Summary:  A rolling job detects which families finished kids check-in, pulls that week's content from a content channel by date, and sends each family one SMS timed to when their service ends. Service-schedule-agnostic.

Why Should You Build This?

The aim of this process is two-fold. The primary objective is supplying parents with conversation topics to engage in with their children as they drive home from a service. Transformative, faith-based conversations with a parent are very important in forging a child's relationship with God, and this process is meant to encourage those conversations. A secondary objective is to alleviate an unnecessary weight off of the shoulders of Ministry Staff who were previously tasked with sending these communications to parents.  

What Have We Built?

The Drive Time Texts Automation is a process that integrates many different RockRMS components to gather recipients, write messages, and notify these recipients in a timely manner. This process leverages Groups, Content Channels, System Jobs, and System Phone Numbers to be able to notify the right people at the right time. 

Our aim was to send out a communication to all parents of kids who have checked into a specific Group. The way we are determining which Groups should receive this communication is by using a Boolean Group Attribute of 'Drive Time Texts.' Groups for which this Attribute is set to 'True' are the Groups which will be considered for these communications. We are using a System Job that loops through Attendance data for these Groups to check for any new attendances created in the last 15 minutes. If an Attendance has occurred in the last 15 minutes, 

Prerequisites:

• v18.1 or later due to the use of the Modify Entity Command
• SMS-enabled Rock install, a kids check-in area, a content channel for the weekly message, parents with SMS enabled.

How was this Built?

• There are three main components for building out this process:
  • Group Attribute
  • Content Channel
    • Multi-Select Attribute
  • System Job
    • Run Lava Type

Group attribute:

The Group Attribute you will need to configure will be a Boolean attribute which determines which Groups receive these Drive Time Texts.

Here is the Configuration:

Content channel:

Set up the Content Channel that will contain the weekly message. Use your preferred Content Channel Type 

Rolling job: A Lava Run job on a 15-minute schedule that pulls recent check-ins, confirms the group's Boolean attribute is true, verifies the parent has SMS enabled, and generates a raw communication timed to scheduled service end. Include the sanitized job logic.

Per-item targeting (optional): A multi-select attribute on the content channel, filtered to flagged groups, so staff can target messages without touching the job.