Getting Started

New to TouchPoint-WP? This page walks you through setting it up, and explains the choices you'll make along the way.

1. Install and connect

Follow the Installation steps: install the plugin, enter the TouchPoint user it connects with, and upload the scripts it needs into TouchPoint.

2. Choose your features

Go to Settings > TouchPoint-WP > Basic Settings. Every feature is off until you turn it on, so turn on only what you need. Each feature you turn on adds its own tab to the settings page.

Feature	What it does	More
Enable Authentication	Lets people sign in to your website with their TouchPoint account.	Authentication
Enable RSVP Tool	Adds a simple RSVP button for meetings.	Simple RSVP
Enable Involvements	Lists involvements, such as small groups and classes, on your site.	Involvements
Enable Meeting Calendar	Lists events on your site, from meetings in TouchPoint, with a calendar.	Meeting Calendar
Enable Public People Lists	Lists people, such as staff or elders. Also needed to show leaders' names on involvements.	People Lists
Enable Global Partner Listings	Lists the ministry partners you support.	Outreach Partners
Enable Campuses	Lets you sort and filter by campus. You probably want this if you have more than one campus.

Some features change the scripts TouchPoint needs. After you change your features, generate the scripts and upload them to TouchPoint again, as in the Installation steps.

3. Know three similar names

Three different things have similar names. Keeping them straight makes the rest of the settings much easier.

Name	Where you set it	What it decides
Involvement Post Type	TouchPoint-WP settings, Involvements tab	Which involvements are listed on your site, and where. For example, "Small Groups" at /smallgroups/. Involvements are chosen by their Program and Division.
Involvement Type	TouchPoint, on each involvement's Settings tab	How the involvement's meetings are grouped on your site. See Meeting Calendar.
Events (the Meeting Calendar)	TouchPoint-WP settings, Meeting Calendars tab	Events from involvements that have "Show in Sites" checked and aren't in an Involvement Post Type. You can call them something other than "Events".

Show in Sites is a checkbox on each involvement in TouchPoint, under Registration > Mobile/Sites. It's how you choose which involvements appear as events.

4. Decide where meetings appear

Meetings from TouchPoint become pages on your site in two ways:

• From an Involvement Post Type: check "Import All Meetings to Calendar" for that post type, and every meeting of its involvements gets a page under the involvement's page. Even without that box, involvements that have "Show in Sites" checked have their meetings imported.
• As Events: an involvement that has "Show in Sites" checked, but isn't in any Involvement Post Type, is imported as an event, with its meetings.

The calendar (the [TP-Calendar] shortcode) shows meetings from both.

Three settings on the Meeting Calendars tab control how far forward and back your site goes:

Setting	Default	What it does
Days of Future	365	Meetings further ahead than this aren't imported yet.
Archive After Days	7	Once a meeting is this many days past, its page stops updating. Its description is kept as it was, even if the involvement is reused and its description changes.
Days of History	1825	Once a meeting is this many days past, its page is removed. Use either very little history (under a month) or a lot (at least 15 months). For a long-term archive, use up to 3650 days (about ten years).

5. Leave meeting grouping for later

The Meeting Calendars tab also has Meeting Grouping settings. These decide how related meetings are grouped together, for example the sessions of a retreat, or each year's offering of an annual conference.

The defaults are a good place to start:

• On a new site, back-to-back meetings of the same involvement are grouped together, and nothing else is.
• On a site that used TouchPoint-WP before meeting grouping existed, meetings are grouped exactly as they were.

Once you're comfortable with how your involvements and events look, see Meeting Calendar for what the grouping options do.

6. How updates happen

TouchPoint-WP updates your site from TouchPoint once a night. Changes you make in TouchPoint appear the next morning.