Services - pull names and teams of upcoming Sunday plans

[SteveD-GH]

Related Product
Which product is this question related to?
Services

Describe the question
I am trying to pull information from Services for this coming Sunday into google sheets:
I know the two service type, id numbers
I want the team name, position, and name of person in 3 columns in Sheets.
I can never seem to pull the person's name for the upcoming Sunday. The only time I could pull names was a list of people and all the events they serve for over a few weeks. Any other time the name column is blank

What have you tried that worked?
I do not know APIs and have never used GitHub, so I am really starting from ground zero. This is my first API so I have been generating code with AI to learn what to do but I keep failing.

What have you tried that didn't work?

Additional context
I can paste a version of the code I have used to see where I got to, if that is how GitHub works...? I know to remove the API credentials, but that is about all I know.

I have..

• Reviewed the documentation found at https://developer.planning.center/docs
• [ x] Searched for previous issues answering this question
• [ x] Removed all private information from this issue (credentials, tokens, emails, phone numbers, etc.)
• Reviewed my issue for completeness

[github-actions]

Potentially Related Issues

I found some existing issues that may be related to this one. Please check if any of them address your question before waiting for a response:

🟣 #1453 — Plan Item Leader / Song Leader in the API (Closed)

Summary: This issue discusses accessing newly added Item Leader and Song Leader assignments through the Services API. The user needed to find the proper endpoints to retrieve which people are assigned as leaders for specific plan items/songs, which relates to the new issue's goal of pulling team member names and positions for upcoming Sunday plans.

Key discussion points:

• Item assignments (including item/song leaders) are available via the item_assignments endpoint
• Use the include=item_assignments parameter when fetching items: /services/v2/service_types/{service_type_id}/plans/{plan_id}/items/{item_id}?include=item_assignments
• Documentation for item_assignments was published at https://api.planningcenteronline.com/docs/apps/services/versions/2018-11-01/vertices/item_assignment

Resolution: Resolved - Planning Center staff confirmed that item_assignments are available through the API using the include=item_assignments parameter on item endpoints. Full documentation was published showing how to access item leader assignments.

🟣 #1429 — More efficient way to retrieve service schedule plan times (Closed)

Summary: This issue addressed the challenge of efficiently retrieving service schedule data for many people, requiring thousands of API requests. The discussion provides an alternative approach using plans and team_members endpoints that would be directly applicable to the new issue's goal of getting team names, positions, and person names for upcoming Sunday services.

Key discussion points:

• Instead of requesting schedules per person, use service_types → plans → team_members approach to reduce API calls
• For getting people scheduled on upcoming plans: GET /services/v2/service_types/{id}/plans?include=plan_times&filter=after&after={date}
• Then get team members for each plan: GET /services/v2/service_types/{id}/plans/{plan_id}/team_members
• Use JSON:API sparse fieldsets to only request needed fields and improve performance
• The team_members endpoint includes relationships to teams and positions which would provide the team name and position data needed

Resolution: Resolved - Planning Center staff provided a more efficient pattern: list service types, then get plans filtered by date, then get team_members for those plans. This approach makes M+N requests (where M=service types, N=plans in date range) instead of one request per person, and avoids empty responses. Using sparse fieldsets was recommended to further improve performance.

🟣 #1418 — Linking timepreferenceoptions to a teammember (Closed)

Summary: This issue focused on linking team members to specific service times (split times like 9am vs 10:45am) within a plan. While not directly about getting names, it demonstrates how to properly use the team_members endpoint and understand the relationship between plan_times and team_members, which is relevant for the new issue's goal of pulling team information.

Key discussion points:

• The team_members endpoint is accessed via /services/v2/service_types/{service_type_id}/plans/{plan_id}/team_members
• Plan times for a specific plan can be retrieved via /services/v2/service_types/{service_type_id}/plans/{plan_id}/plan_times
• The service_time ids on team_members correspond to plan_time ids where time_type = 'service'
• Team member objects include a service_times relationship that links to plan_time objects

Resolution: Resolved - User confirmed they could match service_time ids from the team_members response to plan_time ids from the plan_times endpoint where time_type = 'service', allowing them to determine which split service time each team member was scheduled for.

