Announcements and notifications: what reaches whom

An announcement is a message from the church. It appears on the Announcements page and can also go out by email and as a phone notification. Who actually receives it depends on the audience, on consent and on each person's own settings, so read the section on consent before your first send.

Everyone with the Announcements: View permission can read announcements (every built-in role has it). Creating and sending takes Announcements: Manage (e.g. Administrator). The menu item is People → Announcements. If that's the only item in the People group, you'll find it under Mine.

Send an announcement

1. Click New announcement.
2. You can start from a ready text with Insert template. Templates are in Settings → Message templates.
3. Fill in Title and Message.
4. Choose the Audience:

• Everyone,
• Groups or Teams: tick which,
• Service team: people invited to serve at one upcoming service,
• People list: a saved list, counted at the moment of sending,
• Chosen people: up to 200 people from the directory.

5. Under Channels, tick Email, Push or both.
6. Click Save. The announcement is now a Draft, and nothing has gone out.
7. On the list, click the send icon and confirm with Send.

Sending can't be undone. A sent announcement can't be edited, only deleted from the list.

Consent: why an email might reach nobody

A new person has no consent recorded, so they get no announcement by email or push. Consent is off until someone records it. If nobody in your church has given consent, an announcement to Everyone reaches no inbox at all, though it still appears on the Announcements page.

Consent can be recorded in two ways:

• each person, in the browser: the bell at the top of the menu → Consent to announcements → Email announcements and Push announcements. Their account must be linked to their card in the directory,
• an administrator with People: Manage, for example from a paper form: the person's card → Privacy consents → Add consent.

More in Security and privacy: 2FA, people's data and backups.

Who gets what

• On the Announcements page: all members see announcements to Everyone, Groups and Teams, even if they aren't in that group or team. A Service team message is seen only by that team. A People list or Chosen people message is seen only by its recipients. People who manage announcements see everything.
• Email: people in the audience with an address on their card and email consent. They don't need an account. Family members with the same address get one copy of a People list or Chosen people message. Each email has an unsubscribe link.
• Push: people in the audience with an account, the phone app, notifications allowed on the phone, and push consent.
• Service team: no consent is needed, because it's about serving. Each person's own notification settings still apply, and there's no unsubscribe link.

For People list and Chosen people, the form shows a count before sending: how many will get the email, how many the notification, and who is skipped and why (e.g. no consent, no address).

After sending, click the chart icon (Delivery statistics). You'll see how many emails were sent and skipped. Delivery confirmations aren't reported yet, so "sent" doesn't prove the message reached the inbox.

Your own notifications

The bell at the top of the menu opens Notifications. The settings apply to this church only, so set them in each church separately.

• On phone and tablet and Email each have a main switch and one switch per type: Requests to serve, Serving reminders, Church announcements, Messages from the kids classroom, Room requests and more.
• Everything is on by default, apart from Plan changes, because every plan edit would send one. A few types are for the app only, such as Group conversations.
• Account emails (church invitations, password reset) always arrive.

Serving requests and serving reminders don't depend on announcement consent. Turning off Church announcements doesn't stop them.

In the phone app, you'll find this in Settings → Notifications. Consent can be changed only in the browser.

Serving reminders

Settings → Reminders is for someone with Church settings: Manage. Set Hours before and the Channel. Choose Email, Push or Both. Don't choose the two text message options (see below).

Text messages

Text messages don't work yet. You'll see Text messages in Settings → Integrations and a Text message channel in announcements, but a text message account can't be saved for now, so no text goes out. An announcement with this channel ticked can't be sent either, so leave it unticked. Use email and push.

In the phone app

On iPhone, iPad and Android, open Church → Announcements to read. With Announcements: Manage you can write there too: New announcement, audience Everyone or Teams, the Email and Send notification switches, then Publish.

A leader with Teams & roster: Edit can write to one service's team from the plan in the app, with Message the team.

What to watch out for

• Check the audience before you send. Announcements to Groups and Teams are visible on the page to all members.
• Unverified church. Until your church is verified, it can send up to 30 emails a day, and everything counts: invitations, reminders, announcements. Extra emails are skipped without a warning, and the summary after sending still counts them. See Church verification: why it exists and what it unlocks.

What's next

• Your profile, family, giving and notifications
• Lists, care workflows and automations