Planning Homilies with Homily Manager

Homily Manager is a full-featured homily planning and archiving tool. Plan future homilies and series and view them in a list or visual calendar. Click any homily to open it in Homily Builder and prepare your homily on desktop or tablet. Then view your full homily archive in the manager to see any previous homilies you’ve given.

Note: Available in Verbum Pro subscriptions and higher, as well as legacy packages Silver and above.

To open Homily Manager, open the Tools menu and click Homily Manager.

Note: To make it easier to find in the future, right-click the homily manager and choose Pin to the top to pin it at the top of the tools menu.

 

Skip ahead to:

Viewing Options

Add Homily

Create a Template

Edit Homily Details

Share a Homily

Delete Homilies

Import and Export Homilies and Homily Metadata

 

Viewing Options

You can view past and present homilies in a Week Grid or a Radial Calendar. You can switch between the views with the toggle at the top of the page.

 

Grid Mode

By default, the manager displays all your homilies on a grid. To show or hide columns, click the columns button and check or uncheck the available columns. To limit which homilies display, add filters from the left (click if the filters are not visible), select a timeframe from the date dropdown, or search for a specific homily or series.

 

Radial Calendar

The Radial Calendar displays a circular calendar of the selected time period. December 31 and January 1 appear at the top of the circle while June 30 and July 1 appear at the bottom. The current date appears as an orange circle on the outer rim of the calendar. Hovering over an area of the circle displays a red line cutting across the rim indicating where the cursor is on the calendar.

 

To limit which homilies display, add from the left, select a timeframe from the date dropdown (either calendar or liturgical), or search for a specific homily or series.

 

To overlay a calendar, select it from the dropdown on the right.

 

Add Homilies

Any homilies you’ve created with Homily Builder show in Homily Manager by default. To add a new homily, adjust the parameters in the top bar and click Add. By default, Homily Manager adds one blank homily.

 

To add multiple homilies at the same time:

1. Choose the number of homilies to add.

   Click the current number and choose as many as 100 new homilies to create.

2. Choose a template or lectionary (optional).

   Create blank homilies or choose a homily template or a lectionary and season. You will be able to select any lectionaries currently in your Verbum library. Learn how to create a homily template below. 

   

3. Add a date.

   If you choose a day of the week your new homilies will be added on that day for the following weeks (e.g. Weekly on Sunday).

4. Click Add.

   All added homilies are selected. To bulk edit, make changes in the homily info panel on the right and they will apply to all selected homilies.

 

Create a Template

To create a homily template, start a new homily document (Documents > New > Homily).

 

Provide a name on the left and choose Template in the homily info pane. Add homily info that applies to all homilies that will use your template.

 

When adding homilies in Homily Manager choose your created template in the homily template dropdown.

 

Edit Homily Details

Select any homily or group of homilies to make changes in the info pane.

 

The Homily Info pane holds important details about your homily. The more metadata you add, the easier it will be for you to find at a later date. If you use Logos to publish your homilies, this metadata will help others discover your homily and know what it’s about.

Note: If you don’t see the Homily Info panel, click the info icon to the right of the Add button to toggle it on.

If you publish your homily to Logos Sermons, the homily info you provide is indexed and searchable. Many of the input fields are preloaded with consistent naming conventions, like the topics and reference fields. This helps you stay consistent and avoid duplicate tags.

• Series: Provide a series title to add the homily to a series. Matching existing series show below as you type.
• Number (in series): Use this to indicate how many homilies there are in the series.
• Topics: Begin typing to show predefined biblical topics and themes. Select one from the list to add it to your homily details. You can add multiple topics.
• Passages: Add a biblical passage by typing and choosing the passage from the list below. YOu can add multiple passages.
• Description: Provide a couple of sentences describing the homily's content.
• Target Duration: Likely / desired length of the homily
• Private Note: Unlike the other homily metadata, your private notes will not publish to Logos Sermons, but are visible to you when viewing the homily in Verbum.
• Speaker: By default, your name shows for any homilies you create. To change the speaker, provide a new name in the input field.
• Occasion: Add a date, venue (like a specific church or conference), and time (e.g., 10:00am Service).
• Audience: Provide audience segments like General Adult, Kids, Youth Group, Conference, or Other.
• Liturgy: Where applicable, add a liturgical day, season, and year.

To edit a particular homily, click the title in Homily Manager or select the homily row and choose Open at the bottom of the Homily Info pane to view and edit the homily document.

Note: Learn more about Homily Builder.

Delete Homilies

Select a homily (or multiple homilies) and choose Delete in the homily info pane or by right-clicking a homily and clicking Delete.

Note: Clicking the homily title will open the homily in a new panel rather than selecting it in Homily Manager. Instead, click another on the line other than in the homily title column.

Import and Export Homilies and Homily Metadata

Sometimes it’s necessary to export some of your homily details and plans to share with others or to import homily information from a file in one batch. This information (like date, speaker, Bible passage, theme, etc.) is called metadata, and Verbum allows you to import and export it from the Homily Manager.

You can also import homily documents in .docx format to incorporate any homilies not written in Verbum into Homily Manager.

 

Export Metadata

To export metadata from Homily Manager:

1. Click the Show/Hide columns icon to ensure all the metadata you want to export is displayed.
2. Click the Show/Hide Facet Sidebar icon and filter the displayed homilies so that only those you want to export are displayed.
3. Click the more actions icon , filled by Print/Export. You can also press Cmd+ P (macOS) or Ctrl+ P (Windows) to open the Print/Export dialog.
4. Click Spreadsheet (Excel, etc.) under Save as file.
   

   

   Note: You can also click Microsoft Excel under Send to new document. This opens Excel and begins to transfer the data into a new spreadsheet line by line. If you choose this option, be sure to save the spreadsheet before you close it.

5. Choose where you want to save your file and select CSV from the Format box.
   

   

6. Navigate to the directory you selected in the previous step and open your .csv file.

 

Import Metadata

As you look to build an import file, here are a few details you’ll need to keep in mind before you begin.

• Each row in your spreadsheet creates a homily document, tagged with all of the included metadata.
• Each metadata field is represented as a column in the spreadsheet.
• Title is the only required field.
  • If you try to import a homily with the same title and date as one that’s already in Homily Manager, it will be treated as a duplicate and skipped.
• Header names must match the metadata field name exactly.
• Comma Separated Value (.csv) is the only supported file format at this time.

If you followed the steps to export homily metadata in the previous section, you can see the format you’ll need to use to build an import file. If you’re unsure what field names to use in your import file, export one of your existing homilies to see what you need to include. You can even work from the spreadsheet you exported, overwriting its metadata with the relevant details of the homilies you’ll be importing.

Note: When you overwrite the data in an existing file, make sure you delete the holiday column since it no longer matches.

Feel free to add more rows and import an entire homily series if you’d like.

When you’re done populating the fields in your spreadsheet, save the file with a new name and make note of where you’ve saved it. Return to Homily Manager and:

1. Open the panel again and select Import.
2. Click Choose File.
3. Select the file you just created. Verbum will display information about the status of your import, including any errors or rows that were marked as duplicates.
4. Click Continue to return to Homily Manager.

Now, all the homily metadata in your spreadsheet is visible in Homily Manager.

 

Import .docx Files

Easily import homily schedules and homily documents into Homily Manager to bring all necessary information into the same place.

1. Click more actions icon to open the panel information.
2. Click Import.
   

   

3. Select Homily Homily Schedule or Homily content based on the information you want to bring into Homily Manager.