PCO Integration With Flows

If you've worked with church online software for any amount of time, you'll know that keeping and maintaining people records is crucial to effectively following up with people in your church or those visiting. But when utilizing multiple church software platforms, it can become cumbersome to maintain updated records in each place.

That's why we created an integration with Planning Center Online (PCO): to make your life a little easier and to do some of the manual work for you - especially when it comes to new people records.

In this guide, we'll cover the following topics. Click on any one to jump ahead.

What Type Of Integration Is It?

Nucleus has developed a push integration (i.e. a one-way sync) with PCO. That means, with the integration enabled, certain information that is entered into a Flow will be "pushed" into your PCO account, creating or updating people records.

It's as simple as that 😎

Note: If you'd prefer to use PCO forms on your Nucleus site instead of Flows, you can integrate PCO into your Nucleus site a different way where PCO forms open directly on top of your website, rather than taking people away from your church's website. (See the below example.) If you're interested in this type of integration, click here.

What Information Is Shared With PCO?

The integration exclusively focuses on the Smart Contact and Additional Contact steps in Flows.

Any time a name and email address are entered (and any other information along with it: phone number, physical address, gender, or birthdate), a person record will be created or updated in your PCO account.

To be more specific, when a new name and new email address is entered in the Smart Contact or Additional Contact step in a Flow, a new person record will be (almost instantly) created in PCO.

When a name and email address is entered that matches both the name and email address of a person record that already exists in PCO, no new person record will be created. But if a phone number or physical address are entered, that information will be added to the person record (without overwriting a previously existing phone number or physical address).

In a similar way, if a birthdate or gender is entered that doesn't previously exist for that person record in PCO, that information will be added to the PCO person record. (Since those pieces of info don't need to be revisited unless there was a mistake made in the initial entry, once that data exists in the PCO person record, you can only overwrite/edit that data within PCO, not from entering new information through a Flow.)

Since a new PCO person record will be created anytime someone enters a name or email address that differs from what is on file in PCO, you might end up with duplicate person records.

For instance, it's very common for someone to have multiple email addresses. Let's say Jimmy Parker has a PCO person record with jimmy.parker@nucleus.church on it. But then he fills out a Flow, using Jimmy Parker as his name, but then enters j.parker@nucleus.church, this will create a new person record for Jimmy in PCO. (Alternatively, if he enters Jim Parker has his name but uses jimmy.parker@nucleus.church, this will also create a new PCO person record since Jim and Jimmy differ.)

But once you merge those profiles together, and both of those email addresses are listed under the same person record, as long as Jimmy enters his name and one of those email addresses, PCO will not create a new person record again.

Note: For instructions on how to merge people records in PCO, click here.

Enable Your PCO Integration For All Flows

To enable your PCO integration for all Flows, start by clicking the Overview dropdown button in the top left hand corner of your Nucleus Dashboard, then click Church Settings.

Next, select Integrations along the top of your screen.

Here is a quick link to get you there: https://app.nucleus.church///settings/integrations

Then click Connect > Get Started.

This takes you to a PCO login screen where you will need to login to your PCO account.

Once you've logged in it will redirect you back to the integrations dashboard in Nucleus where you should see circles spinning connecting PCO to Nucleus. The status should change to "Connected" which at that point will mean you're all set 😎👍

Clicking the Actions button, will allow you to turn off (disable), reauthorize, or delete this connection.

From this point onward, any data entered in a Smart Contact or Additional Contact step will be pushed through to PCO.

Disable The Integration For Specific Flows

While the PCO integration can be super helpful in many contexts, you might not want it turned on for every single Flow you've created.

To disable the integration for a specific Flow (i.e. to ensure person data isn't sent automatically to your PCO account), go to manage that specific Flow.

In the left sidebar, click Integrations.

From there, select No (Don't Send). Save those changes and then hit the publish button if you're ready for that change to go live right now.

What Next?

Nucleus Flows has a ton of advanced features/settings you can explore. Whether you're ready to create more complex Flows or just wanting to find out more information about all you can do with Flows, click any of the following guides to learn more:

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