Question

Photo of Kyle Larson

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How are people using Text to Workflow?

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I am curious on how other churches are utilizing "text to workflow".
It looks extremely powerful and could make signups and information gathering easier for attenders.

Thanks,
Kyle

  • Michael Garrison

    Michael Garrison

    Rather than looking for one "Right Answer" on this question, I encourage (with Kyle's blessing) churches to jump in and share their own ideas of how they're using Text to Workflow, making this article something that people can browse to spark ideas of it's potential use in their own ministries. As much as possible, please create new threads for asking further "how would I do this same thing/how did you do that" questions in response to what churches post here, so that this page stays mostly an easy-to-browse list of ideas. Thanks!

    • Photo of Aaron Jones

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      We mainly use during our announcements so that if someone wants more information, they can just text the shortcode instead of having to remember at the end of service to talk to someone. 

      1) Connect Cards - we have a digital connect card that they can text connect to and it will shoot them back  a link

      2) Serving Opportunities - We use it to promote serving opportunities so that they can text worship and it will automatically go through the connection process and assign it to team leader / coordinator to follow up.

      3) Events / Promotions - We also use it so that they can text a code for an event and get the registration link and also have set it up for some of our promotional items like shirts and jackets that they can just text gear to and get the order form.

      It has really been a game changer for us



    • Photo of Michael Garrison

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      The first use case we developed was to establish a connection with new guests on the weekends. We've started having monthly "breakfast with the pastor" events at the church that we don't publish anywhere else. So when someone texts "new" to our number (being prompted from the stage to do so), they are told about the upcoming breakfast (upcoming events could be stored in a Content Channel but for now we're just editing the workflow whenever the last event passes) and asked if they want to attend. If they respond "yes", they are added to a group of attendees for the next breakfast and a confirmation is texted back to them. From that group, registrants can be communicated with manually in the future. After the event is over, we can also use bulk update to add the date of their attendance to a Person Attribute. If they respond "no" they are assigned to a pastor for personal follow-up at a later date.

      In a future iteration of the workflow, we could leave their workflow open so that after the event, someone could go through the open workflows and be prompted "did they attend?" Clicking yes on such an entry form would enter the date on their person attribute, removing them from the group at the same time, whereas clicking no would assign them either to another group, or to a pastor for personal follow-up.

      If the workflow were left open, we could also e-mail them a link to a survey about the breakfast, where we'd collect their comments/questions and assign such responses to a pastor as well.

    • Photo of Michael Garrison

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      We have just launched a "serve" keyword - when someone texts that to our number, they are thanked and told that we are currently looking for ministry partners in the following areas: CHILDREN, YOUTH, HOSPITALITY, WORSHIP, GREETERS, and to please let us know which area they'd like information about. Or, they can reply INFO or ANY.

      Each of those keywords point to a "stub" workflow that does nothing but "activate other workflow activity on match" - and looks for a matching FromNumber attribute in an active "serve" workflow. (We verify with SQL that a match _should_ be found, and if not, reply back with a message that an error occurred, and invite them to try texting "Serve" again or to contact the church directly).


      The first workflow ("serve") has an activity for each possible response (which aren't activated by anything in that workflow itself), and the stubs simply activate the corresponding activity in the first workflow, then close. The activity for each response then adds the person to a group of potential volunteers for that area, responds to the person with a confirmation, assigns the activity to the appropriate person for personal followup, and provides an Entry Form for the staff person to see how to contact them, and take notes (which can be stored as person notes) on their conversation.

    • Photo of Eddie Holeman

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      We are using text to workflow as a tool to survey conference attenders.  For a conference of 6 sessions, the attenders are asked after each session to text the keyword Session1, Session2, Session3, Session4, Session5, or Session6 to a number.  The response they get is a link to the appropriate one of six workflow user entry forms.  The url includes the WorkflowTypeId and WorkflowId so that their answers to the two word survey are placed in the same workflow initiated by the keyword text.