Event types and date masks
Event types categorize your events and can auto-name them and pre-fill attendance.
Event types categorize your events: "Sunday AM", "Wednesday Evening", "Youth Night". You manage them in Settings, then Planning Config, on the Event Types tab. Requires the Manage event types permission.
Each event type has a name, a description, and three useful switches:
Date mask
Turn on Use Date Mask and events of this type name themselves from their date, for example "Sun Apr 26 AM, 2026". You build the pattern from the tokens below; the line under the field shows a live preview using today's date, and the help icon beside the field shows the same table in the app.
| Token | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
ddd |
Day name (short) | Sun, Mon |
dddd |
Day name (full) | Sunday, Monday |
MMM |
Month (short) | Jan, Apr |
MMMM |
Month (full) | January, April |
MM |
Month (2-digit) | 01, 04 |
d |
Day of month | 5, 26 |
dd |
Day (2-digit) | 05, 26 |
yyyy |
Year | 2026 |
tt |
AM/PM | AM, PM |
h |
Hour (12h) | 2, 10 |
hh |
Hour (2-digit) | 02, 10 |
HH |
Hour (24h, 2-digit) | 02, 22 |
mm |
Minutes | 05, 30 |
A few rules that trip people up:
- Tokens are case-sensitive:
MMMis the month,mmis minutes, andddis the day, not the day name. - Spaces, commas, dashes, and colons pass through as typed, so
ddd MMM d, yyyygives "Sun Apr 26, 2026",dddd, MMMM dgives "Sunday, April 26", andyyyy-MM-dd HH:mmgives "2026-04-26 10:30". - To include a word of your own, wrap it in single quotes:
ddd 'Morning' h:mm ttgives "Sun Morning 10:30 AM". Without the quotes, letters such asd,h,m,M,s,t,y, andginside the word are read as tokens and the title comes out garbled. - Day and month names come out in the language the app is set to when the event is created. The title is stored as text, so changing the mask later renames only new events.
The default event type created with your church uses ddd MMM d tt, yyyy, which gives "Sun Apr 26 AM, 2026".
With a date mask on, you can leave the title blank when adding events and every "Sunday AM" gets a consistent, sortable name.
Preload attendance
Turn on Preload Attendance and new events of this type start with an attendance list already populated: everyone who attended recent events of the same type within the Preload Days window (1 to 365 days). Attendance takers then uncheck the absent instead of building the list from scratch.
Default
One event type can be the Default. It is pre-selected whenever someone adds an event.