Platform - Released November 17-18, 2025

Grab a plate for the upcoming holiday season! We have a healthy portion of Live Chat and Texting Opt-in features, with a side of personnel updates, and some sweet improvements for dessert.

Attention: After this release, you'll find updates to routines and notifications as part of Platform release notes.

Live Chat in MinistryPlatform

SPoCs and Parish Reps can chat with Support directly in the Platform! If you have the appropriate permission, you'll see the question mark icon at the top right of your Platform instance. Clicking this opens a small window where you can start a chat.

^{If you're a Parish Rep, you may see an extra step where you select your parish.}
When you're finished, make sure to close the live chat. Click the three dots in the upper-left corner, click End conversation, then click the question mark icon in your Platform window to fully close the chat. Your chat is saved as a support case with your information for future reference.
Live chat with Support is available Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. EST/EDT. You'll see an indicator in the chat window when Support is online. When chat is not available, you can still contact Support in the usual ways.
Note: The existing chat feature (outside of MinistryPlatform) will be disabled on November 21st. So don't wait — start using the new live chat in your MinistryPlatform instance today!

Texting Opt-In

We're enhancing the texting opt-in feature so that you can continue to adhere to Twilio's requirements and receive campaign approval. Previously, you've marked Contact records as Do Not Text, you made sure not to text those people, and that was the extent of it. But Twilio is now recommending express written consent from contacts, a double opt-in process, and clear opt-out options. So we're making those available!
What does this mean for your church? Contacts will have more control over whether they receive your text messages. By putting the process clearly in front of them, you won't have to manually update every contact. When a contact adds or updates their mobile phone number on their user profile, they'll be prompted to opt in to receiving text messages. The Platform supports this preference to ensure people who don't want to be texted will not be sent any messages. After they've opted in, they can change their preference at any time. They can also opt out by replying to your church's text message using an opt-out keyword (such as "STOP").
Note: If a contact has already said they do not want to be texted (that is, they have Do Not Text set to Yes on their record), MinistryPlatform will automatically set their texting opt-in preference to the equivalent. These folks will not be asked again unless they add a new mobile phone number.
Want to follow the best practices? Twilio strongly recommends using a double opt-in process. That means contacts must check the box consenting to receiving texts AND they must also enter an opt-in keyword (such as "START") after they receive the initial text message. You'll need to provide links to your Terms of Service and Privacy Policy when people opt in, which can be added as configuration settings.
Note: We know it may be a big transition from using an opt-out system to an opt-in process. MinistryPlatform supports your choice, so you can start with the single opt-in process or jump right into a double opt-in process for your contacts. Make sure you clearly communicate your new process with your congregation and staff.
How do I get started? This is just a taste of the new texting features. We provided more information and setup steps in our help topic, Texting Opt-In for Twilio Compliance. Early adopters can use the Acceptance Testing Guide provided in the MinistryPlatform Community for preparation steps, testing scenarios, how to log feedback, and tips for success.

Care Cases

If you like the KPIs that you see in Care Connect, you'll love the new views we've added to the Platform! On the Care Cases page, you can select the view to see New Care Cases, Needs Review, Lapsed, and Closed.

Contacts

We reorganized the layout of the Contact record to place "Contact Information" at the top, with all other groupings ("General" and so on) underneath. Here's an example of the new layout:

Attention: If your Contact records look different than the example, you may have previously used field management to customize your records or add custom fields. Any custom fields now display at the bottom of the record in the "Ungrouped" grouping.
To place your fields in a different grouping, open the Field Management record, and add a Group Name and View Order. Or, if you prefer the way your Contact page looked before the update, you can delete the new Field Management records.

List Layout

If you like viewing your records in a list, you can now choose which column to sort by. This is especially useful when looking at upcoming events! For example, you can sort by Event Start Date in ascending or descending order.

Locations

We're introducing location categories, which can help you identify each location based on its function. You can set the Location Category field on a Location record. For Catholic instances, the default values are Department, Facility, Office, Organization, and Parish. For non-Catholic instances, there are no default values. In all instances, admins can add any location categories that make sense for your organization under Lookup Values > Location Categories.
Once your categories are set, you can see all the locations that are in a certain category on the Locations tab of the Location Category record.

New Message Tool

We increased the limit for text messages to 500 characters. Twilio still limits each segment to a certain number of characters, so we recommend you try to keep your texts short. And remember that emojis and symbols take up more than one character. There's a helpful count at the bottom of the New Message Tool so you can see how many characters you're racking up. And keep an eye on the Estimated Texting Segments because Twilio calculates billing based on segments.
Your Message tab may look a little different now depending on the Texting Compliance Level value you've set on Outbound SMS Number records. For numbers that have switched to using a texting opt-in process, you'll see the Sender field and Text Message Preview pane.

