Getting Started with CongPlan

Create a Congregation or Accept an Invite

CongPlan has no email-and-password login. It works with passkeys and personal invite and device links instead. If your congregation is not on CongPlan yet, you register it free of charge at my.congplan.app/register (opens in a new tab). The form asks for the country, the congregation name, the language, your first and last name, and your email address; you also confirm that you are authorized to register the congregation and accept the Terms, the Data Processing Agreement, and the Privacy Notice. Only one person does this – everyone else joins later by personal invitation. On iPhone and iPad you can also use CongPlan as an app from the App Store; the iOS app guide (opens in a new tab) describes the setup.

Set Up a Passkey Before You Start

After the first login, a setup assistant offers the two steps that are still open: allow notifications and create a passkey. Normal planning works with a login by link or code. Full administration asks you to confirm the current session with a passkey, so as an administrator you set it up before the steps below.

1. Check the Meeting Times

Meeting times drive nearly everything else: the planning range, which meetings and program parts exist at all, and which dates an import can use. Enter the day of the week, the start time, and a valid-from date for Our Christian Life and Ministry Meeting and the Weekend Meeting. When a time changes later, add a new entry with a future valid-from date instead of overwriting the current one – past meetings then keep their original time.

2. Set Language and Country

The congregation’s default language decides which language congregation-wide notifications and meeting terminology use; the country affects available fields and formats. Both are worth checking before more publishers join, because they shape what everyone else sees. Each publisher still picks their own interface language afterwards.

3. Create or Import Publishers

Before anyone can be assigned to a field service group, a program part, or a task, they need a user record. For a handful of people you add them one by one; when a whole congregation moves across, the import reads the CSV exports of the previous desktop program and creates the publishers plus, if you want, the program of the coming weeks. The import needs the meeting times from step 1, and a second run updates the same records instead of creating duplicates – what arrives and what does not is described under Switching from a Desktop Program .

4. Set Up Field Service Groups

Field service groups organise publishers for the field ministry and show up everywhere afterwards: in the Meetings for Field Service, in public witnessing, and in printed group lists. You create each group, name the brother who leads it – group overseer if he is an elder, otherwise group servant – and optionally an assistant, then assign the publishers. Newly created publishers belong to no group at first, so remember to add them.

5. Delegate Permissions

Decide who plans what before regular use starts. Role presets are the starting point: one covers most planners and secretaries, others limit editing to a single meeting type. Someone who only plans Our Christian Life and Ministry Meeting does not need full administration, and a chairman who should correct his own meeting gets a delegation for it rather than a broad edit permission.

6. Plan the First Meeting

This is where the new setup becomes visible to everyone. Open the next meeting, switch on edit mode, and assign the program parts – CongPlan suggests eligible publishers and draws on qualifications, assignment history, absences, and the planning context to do so. Assignments made inline save immediately; changes to the meeting itself are confirmed explicitly before they apply.

7. Invite Publishers

Invites come last, once there is something to see – an empty app with no meetings and no assignments is a confusing first impression. Open a person and generate an invite link, a QR code, or a device setup code. Whoever opens the invite confirms their name and congregation and is in the app; invite and setup links are personal and are not meant to be forwarded.

What Comes Next

The congregation is ready to plan. Technical assignments, tasks, public witnessing, the public schedule page, and the Visit of Circuit Overseer are set up once regular use begins.

Get started: my.congplan.app/register (opens in a new tab). Every step, with every dialog, is described in the First Steps guide (opens in a new tab) in the documentation.