Your church may not be using All-Check: Churchteams powerful feature that allows a family member to check in the whole family to each of their classes as well as Worship. If that is the case and you still need a way to capture Worship attendance for members and guests, Text-to-Attend is the answer.
Text-to-Attend provides a simple way to capture attendance. Regular attenders can text a keyword to be counted automatically, while guests receive a digital connection card to share their information and record their attendance. This makes it especially popular for youth groups, where quick, easy attendance is important, but it also works well for the main church service that needs a simple, scalable way to track worship attendance and connect with guests.
It also has the ability to be set up so that everyone who texts in receives the Connection Card back and, by filling it out, records their attendance and responds to the service. Here's how to set it up:
Start with a Group
- This should be a group that will act as your digital connection card for guests, so we will add some registration settings to this group later. For now, as you are creating the group, be sure to check the box labeled "Adult Worship / Youth Text Attendance."
Adding the Registration Settings to make a Connection Card for Guests:
- After you have created your group, go to the group page and click Registration > Settings. Expand settings section 1 and add a Keyword for people to text.
*Notice the Registration Link for this group is at the top of this section. You can copy this link and paste it on your website for guests to register ahead of time!
- Expand settings section 2 to add any instructions or greetings that you want to appear in your Digital Connection Card for guests.
- Expand settings section 3 and add in any form questions that you want to ask - we call these attributes. These should be some of the questions that you ask on your paper Connection Card, but we recommend you ask only a few questions. To add attributes, choose from the Registration attributes drop-down menu that says "Select registration field" (1), or to add an entirely new customized question, you can create that using the "Customize registration fields" button (2). Learn more about creating Registrations and adding registration attributes here.
- Expand settings section 4 to edit any Form or Event Settings. Here is where you determine what Text-to-Attend option you want for this form under the "Attendance Settings" header.
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- Option 1: "Only send link for new people / visitors" will only send the link for the registration form to those who are not already in your database. For those already in your database, it will automatically take attendance for them as it recognizes them by their mobile number when they text the Keyword and sends them a confirmation text.
- Option 2: "Always send link" will send the link for the registration form to anyone who texts the keyword, whether they are in your database or not. This option is used when you want your regular members or attendees to still fill out the Connection Card on a weekly basis, as you may customize your questions weekly to respond to the message.
- Add in any other Registration Settings you wish in this section, such as where you want this form to redirect after it is complete (3) under the "Registration Completion Options." A lot of churches will redirect back to their website, events page, or a sermon notes page for that week.
- Finally, expand settings section 6 to edit any Follow-Up Communications from completing the registration, such as a confirmation text (4) or confirmation email (5). You also have the option to select "Don't Send" (6,7) if you do not want them to receive these communications. We do recommend you enter some text in the Completion Message field (8), as this will be a pop-up box for the guest after completing the form.
How does it work? Members and guests should be asked to text the Keyword you used in the Settings to your Text-to-Church number. Guests will get the Connection Card link. Members will be counted toward attendance and do not have to do anything else.