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Overview:
PastorsLine and Text In Church have a similar layout and lots of similar features in the Messages tab!
Let's break down where you can find your:
Messages tab
Inbox
Sent
Scheduled
Closed
The Messages tab is still on the left-hand side of your screen; it's in the blue sidebar to the far left.
Your Inbox, Archived, Pending, and Sent folders all live beside each other in the Messages tab.
If you have multiple Text In Church numbers, you can also filter the messages displayed in these folders by clicking where it says "All Inboxes."
...Learn more about multiple Inboxes here! 💡
We'll dive into the key differences between Text In Church's Messages tab and PastorsLine's Messages tab in the next section.
Key Differences:
Inbox - Communication Channels:
Text In Church's Inbox has all of the incoming communication to your number.
A contact's text messages, phone calls, and voicemails can all be viewed in their Conversation History in the Inbox.
Instead of having a separate folder for each channel of communication, you can filter the Conversation History using the icons in the top right corner.
You can filter for:
1. Missed Calls:
2. Voicemails:
3. Outgoing emails and Reminder messages about this contact:
4. Text Messages:
5. Voice Broadcasts:
6. Outbound calls to this contact:
7. And Public Notes that have been left internally by Users on your account:
Opt Outs:
Text In Church's Messages tab doesn't have an opt-out folder, but it's easy to tell when someone's opted out!
You won't be able to text them from the Inbox, and if you click into their Conversation History, there will be a handy notice to alert you they've opted out!
You can also view a person's opt-out status via the People tab!
Contacts who have opted out will have a red dot beside their phone number or email address:
You can also filter your People tab to see who has opted out of emails and/or text messages:
Message Delivery Status:
There isn't currently a specific folder for Undelivered messages, but you can view your message's status in the Conversation History within your Inbox:
And you can get a more detailed view in the Sent folder!
Undelivered messages are not automatically reprocessed or resent.
At the moment, undelivered messages must be manually recreated and sent to be resent.
Scheduled Messages:
The Pending folder is Text In Church's version of the Scheduled folder in PastorsLine!
You can view and edit your manually scheduled messages here.
Automated Workflow messages are not displayed in the Pending tab.
...learn more about Automated Workflows vs Scheduled messages here!💡
Instead, you can check when your Workflow messages will be sent to your contacts using your Workflow's Report!
...learn more about Automated Workflow Reports here! 💡
Blocked Contacts:
Texts and phone calls from blocked contacts will not appear in the Inbox.
The Messages tab does not have a separate folder for blocked contacts or their messages.
Instead, you can review and unblock any blocked contacts via the People section by filtering for Blocked contacts.
After a contact has been unblocked using the blue "Unblock" text to the right, their contact, incoming messages, and Conversation History can be viewed again.
Character Limit and Credit Cost:
With PastorsLine, the max character limit was 1,600 characters in one message, and each segment of 160 characters sent to a contact was counted for one credit.
With Text In Church, the max character limit is 459 standard characters in one message, and all those characters count as just one credit when sending a text to one contact.
...learn more about your allotment and usage here! 💡
Emails:
Unlimited emails are included in all of our plans. You can send an unlimited number of emails from Text In Church for no additional cost!
...learn more about sending emails here! 💡
Short Codes:
While Text In Church does not offer a shared shortcode, due to industry and carrier regulations.
But we do support shortcodes on our platform!
Shortcode ownership is very resource-intensive, with the average cost of owning a shortcode being at least $1,000 a month.
If you are interested in owning a shortcode, reach out to support@textinchurch.com and ask for a human for more information!
Now that we've covered some key differences, let's dive into each folder of the Messages tab!
Inbox:
Your Inbox is where all incoming texts, that are not Keywords, will live until they are manually archived.
Messages are sorted with the most recently received messages at the top of your Inbox.
If a new contact texts a Keyword, that conversation will be in the Archived folder until they text something that is not a Keyword.
Once they've sent a message that is not a Keyword, their conversation will be flagged as unread and moved to the top of your Inbox.
Unread messages do not have their own folder; all non-Keyword texts will be in the Inbox until they are archived.
With an unread conversation, the name or number of the contact will be bolded, and the unread conversation will have a blue flag in the corner:
Clicking on someone's message does not automatically mark it as read; a message can be marked as read in three ways:
By clicking into the conversation and then clicking the three dots to the far right, and choosing "Mark Conversation as Read."
By clicking the checkbox by the conversation, then clicking Options, and choosing "Mark Read."
By archiving it! Archiving a message automatically marks it as read.
You can archive a conversation using the two methods above; just choose Archive instead of Mark Read.
Messaging Features that are similar between both platforms are:
Quickly create a new message with the "Create New Message" button.
The ability to search:
Checking the checkboxes for your contacts to select or choose "Select All" and action them:
Group messages are the same as they are in PastorsLine!
Group messages are a one-to-one conversation; no one else in the Group will see anyone's responses.
Archived:
The Archived folder is where your incoming Keyword texts and any conversations you've manually archived will live.
Archiving is our version of Closing a conversation.
We recommend archiving conversations that do not need a response to help keep your Inbox organized.
... Learn more about archiving here! 💡
If you archive a conversation and the contact texts you something that is not a Keyword, their conversation will pop back into your Inbox and be marked as unread.
The Archived folder has similar features to the Inbox, such as actioning them with the checkbox and searching your archived conversations.
Pending:
The Pending folder holds messages you've scheduled, like outgoing texts and emails.
Your Automated Workflow messages won't appear here before they're sent, but any messages you scheduled in the Messages tab will be here.
You can edit or delete any pending messages in this folder before they're sent.
...Learn more about pending messages here! 💡
There are some additional options in this folder, like:
Filtering the list to see just Group messages
Changing the order messages are displayed in
Filtering the list to see a specific kind of message
Sent:
All outgoing communication from your account can be found under the Sent folder.
You can click into each sent message to see:
The total number of contacts in the Group
How many messages were sent from the platform
The message itself
The recipient's list
Each recipient's carrier
The delivery time
The status of the message
If this was a manually sent message, you'd see who sent the message in the Message details section on the left below the carrier information graphic.
You can also click the blue View text on the far right-hand side of each recipient to see the Delivery Info for that contact's message.
You can filter the list of Sent messages by the message type, whether it was sent to a Group or not, and search your Sent messages here too!
Additionally, you can export sent messages using the downward arrow icon, and filter for messages sent on specific dates with the calendar icon:
Have questions? Or need help?
Chat with us within your account by going to Resources under the Settings tab, then choose "Message Us."
Or, send us an email at support@textinchurch.com! We're here for you!
