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Send Quick Communication Emails and Texts

Make sure you have set up your email and text providers.

You can send quick emails and texts to ministers.

  1. Under minister reports, expand Data Export/Quick Communication, then double-click Send Text Message/Email or Send Text Message/Email with Assignments.
  2. Click Next.
  3. Enter the name of the person or parish the message is from.
  4. Enter the message to send.
    Note: Most providers limit text messages to 140 or 160 characters. Please check with the provider to make sure your message doesn't get cut off or split.
  5. Enter a return email address.
    CAUTION: Some email and text providers do not support a return address.
  6. To send the message to the first phone number or email address listed for the recipient, select Send text/email to one phone number/email address. Otherwise, to send it to all of the recipient's phones and emails, select the multiple phones/emails option.
  7. To send the message as a text and an email (if the recipient has both listed), select Send Both Text and Email to Each if Possible.
  8. Click Next.
  9. Select which records you want to build a list of recipients, then click Build.
  10. Click Yes to review the list of recipients.
  11. Review the list, and print it as a reference for those you need to call. Click Close.
  12. Click Yes to send the emails and texts.
Note: If you use Gmail to send emails from PDS: Google limits the number of messages and the number of recipients per message you can send through the Gmail SMTP servers. See this Gmail article for details. If you exceed the limit, you may see an error in PDS when attempting to send the emails, such as "Transmission Failed. Error: 4.3.0 Temporary System Problem". If this happens, you can try sending emails in smaller batches over multiple days, as permitted by your Google settings.