Integrations are the simplest way to quickly populate your Gloo account with people. Rather than adding people one by one or waiting on your congregants to text into your Gloo phone number, you can easily upload your entire contact list into your Gloo account with just a few clicks.
How to set up a MinistryPlatform Integration
The first part of the integration is to create an API connection in your MinistryPlatform account to enable the integration with Gloo. Steps 1-5 show how to do this.
Log into your administrator account on MinistryPlatform.
Using the Advanced Menu on the left side, click the Administration dropdown. Select API Clients, and then click New API Client.
Your Display Name and Client ID can both simply be "Gloo."
The Client Secret box will be required later. This is simply a completely unique code that can be used to identify your account. This is not something you can custom create- it must be generated. To generate one, simply visit this online tool and generate a code using the default settings. Once you've generated the code, copy/paste it into the Client Secret box.
Finally, select the user in MinistryPlatform that you want this to be associated with. This can be either the main administrator of your account, or the person setting up the Integration. Everything else on this page can be left with its default value. When you're finished, click Save.
The second part of setting up the integration is done within your Gloo dashboard. Steps 6-11 show how to do this.
Under My People, navigate to Integrations and click the green Configure button.
Select the MinistryPlatform Integration.
Verify you have permission to text the numbers you will be importing. Then click I Agree.
Sign in using the API Client you just created in MinistryPlatform. The MP API Client will be your Client ID. Copy/paste your Client Secret. Finally, simply copy/paste the URL from your MinistryPlatform account. Then click Connect.
Select which groups you'd like to sync from MinistryPlatform into your Gloo account. Unlike other Integrations that can sync everyone regardless of group, MinistryPlatform can only sync certain groups because of its "congregation" structure.
Important: Make sure to check out the notes in our Integrations Overview article to view requirements for which contacts Gloo is able to pull over from your MinistryPlatform account. There are also notes in the next section of this article describing each type of MinistryPlatform group.
Note: The MinistryPlatform Integration is brand new and has some limited functionality. At the moment, setting up a 2 way integration where new contacts in Gloo are synced back into MinistryPlatform is not possible, so those buttons are greyed out. This will become available in the future.
Click Save Settings to commit any changes, and click Sync now to finalize the Integration.
Gloo will automatically sync your integration every night. Any groups you bring over from MinistryPlatform will automatically be created as Groups in Gloo. You can view the people in each group by going to Engage -> My People -> Groups. Any adding/removing people from MinistryPlatform groups needs to be done through MinistryPlatform, not Gloo.
Important Notes on MinistryPlatform Congregations and Groups
The MinistryPlatform Integration is brand new and contains some limited functionality compared to other ChMS integrations. Because of the way MinistryPlatform structures its own database, there are some nuances to how Gloo syncs contacts.
Although a dropdown currently exists in Gloo to Choose Contacts or Groups, only groups are supported at the moment, not individual contacts.
Only MinistryPlatform groups of the types Ministry Team, Small Group, Congregations, or Publications are supported at this time.
If you sync an entire Congregation into Gloo, the subgroups in MinistryPlatform that those congregants are part of will not necessarily sync into Gloo unless you specifically select them as well.
If a group in MinistryPlatform is the Ministry Team or Small Group type, Gloo will automatically create a duplicate group of the other type. In order to sync the group correctly, you need to select the group in Gloo whose type corresponds to the type that exists in MinistryPlatform.
For example, if you have a group in MinistryPlatform called "Friends & Internet Campus" that is the Ministry Team type, you'll notice a duplicate of that group in your Gloo Integration window that is the Small Group type. In order to sync correctly, ignore the Small Group type option and select only the Ministry Team type option.
Viewing, Editing, and Disconnecting your Integration
Once you have signed in, you'll be able to view, edit, or disconnect your Integration by going back to Engage -> Settings -> Integrations -> Configure. If you've recently signed in, you can simply click the Integration, but if it's been longer than 24 hours, you'll need to re-authenticate your MinistryPlatform Integration using the API Client info you set up earlier.
If you want to change your integration settings, simply view the Integration, make any adjustments you want, and click Save Settings and Sync Now.
If you want to disconnect your MinistryPlatform integration, click Disconnect. This will not remove any People that you have integrated, but it will prevent any future syncing and remove any previously synced MinistryPlatform groups from the Gloo Groups tab.
