Elvanto Primer

An Elvanto plan is made up of three distinct items: Headings, Songs, and Items. 

Headings are there purely to help break up the plan into logical parts. By default, there are four main headings that correspond to the Seek, Connect, Grow, Send aspects of our church mission. 

Songs are special items that help us track song usage for CCLI. Generally, you shouldn't have to add them yourself, as the person doing the song choosing will do this for you. 

Finally, there are Items, and these are where you will spend the majority of your time in Elvanto. By default, every gathering will have a pre-defined set of items already created, so most of the time you shouldn't need to create new ones. But if you do, it's simply a matter of pressing the "Add Item" button at the top of the gathering plan page.

Each item has a title, a description, and a place for notes. In brief, the title is what this item is called. Examples are "Welcome", "Kids spot", "Bible Reading". The description field is where you can add everything required for this item. 

Descriptions

For example, if you want to add a prayer to the "Welcome" item, you would open the "Welcome" item, and in the description put something like:

    God our Father,
    we pray that the message of your Son
    will dwell richly among us,
    as we teach and admonish one another
    with the wisdom you give,
    and sing with thankfulness in our hearts to you.
    And whatever we do, in word or deed,
    may it be done
    in the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ,
    and for his glory. 

    Amen.

If you want to add this prayer as a series of slides, you simply need to add the instructions:

    Please add this prayer as slides

And then colour the prayer "orange" to make it clear the words of the prayer should be made into a slide.

If you want a specific series of slides, add the breakup to the description:

Again, colour the text in orange to make it clear what text should be included on the slides.

The goal is to put as much information into the descriptions as needed for the person creating the slides to know exactly what you want. The more information you provide, the more reliable the result will be.

You could potentially include everything you want to say to the description field of the items, or you could just include information required for slides. It's up to you how you want to make use of the facilities.

Notes

The other part of an item are the notes. Notes are instructions you want to give to other participants of the gathering. For instance, you might want the Bible reader to come up unannounced at the end of the 2nd song. To put that instruction into the plan, click on the Bible reading item, and into the notes field, put this text:

    Please come up at the end of the song

And change the "All Departments" to "Bible Reader (1)" to make it clear this instruction is specific to the 1st Bible reader.

That instruction will now be included in the gathering plan, which everyone in the team will received on Friday afternoon.

You can add multiple instructions as well. Click the "+" button and space for another note will be created. Add the instruction, and who it applies to.

Reordering and Hiding Items

You can reorder items in the plan by clicking on the 4-arrow icon and dragging the item up or down the order. You can also hide items by clicking once on the time value for the item. Clicking on it again will unhide it.

Marking the plan as complete

The final step of the process, when you've finished updating the plan, is to change the very first item in the plan - the "Plan ready to go?" item. In the description for that item, change the "No" to "Yes" so it's clear that you've finished and any slides are ready to be created.