Changes to SMS Management in Twilio and Ministry by Text

Chris.Dolan • March 30, 2022

A few changes have been made to our SMS/texting functionality since our last deployment.

If your church uses Twilio here is what you need to know:

  • The group for sending Quick Sign-In codes and System Messages is now the same group. This group is managed in the subscription tab just like all the other groups where a user can opt-in and out. This means that if a user has opted out of text messaging or has specifically opted out of this group then they will not be able to receive system messages (i.e. attendance reminder messages) or quick sign-in codes.
  • We recommend that this be a stand alone group from your main “Churchwide” text group to make subscription management more clear for your users.
  • For compliance reasons we are no longer able to force attendance reminder messages to be sent to users who are not opted in. Use the above rules to help a user opt-in to system messages if they need to receive attendance reminder messages.

If your church uses Ministry By Text (MBT) here is what you need to know:

  • Quick Sign-in (OTM) and System Messages should be set up as separate groups for MBT.
    • The Quick Sign-in (OTM) group does not show on the subscription tab so users are not able to opt-in and out of the group. The only messages that are able to be sent from this group are quick sign-in codes and auto replies from ReplyWords (read more below).
    • The System Messages group does show on the subscription tab and users can now manage their opt-in and out preference.
  • Reply words are now managed on the “Quick Sign-in (OTM)” group instead of on specific groups. This is because MBT uses a short code that is shared between all groups.
    • Keywords in MBT can now be set as ReplyWords in TouchPoint so a user will get the opt-in message from MBT and the autoresponse from the ReplyWord in TouchPoint.
    • Stand alone ReplyWords can be set as well and are now supported using an MBT short code.
  • All incoming SMS messages are now recorded on the SMS messages page.

 

To learn more about MBT and Twilio, click here .

Share by: