troubleshooting.

The key can only read. It cannot create or change a plan, so nothing at the projector can rewrite what the church planned.

See Account & Billing for how ChurchCast bundles and RheoCast subscriptions relate.

The Service Plan sub-tab

Present › Service Plan shows today's service, or the next one when there is none today. RheoCast looks a week ahead, so a plan for a fortnight away appears nearer the date. When your church runs more than one service on a day, buttons above the plan switch between them.

At the top: the date and title ("Sunday 14 September, First Service"), the start time and theme if the plan has them, when this copy of the plan was last refreshed, and a Refresh button.

Below that, four sections, in the order the tab shows them.

Load whole service, and the session it loads into. One card, and the everything-at-once way in. Load puts the songs in the setlist, the Bible readings in the queue, and the announcements and sermon title in the Overlays panel, and makes a lower third for everyone the rota tags as on screen, all switched off. Under it, a line says what this session already holds, because loading adds to a session rather than replacing it: Sunday's setlist is still there on Wednesday, and last Sunday's is there next Sunday. For a fresh start, New session saves everything you have under a name (the plan's heading, or the date) and begins again; nothing is thrown away. The dialog offers to load this service into the new session straight away, ticked by default, so one press puts last week away and brings this week in. Untick a part to carry it into the new session unchanged, which is how a church keeps a permanent logo overlay. Anything that is on air stays on air whatever you choose. Saved lists earlier sessions; Reopen brings one back, saving what you have now first. See Sessions.

Below the card, a small heading says Or one at a time: the Team, Sermon and Order of Service sections each have a button per row that adds just that item. Once an item is in, however it got there, its button says so with a tick: On setlist ✓, Queued ✓, Slide ✓, Title card ✓, Lower third ✓. So after Load, every row reads as done, and a row you add by hand in Present reads the same.

Team. The people on duty and the role each one is filling. A row still waiting on somebody's answer says not yet confirmed. A role your church shows on screen also gets a Create lower third button, which adds a lower third for that person to the Overlays panel, switched off; it shows a tick once the layer exists, and pressing it again takes the layer away.

Sermon. The title, series and preacher, and the main text, as set on the plan in ChurchCast. Queue Bible readings puts the main text in the Schedule queue with your other Bible readings, and Title card adds a title-card overlay layer, switched off, along with the preacher's lower third; the button shows a tick once the layer exists. The card is there whether or not the order of service has a sermon item, because the sermon details live on the plan itself. When ChurchCast has none yet, the card says so.

Order of Service. The plan in order, each item with one action:

Item	Action	What it does
Song	Add to setlist	Finds the song in your library and adds it to the end of your setlist. See Songs not in your library
Scripture	Queue	Looks the reference up in your current translation and adds it to the Schedule queue on Present › Live. A reading of two passages queues both
Announcement	Add slide	Creates an announcement overlay layer carrying the headline and the text, and a lower third for whoever reads it: the person the item is assigned to, or the rota's announcer. It is the same lower third the Team row makes, so it is never made twice
Sermon	Title card	Queues the sermon's main text with your other Bible readings, creates a title-card overlay layer with the sermon title, and the series and preacher under it, and makes the preacher's lower third, the same one the Team row makes
Prayer, offering, media and anything else	none	Shown so you can follow the service, with nothing to load

An announcement the plan marks as not for the screen is listed the same way, to be read out rather than shown, and has no Add slide button.

Overlays arrive switched off. An announcement or title card made from the plan is added to the Overlays panel as a layer with its switch off. Nothing goes to air until you turn it on, so you can load a service in the middle of worship without anything appearing on screen.

Loading a whole service

Load whole service does every action in the list at once.

If any song in the plan is not in your library, RheoCast asks about those first, so the setlist is built complete rather than leaving a gap you discover mid-service.
It then makes a lower third for everyone on screen, adds the songs in plan order, queues the Bible readings, and creates the announcement and title-card layers, all switched off. Songs go on the end of the setlist you already have, so start from an empty setlist if you want the service in the plan's order exactly. A song already in the setlist is not added twice.
One message reports what it did: "Queued 4 verses, added 5 songs (1 skipped), created 3 overlays and 4 lower thirds."

A song you skipped is counted as skipped, and a reading your current translation does not carry is counted as not found, so you can see what did not make it rather than finding out mid-service.

Sessions

A session is the working set for one service: the setlist, the Bible readings queue and the overlay layers. Scenes, sources, stream destinations and styles are your room's setup and stay the same across sessions.

