Choir Programme Planner – User Manual

1. What the app does

This is the Choir Programme workbook, turned into something you can carry on a phone. It holds the same hymn index of 1 317 entries, and it produces the same three sheets:

• Music Program – the hymn programme for a divine service, on one A4 page.
• Before service – the running order before the service, timed to the minute.
• Preparation – the festive divine service preparation form.

It adds a fourth: a practice sheet for each choir practice, built from the pieces the service needs.

Everything is kept in the browser on your own device. There is no login and no server, and it works without a signal once the page has loaded.

2. Getting started

1. Open the app and, on a phone, use Add to Home Screen (or Install app) so it opens like an app, with the tabs as a bar along the bottom.
2. In the Files tab, fill in the defaults – your congregation, your name and the organist – so every new service starts with them, and set the time a service usually starts on each day. It comes set to 9:00 on a Sunday and 19:30 on a Wednesday.
3. At the top of the screen, set the congregation and the date. The time fills itself in from the day the date falls on, and follows it if you move the service to another day – until you type a time yourself, after which it is left alone. The date appears on the programme; the time is what the before-service running order counts back from.
4. Work through the tabs and save or print the sheets you need.

3. Looking a hymn up

Wherever a hymn is wanted there is a small No. box. Type the number and the title appears beside it:

If you know the words but not the number, tap Find. Type part of the title, or filter by book and by the point of the service the hymn suits, then tap the one you want.

Beside the title the app shows what the index knows about the hymn: how hard it is (Easy, Practice, Tricky, Difficult, New, Unknown) and any comment, such as Alto Solo or Christmas.

4. The Programme tab

This builds the Music Program sheet. It opens with the usual sections of a divine service:

Before service · Opening hymn · After Bible word · Call-up · Hymn of Repentance · Holy Communion · After service.

• Each line has who sings it (Congregation, Choir, Organ, Orchestra, Recorders, Sunday School Choir, Soloist), the hymn number and a note such as 2nd verse. Notes print under the section, as they did on the sheet.
• Add hymn adds a line, × removes one, and the arrows move a whole section up or down.
• The dropdown beside a section name says which hymns the Find button should offer first for that section – the same tags the workbook kept in its Bs, At, Cu, COM, As and Departed columns.
• Add section at the foot adds another section, including Holy Sealing, Confirmation, Baptism, Ordination and the service for the departed.

Lines sung by the choir, orchestra, recorders or a soloist print in bold, so the conductor's own items stand out on the page.

5. The Before service tab

This is the timed running order. You give each item a duration in minutes; the app counts backwards from the start of the service so the closing silence ends exactly as the service begins.

With a service at 10:00, a two-minute silence and four pieces of 5, 4, 3 and 4 minutes, the first piece starts at 09:42 – change any duration and every time shifts with it.

• Add item adds a piece; give it a number, a discipline and its minutes.
• Closing silence is the quiet before the service starts; the sheet used two minutes.
• After service (exit) lists the music as the congregation leaves.
• On duty records the main person and the back-up for each part, the time keeper included.
• The checklist starts with the six lines from the sheet. Edit them, remove them or add your own.

6. The Preparation tab

The Festive Divine Service Preparation form, for a service with an Apostle or District Apostle: the event and venue, who is invited, the project coordinator, and the main and back-up for each of the five music positions.

Under that, a grid of seven columns per group for the practice dates, times and venues – choir, orchestra, Sunday School choir and recorder ensemble – then a programme for each discipline and the two signature lines.

The date and time follow the ones at the top of the screen until you give the form its own.

7. The Practices tab

This is the part the workbook could not do. New practice starts a practice for the service you are working on, a week before it by default.

• Add the pieces still to rehearse pulls in every choir, orchestra, recorder and soloist item in the programme that this practice does not already cover.
• Each piece starts with the minutes its ability rating suggests – 5 for Easy, 10 for Practice, 15 for Tricky, 20 for Difficult or New – and you can change them. The total and the finishing time are shown beside the buttons.
• What to work on is your note for the evening: an entry, an ending, a balance.
• Tick a piece off once it has been rehearsed.
• Save PDF gives you the practice sheet, with the whole service programme underneath it and a tick against everything this practice covers.

8. The Hymns tab

The whole index: 422 hymns from the hymn book, 580 English and 315 Afrikaans. Search by number or by words in the title, and narrow it by book, by ability, by the point of the service, or by season.

Tap a hymn to open it. You can set the ability, say whether it has organ accompaniment, add a comment, and tag the points of the service and the seasons it suits. Use this hymn in the programme drops it into the first section of the current programme.

Your own ratings

Easy, Practice, Tricky, Difficult, New and Unknown were how one choir at Phumolong read its hymns. Your choir is not that choir, so the Ratings button at the top of this tab opens the list and lets you make it yours:

• Rename a rating and every hymn carrying it is re-labelled at once – the 1 317 entries keep their rating, it simply reads differently.
• Minutes is what a piece with that rating is given when it goes into a practice. Set it to what your choir actually needs.
• Colour is the colour of its badge through the whole app.
• Add a rating for a category of your own, and × removes one. The count beside each says how many hymns use it; hymns still carrying a removed rating show its letter until you re-rate them.
• Back to the workbook’s ratings restores the original six.

What the tags mean

A tag followed by ? is one the workbook marked ??? – it suits that point of the service, but that was never confirmed.

9. Printing and sharing

Each tab has its own buttons for its own sheet:

• Save PDF downloads the sheet.
• Share appears on a phone and opens the share sheet, so the programme can go straight to the choir on WhatsApp.
• Print sends the same PDF to the printer, so what comes out of the printer is what you would have shared.

The Music Program prints on one A4 page in portrait; the Before service and Preparation sheets print in landscape.

10. Services and backups

The Version line at the foot of this tab says which build of the app you are running. If something you were told is fixed still looks wrong, check it: an old copy may have been kept by the browser, and a reload will replace it.

Every service you plan is kept. The dropdown at the top switches between them, and the Files tab can open, duplicate or delete one. Duplicate is the quickest way to plan next Sunday: copy the last one and change the hymns.

Defaults for new services fills in the congregation, conductor and organist on every service you start. When a service starts holds the usual time for each day of the week – 9:00 on a Sunday and 19:30 on a Wednesday to begin with. Change them to your own, and leave a day blank if your congregation holds no service on it.

Once the app has been opened once, it works without a signal: the hymn index and everything needed to build a PDF are kept on the device, so it opens in a hall with no reception. The Version line says works offline when that is in place.

Everything lives in this browser only. Export backup writes one file with every service, every practice, your ratings, your service times and your own changes to the index; Import backup reads it back on another phone or computer. Clearing the browser's site data erases the lot, so keep a backup.