Texting Compliance set to None Texting Compliance set to Single or Double Opt-In
When you send a text message and select the Send to Parents option, parents who do not have an email address will now receive the text.

Personnel

Categories and Types:

In Catholic instances, there's a new Personnel Categories page. We moved the existing values from Personnel Types to Personnel Categories, and added new values to Personnel Types.
- Personnel Categories identify personnel based on what they do in the church or diocese. The available values are Catechist, Clergy, Religious, Staff, Volunteer, and Seminarian.
- Personnel Types categorize personnel based on their role, status, and/or employment relationship. The default values are Permanent Deacon, Transitional Deacon, Religious Priest, and Diocesan Priest, but you can add others.
Note: If you've created page views that reference the "old" Personnel Types, you'll want to update those to point to the new types.
We updated the following to reference Personnel Categories instead of Personnel Types: Personnel page, Personnel Comments page, Clergy: Expires Within 30 Days view, and Direct Clergy Assignment view.

Beneficiaries:

You can now track beneficiaries who have some relationship with the personnel (such as a spouse, child, or parent) on the Personnel Beneficiaries page. An admin must grant users permission to the page and subpage as well as the Beneficiary Relationships page.
There's a new Beneficiary grouping on the Personnel Estate Plans page, where we moved the Beneficiary On File and Beneficiary Notes fields. Your existing data will be migrated.
In a later release, we'll deprecate the beneficiary fields in the Personnel table.

Personnel Record:

Using field management, we added groupings to the Personnel record. Fields are now organized under General or Employment History.
We reordered the fields in the General grouping so that Personnel Category and Personnel Type are more intuitive based on their purposes.

Ordination:

You can now track more advanced ordination details on the Personnel Ordination record. Information is grouped under General, Diaconate Ordination, Priest Ordination, and Religious.
We changed the existing fields for Ordained Here and Ordained By to be Deacon Ordained Here and Deacon Ordained By.

Views:

There's a new view on the Personnel Assignments page called "Expires Within 30 Days". It shows Assignment records where the End Date is within the next 30 days from the current domain time. Assignments that don't have a Start Date are not included in this view.
We added a view on the Personnel Assignments page called "Directory Personnel Assignment". This is similar to the Directory Clergy Assignment view, but it includes ALL personnel types. This view shows Assignment records that have a future End Date or no End Date. Assignments that don't have a Start Date are not included in this view.
There's a new view on the Personnel Assignments page called "Active Assignments by Location Group". It shows active Assignment records sorted alphabetically by Location Group Type.
We added a view on the Personnel page called "Upcoming Birthdays". It shows personnel birthdays in the next 30 days.

Refunds

There's a new view on the Payments page called "Refunds". It shows Payment records that have a negative Payment Total, with more recent payments showing first. If you set up a view notification, you'll get an email as soon as the Payment record is created with a negative amount, no matter whether it was created in the Reverse Payment tool or a third party like MP eGiving.
There's a new view on the Invoices page called "Refunds". It shows Invoice records that are associated with a negative payment. This makes cleanup easier after registrations and invoices are canceled.

User Accounts

We updated the User Account to look more like the rest of the Platform. Also, if you change your email address or phone number, you're prompted to enter your password. This is an extra layer of security to ensure bad actors can't gain control of your account.

Reminders

Recent Change to Life Apps: In the last Life Apps release, we changed the names of the Care Life and Group Life applications to Care Connect and Group Connect. Volunteer Connect and Need Connect already followed this pattern. These are now collectively known as Connect Suite. Check out the Life Apps release notes for details.
Portal access will end December 31. The Portal has served many churches for years. But now that its functionality is available in newer, modern tools like PocketPlatform, Connect Suite, and Widgets, we are disabling access. For details, see End of Portal Access.
Are you more of a visual learner? Check out our video library for MinistryPlatform! We are constantly adding and updating new videos, and you can submit video topics that you'd like to see next. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Reminder about Support Hours: Support is available Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. EST/EDT. If you submit a case outside of these hours, including on a holiday, the case will be reviewed at the start of the next business day. If your concern cannot wait, you can call 843-413-8400 and leave a voicemail. We are notified and will work to assist you. Hourly rates may apply for off-hours assistance. For all the details, see Support Hours & Holidays.

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