RheoCast keeps whatever you had until you say otherwise, so the first card under the plan's heading on the Service Plan sub-tab says so whenever there is something in the working set or a saved session to go back to:

New session saves what you have now, under the name you give it, and begins again. Each part has a tick: leave a part unticked and the new session starts with it as it is. When a plan is showing, Then load this service into it is ticked, so the new session opens with that service loaded; untick it to start empty and add items one at a time. An overlay that is switched on at that moment is never removed, so pressing this mid-service cannot change the screen.
Saved lists the sessions you have put away, newest first, with what each holds. Reopen brings one back and saves the current working set first, so switching back and forth loses nothing. A saved session can be deleted from the same list; it asks once.

The Scripture Lower Third and Sermon Note layers are your room's way of putting verses and notes over the picture, not part of any service, so a session never includes them and a new session never clears them.

Saved sessions live in RheoCast's own database on this computer, beside your songs, not in the browser's storage, so they survive a cache clear and do not count against the layout's storage limit. RheoCast keeps the 60 most recently saved; older ones are removed as new ones are saved.

Songs not in your library

RheoCast matches a plan's song against your library by CCLI number first, then by title, ignoring case, punctuation and anything in brackets, so "Great is Thy Faithfulness", "Great Is Thy Faithfulness!" and "Great Is Thy Faithfulness (Live)" are all the same song.

When there is no match, the item shows Not in your library in yellow, with an Add song button. It opens the usual song editor, already filled in with the title, author and CCLI number from the plan, and with the lyrics too when the plan carried them. Save it and the new song goes into the setlist, and stays in your library for next time.

Load whole service collects every unmatched song into one prompt before it builds the setlist, with Add or Skip for each, so you deal with them in a row instead of one at a time.

Tip: Ask whoever plans the service to put the CCLI number on each song. A number matches exactly; a title only matches if it was typed close enough.

See Songs for the setlist itself and for importing an existing library.

Using the plan in Broadcast

The plan follows you into the Broadcast tab, so nobody retypes the preacher's name at the last minute.

Lower thirds. The lower-third dialog has From today's service, which lists the people today's plan marks as shown on screen ("Pastor Kofi Mensah, Ministering") and fills in the name and the label for you.
Custom overlays. A design of your own with a field named preacher, worship_leader, sermon_title, sermon_series, sermon_scripture, service_theme, service_title or service_date gets a Fill from service button beside that field. One field, one value from the plan. Write the name how you like, worship_leader, worship-leader and worshipLeader all count, and the button only appears when the plan has something to put there.

Everything else about those overlays works as it always does, including editing a field while the overlay is on air. See Overlays.

Working offline

Plans are stored on the machine that fetched them, so Sunday does not depend on the building's internet.

RheoCast fetches plans in three places: when the app starts and it is connected to ChurchCast, when you open the Service Plan sub-tab, and when you press Refresh. What you see is always read from the copy on disk. The network only updates that copy.

If the connection is down, the Service Plan sub-tab still shows the plan you last fetched, and Load whole service still works. Refresh is the only part that needs the internet.

Open the Service Plan sub-tab once while you still have a connection, at the Saturday rehearsal or before the doors open. The last refreshed time at the top tells you how old the copy on this machine is, and RheoCast points it out when that copy is getting old.

Troubleshooting

The Service Plan sub-tab says RheoCast is not connected to ChurchCast

No key has been saved on this machine. Open Settings → Account, find the ChurchCast row, and paste the key a super admin created with API Keys → Connect RheoCast in the ChurchCast admin. Churches on a bundled ChurchCast plan are connected already and should never see this.

The sub-tab says this key cannot read service plans

The key RheoCast is using does not carry permission to read service plans. That is usually a key made by hand before this feature existed, and it also happens to a key that was revoked or replaced in ChurchCast afterwards. The fix depends on how the church is connected, and the sub-tab tells you which case you are in:

Connected by a bundled ChurchCast plan. There is nothing to paste. A ChurchCast super admin opens API Keys and presses Connect RheoCast; ChurchCast brings the plan's own key up to date in place and says so. Press Refresh in the Service Plan sub-tab a few minutes later.
Connected with a key you pasted. A ChurchCast super admin makes a new key with API Keys → Connect RheoCast and you paste it into Settings → Account → ChurchCast. Nothing else about the connection changes.

The sub-tab says service plans are not included in your ChurchCast plan

The church is on ChurchCast Basic or Basic Plus, and service plans start at Professional. Whoever manages the church's ChurchCast subscription can move it up; the Service Plan sub-tab starts working as soon as the subscription does.

The plan exists in ChurchCast but nothing shows here

Almost always the plan is still a draft. RheoCast is only ever sent published plans. Ask the admin to open it in ChurchCast and press Publish, then press Refresh here.

If it is published and still missing, check the date. RheoCast only shows the coming week, so a plan further out than that is not late, it is early, and it appears as the date comes closer.

Service Plans