Automated Workflows are one of the most powerful features in Text In Church. They let you send a scheduled series of messages and take automatic actions for people in your Groups, all without manual effort. This article covers what a workflow is, how to create and schedule one, how to manage and monitor it, and how to troubleshoot when something does not go as planned.

An Automated Workflow is a scheduled series of messages and actions that are sent automatically to members in a Group. Once set up and activated, the workflow runs on its own with no manual sending required.

There are four types of messages you can include in a workflow:

You can also add the following actions to your workflow:

After creating your workflow, you can add and edit steps at any time. To access your workflow steps:

Make most of your edits before activating the workflow, but you can adjust the timing and content of steps after activation as well.

Workflows use a flexible scheduling system based on a trigger: the event that starts the workflow. Triggers include:

When using the Groups Trigger, you can enable the option to re-trigger after the workflow completes if a contact is added to the group again. This allows a contact who has already finished the workflow to restart it by being removed from the group and re-added.

Each workflow step has three scheduling options:

Setting Wait Days to 0 sends the step on the first occurrence of your chosen time after the trigger fires. For example: if set to "0 Days, Any Day, 1:00 pm" with a Group Join trigger, the message will send at 1:00 pm on the day they join (if they join before 1:00 pm) or at 1:00 pm the next day (if they join after 1:00 pm).

To send a step on the second Monday after someone joins (not the first), set the wait to 1-2 days. The system will then find the next Monday following that wait period.

To edit a step, open the workflow and click on the step you want to change. You can adjust the schedule or content from the menu on the right. When done, click the blue Save Step button at the bottom.

To reorder your workflow steps, click and drag the step using the drag handle on the left side of the step card. Move it up or down to change its position in the sequence. Reordering steps does not change the timing for contacts already in progress through the workflow. Only contacts added after the reorder will follow the new step order.

Individual steps are marked with a green dot (active: will send) or red dot (inactive: will not send). This lets you draft steps before going live. To toggle a step active or inactive, click the dot next to it, or open the step and use the toggle in the top corner.

To deactivate an entire workflow, go to Connect then Workflows, click the three dots or the workflow name, select Edit, then click the red Deactivate button in the upper right. Click Yes, Deactivate to confirm. No one in the group will receive steps while the workflow is deactivated.

To reactivate, click the blue Activate button in the top right. Messages will resume based on their scheduled times. No steps are sent for the period the workflow was deactivated.

Note: Editing the workflow trigger will automatically deactivate the workflow. Contacts added to a group while a Group Join workflow is inactive will not be processed after reactivation. You will need to remove them and re-add them.

To pause a workflow temporarily:

While paused, the workflow remains active but stops sending messages. Steps that would have sent during the pause are flagged as Pending until the resume date. If contacts missed messages due to a pause, you can manually reschedule them via the Workflow Report.

Open the step you want to remove and click the trash can icon in the right-hand menu.

Text In Church offers pre-built Workflow templates you can import from the top right corner. These save time and provide a starting point for common follow-up scenarios.

The Workflow Report shows the total steps processed and the status of each individual step. To access it:

Each step shows two columns:

If both columns are grayed out, the step is inactive and will not be processed.

This stops that individual from receiving the step but does not affect anyone else. To prevent all contacts from receiving a step, consider pausing or deleting it instead.

Sometimes you want a contact to receive a step right away: for example, when you have manually entered paper connect cards and want to trigger the first message today.

The person will receive the step immediately instead of waiting for the scheduled time.

Text In Church does not have built-in language detection or multilingual workflow branching. The recommended approach for reaching contacts in multiple languages is to create separate workflows for each language and use separate Groups to manage which contacts receive which version.

For example, create an "English Follow-Up" Group with an English-language workflow and a "Spanish Follow-Up" Group with a Spanish-language workflow. Contacts are then added to the appropriate Group based on their language preference, either manually or through a Keyword or Connect Card response.

This approach gives you full control over message content and timing for each language without technical limitations.

If contacts are not receiving workflow messages, check these common causes:

For Calendar Date Workflows, make sure contacts are added to the group before the scheduled message date. For Person Date Workflows, confirm the contact has the correct date in the custom field the workflow uses.

When reactivating a workflow after deactivation, the system reschedules all pending steps based on each contact's original trigger date. If the trigger date was too far in the past, some steps may be marked as Missed. For advanced troubleshooting, consider duplicating the workflow with the re-trigger option enabled, removing all current members, activating the new copy, and re-adding contacts.

If members were added from an external source such as Planning Center, you may need to remove and re-add them manually in Text In Church to trigger the workflow.

Note: The Groups Trigger, Calendar Date Trigger, and Person Date Trigger all require the workflow to be assigned to at least one group.

Have questions or need help? Reach our support team at Support@TextInChurch.com.