Switch from a desktop program to CongPlan
Before a congregation changes planning tools, the question that matters is what happens to the data it already has. This guide answers it in order. The import reads the regular CSV exports of the desktop program the congregation uses today and creates publishers, field service groups, qualifications, and the planned program from them. Personal data such as dates of birth, phone numbers, addresses, emergency contacts, and publisher reports is never read. The result screen names every omission, and the import can be repeated without creating duplicates. The switching page (opens in new tab) covers the same decision for readers outside the documentation.
What the switch needs first
- The Full administrator rights permission.
- The meeting schedules, under Congregation > Organisation > Settings. A midweek schedule is required to import the Life and Ministry program, a weekend schedule to import the public talks. The wizard says so if one is missing.
- The meeting times for every year the import reaches into, so imported meetings land on the correct date and time.
Meeting times come first for the same reason they come first in First Steps: they decide which meetings exist at all.
Which four lists to export
The import is built for the CSV exports of one specific desktop program, New World Scheduler. In it, open Congregation > Import or Export and save each of these four lists as its own CSV file:
| Export | Brings into CongPlan |
|---|---|
| Persons | Publishers, field service groups, privileges, assignment types |
| Public Talks Schedule | Weekend public talks, internal or external speakers |
| Life and Ministry Meeting (Schedule) | Midweek Life and Ministry assignments |
| Duties | Technical duties such as attendants, microphones, audio/video, stage |
Order and file names do not matter. The column names are written in English regardless of the program language, so CongPlan recognises each file by its content. You can import only some of the lists, and you can rename the files first. Up to 12 CSV files of at most 5 MB each go in at once, and a second file of the same type replaces the first.
What arrives
Persons. Name and source ID, gender, active status, whether the person left the congregation, baptism status, privilege and pioneer status, their field service group and role in it, and the meeting parts, technical duties, and field service assignments they are qualified for. Imported persons are created as member records without a login and without permissions — you invite them and set permissions separately, and an import never changes permissions that already exist.
Program. Weekend public talks and midweek Life and Ministry assignments, as far as the import horizon reaches. The preview step lists the meetings per week; meetings that do not exist yet are created from your templates.
Technical duties. Duty numbers are configured per congregation, so CongPlan cannot guess them. One wizard step maps each number to a CongPlan technical assignment type, with sensible defaults pre-filled. A number you leave unmapped is skipped and reported.
The import horizon decides how far into the future the import reaches. The default is 12 months, so a normal export brings its full future program along. You can narrow it to two, three, or six months, or widen it to 18 months or all future entries. Entries older than 24 months are always excluded.
What CongPlan deliberately does not read
To protect personal data, the import never reads:
- dates of birth
- phone numbers and e-mail addresses
- postal addresses
- emergency contacts
- publisher reports
- the exact date of baptism, only whether a person is baptised
- absences and family relationships
Files that are not exports of the supported program, and files CongPlan does not import such as publisher reports and emergency contacts, are marked as not imported and ignored.
What you add by hand afterwards
Some planning details are not in the exports at all. After the import, add:
- absences
- families
- any custom weekend assignments
Then check that the rest landed: members, field service groups and assignment types, meeting times and meeting detail pages, technical assignment templates and assignments. See Permissions for deciding who plans what, and Plan Our Christian Life and Ministry Meeting for the first planning week.
Read the result screen: "Not imported" is the important list
When the import finishes, the result screen summarises what was created and updated, including how many persons were created inactive, set to inactive, or reactivated. The panel to read carefully is Not imported, which lists everything left out on purpose:
- unsupported or unrecognised files
- attributes CongPlan has no counterpart for, for example hospitality, cleaning, or garden care
- unmapped duty numbers
- persons the export marks as moved or removed
- entries beyond the chosen import horizon
- duties in weeks with no meeting program, such as a convention or Memorial week
Nothing disappears silently. Everything on that panel is either something you add by hand or something you deliberately skip.
Repeat rather than restart
The import can be run again at any time. Persons are matched first by their source ID, then by name, so a re-import updates the same records instead of creating duplicates. Field service groups are matched by name, so avoid renaming a group in the old program between two imports.
One column deserves attention on every re-import: Active. Only an explicit
False, No, or 0 deactivates a person. A blank cell — or an export without
that column — always means active, so someone you deactivated inside CongPlan
is reactivated by the next import unless the export says otherwise. The result
screen states this every time.
Technical duties can also be refreshed without importing the other lists. Open Congregation > System > Data Import and upload only the Duties CSV. The central wizard shows the duty mapping and name-matching steps for that file and leaves persons and the meeting schedule untouched. The Technical Assignments page has no separate import action.