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This comment was generated automatically. If none of these match your issue, no action is needed — a team member will review your issue soon.

[KatieRiley]

Hi @SteveD-GH 👋🏼 Im curious what endpoint you are hitting already? If you havent tried it out our /team_members endpoint might be what you are looking for. That hangs off of a single plan (so as long as you are not planning on getting data for multiple plans in one request you should be good). If you try something like

/service_types/[service_type_id]/plans/[plan_id]/team_members?include=team

You will get back an object that looks like this

"data": [
    {
      "type": "PlanPerson",
      "id": "[plan_person_id]",
      "attributes": {
        ...
        "name": "[Person name]",
        ...
        "team_position_name": "[team position name]",
        ...
     }],
"included": [
    {
      "type": "Team",
      "id": "[team_id]",
      "attributes": {
        ...
        "name": "[team name]",
        ...
      },]

To grab the plan_id for this coming Sunday, you can hit /service_types/[service_type_id]/plans?filter=future&per_page=1 which will give you the next upcoming plan for that service type, and then you can use that plan id in the URL above.

Does that sound like it would work for your case?

[SteveD-GH]

@KatieRiley from my perspective, you are a genius!
I really have no clue how to read some of this but I was able to add it to a google script and it works! I also have it pulling the upcoming Sunday when it runs the script. I do have one more question, how can I handle some teams that are split teams? Some people serve at 9am or 10:45am only - and others serve at both. See attached picture.
It can be a separate column in Google listed 9am and 10:45am or it can be a full name like Pastoral Prayer 9am, Pastor Prayer 10:45am.

[KatieRiley]

@SteveD-GH ahhh yes split times 🤦🏼‍♀️ totally forgot about those guys, it can be done, its just going to be a little bit of extra work on your end unfortunately. The team_members response you're already pulling actually tells you which times each person is scheduled for, but only as IDs. So you'll want to grab the list of service times first to translate those IDs into something readable. To get the service times for a plan you can use something like this
/service_types/${serviceTypeId}/plans/${planId}/plan_times?where[time_type]=service

the ?where[time_type]=service here makes sure we only pull Service Times, not Rehearsal or Other times (if you want to include those you can take off that filter). That will give you back an object that looks like

"data": [
    {
      "type": "PlanTime",
      "id": "[plan_time id]",
      "attributes": {
        ...
        "starts_at": "2026-04-19T07:45:00Z",
        "time_type": "service",
      },
...

Note

to display the time the way it shows on the plan page, you can look at the starts_at. For example 2026-04-19T07:45:00Z is 07:45, so if you strip off everything before the T and after the second : you should be good there

Then to match them all up, in your original team_members response, each PlanPerson has a relationships.times.data array with the plan_times IDs they are scheduled for that will look something like this:

"relationships": {
        ...
        "times": {
          "data": [
            {
              "type": "PlanTime",
              "id": "[plan_time id]"
            }
          ]
        },

So for each person, you can look up those IDs in your list of service times and pull the time. Someone with one ID is serving once, someone with multiple is serving multiple, for non-split teams that'll usually be every service time on the plan.

I know thats a lot but I hope it helps 😅 Let me know if you run into trouble getting that all pieced together!

[SteveD-GH]

@KatieRiley Again, all that worked out great! I was able to convert to my time zone and get everything listed out with a few hiccups I think I can try to correct. But one thing I didn't do right or I messed up....it is pulling in the "No" responses as well.
I want it to grab confirmed (green) and undecided/not responded (yellow) but to not pull in the "no" response people (red).

[KatieRiley]

@SteveD-GH Yay Im so glad all that worked out for you! For filtering out declined (no) people we have a built in filter for that so should be an easy change, if you add on filter=not_declined to your team_members request like

/service_types/${serviceTypeId}/plans/${planId}/team_members?include=team&filter=not_declined

that will filter out all declined people but show unconfirmed (yellow circle) and confirmed (green circle). We have other filters for team_members if your needs change in the future too (team_members are at the bottom of that block)! Let me know how that works out for you!

[SteveD-GH]

@KatieRiley Thank you so much!

[KatieRiley]

Im gonna close out this issue but feel free to reach out again if you get stuck! 👋🏼