Working with volunteers involves clear communication to eliminate confusion and frustration. Start with who you need to contact, which will help you determine where and how to reach out to them.
Important
Emails are sent to the primary email address, except for Account settings. Account settings sends an email to every email address listed on an organization administrator or billing manager's profile.
You can email or chat with all team members from the Team page or the People page.
You can email all your team members from the team page.
You can also start a chat with your entire team. Team chats can be frozen, allowing only leaders to post messages.
-
Go to the Members tab.
-
Select All team members.
-
Select the 💬 chat icon to start a conversation.
Important
You cannot filter team chats to specific positions or time preferences. Chat conversations include all team members.
-
Go to the People tab.
-
Filter the page to the people you want to email.
-
(Optional) On the web, you can choose to email only certain people from the filtered list by hovering over their names and selecting the checkbox that appears before proceeding to the next step.
-
Select the ✉️ email icon.
You can contact your team from a plan to let them know about their assignments or send information related to the plan.
Warning
It's not possible to attach files to an email sent from Services, so attach a file to a plan or a public file-sharing site, and then include where to find the attachment in your email.
Emails from plans include:
-
Buttons to accept or decline positions for unconfirmed recipients
-
Times assigned to the recipient
-
Assigned plan notes
You can contact scheduled teams or a specific scheduled person.
Choose who you want to contact.
-
By default, the email is sent to the people scheduled to the plan. Select Signup Sheets instead if you want to email those who need to sign up for the plan.
-
Prepared Notifications chooses any team members with prepared notifications.
Caution
An envelope icon next to someone's name means some team members still have a prepared notification and haven't been notified about the plan.
-
Scheduled People chooses any team member scheduled to the plan.
-
Needed Signups chooses team members assigned to any needed positions with Signup Sheets.
-
-
Choose the status of the members you'd like to email.
-
Enable the teams you'd like to contact.
-
If there is more than one service time, you can add or remove the additional time to email just those assigned to a specific time.
-
Tap People Selected if you want to adjust the list of people to message.
-
By default, the email is sent to the people scheduled to the plan. Select Signup Sheets instead if you want to email those who need to sign up for the plan.
-
Your teams are listed here, but you can also add other teams.
Notice
Schedulers cannot add other teams; they can only email their teams.
-
If there is more than one service time, you can add or remove the additional time to email just those assigned to a specific time.
-
Choose the status of the members you'd like to email.
-
If you only want to email those who haven't yet received a notification about the plan, check the box.
Contact a specific person by selecting their name in the plan.
After you have confirmed the recipients, you can enter your message.
Text
From the text tab, you can compose your text message.
-
View the list of people receiving this text and add mobile numbers for people who don't have them.
-
Enter the text message.
-
If you include the phone reference, the name and last four digits of a person's phone number will show in the text, so people will know who is replying to the thread.
To send the text, you're taken to your device's preferred text messaging app to actually send the message. Because of this, there's not a way for recipients to opt in or opt out of the messages. Responses are also included in the group message.
Text messages are reliant upon the limitations of the cell phone provider, so although they can be convenient, there are two things to keep in mind:
-
If you've prepared a text message for more people than your phone carrier allows, not all team members will receive the text message.
Tip
If you're not sure of the number of people your carrier allows, copy the text before tapping the button to send it. You may need to send multiple messages, and this helps you remember what you're sending!
-
There is no additional Planning Center charge to send a text, but recipients may incur standard texting charges if applicable to their mobile provider.
Once you've verified the recipients and content, send the message!
You can start chats with one or more teams that are scheduled to a plan.
Important
Administrators and editors can start chats with any team. Schedulers can only start chats for the teams they lead.
View a list of the emails sent to a person through Planning Center, including those that are undelivered, from the Communication tab on their profile.
If you see an email highlighted in red, open it to see if the email failed or was dropped. Hover over the status to view the reason for the failure.
Tip
To learn more about what specific error codes entail, check out Email Error Codes.
If someone mentions they didn't receive an email, or you see that an email failed to be delivered to them, check in Planning Center People to make sure their email address isn't blocked.
If they still do not receive emails after unblocking their email address, contact support for additional troubleshooting by selecting the ? in the top right corner of the product.