Key concepts

These are the terms you’ll see in Guidepost and in this help.

How a service is organized

Library (on this Mac, shared by every presentation)
 ├─ Songs ──── each with sections and arrangements
 ├─ Media ──── images and videos
 ├─ Themes ─── built-in and your own
 ├─ Saved slides
 └─ Bibles ─── installed translations

Presentation (one service, one file)
 ├─ Theme ──── the default look
 └─ Slides ─── in order, some organized into groups
     ├─ Kind ─────── Text, Scripture, Song, Media or Blank
     ├─ Layout ───── where the text and media sit
     ├─ Background
     ├─ Layers ───── text, images, videos and shapes
     └─ Notes ────── private, for the operator and the Stage Display

Building

Presentation: The document for one service: an ordered list of slides, saved as a single .guidepost file. One presentation is open at a time.
Slide: The content shown on screen at one time. Every slide has a kind: Text, Scripture, Song, Media or Blank. The kind determines its content. A Scripture slide includes its passage and translation; a Song slide includes its song and section.
Group: A run of slides that belong together, such as one song or one passage. Guidepost makes groups automatically for songs and multi-verse passages; you can also group any slides yourself. Groups have a name and can be collapsed in the slide list.
Section: A labelled part of a song: Verse 1, Chorus, Bridge, and so on.
Arrangement: The order a song’s sections are sung in. Every song has a Default arrangement and can have more, such as “Sunday short” or “Christmas”.
Layout: Where the text and media sit on a slide, for example Title · Centered, Lower third or Reference above. Switching layouts keeps the text.
Theme: A set of fonts, colors, backgrounds, text effects and layouts you can apply to a presentation or group. Slides follow the presentation’s theme unless they override something.
Saved slide: A finished slide kept in the Library for reuse, such as a welcome or offering slide. Adding one copies it into the presentation.
Background: What sits behind a slide’s content: a color, gradient, image, video or scene.
Scene: One of the animated or textured backgrounds built into Guidepost.
Dim: A color tint over a background that keeps text readable.
Layer: One object on a slide: a text box, image, video or shape.

Running

Live: The service is running and screens are showing it. Marked with the amber LIVE badge. You start and stop it with Go Live and End Live.
Program: The monitor in Present that shows exactly what the audience screens show.
Up Next: The slide that Next will show.
Audience screen: A display or window that shows the slides to the congregation.
Stage Display: A screen for the band and the speaker, showing the current and next lyrics, a clock, the speaker timer and cues.
Network viewers: Phones, tablets and TVs on the church network that watch the service in a web browser.
Blank, Logo, Freeze, Clear text: The four holds. Each temporarily replaces the slide on the audience screens. See Blank, Logo, Freeze and Clear text.
Message: Short text shown over the slides along the bottom of the audience screens, such as “Please silence your phones”.
Cue: A private message for the speaker, shown only on the Stage Display.
Countdown: A countdown to the start of the service, shown on the audience screens.
Speaker timer: A timer shown only on the Stage Display, so the speaker can see how much time is left.

Themes, overrides and resetting

Slides use their theme’s settings unless you change them on the slide. When you change something on one slide, such as its background, that property is overridden: the inspector marks it with a small dot and offers Reset to theme. Changing the theme later updates every slide that doesn’t override that property.

A group can use a different theme from the rest of the presentation, for example to give one song its own look.