Choosing how a message is delivered
Every Connect message carries an explicit delivery choice. In Compose it is the small via dropdown at the right-hand end of the To row — sitting right beside the people you are writing to, which is where a decision about reaching them belongs:
- Email — email addresses only; nobody is texted.
- Text — texts only; nobody is emailed.
- Email preferred — email when possible, text when someone has no usable email.
- Text preferred — text when possible, email when someone can't receive texts.
- Email + text — each person gets email *and* text where both are possible. This is always your explicit choice; it never happens by accident, and it never means two copies of the same email.
A Newsletter or a Designer layout can only travel by email — a laid-out page cannot ride a text — so choosing either of those shapes locks the dropdown to Email and says why. Switch back to Plain message and the choice you had before comes back.
What "possible" means
A channel is used only when everything lines up: a usable address or mobile number, the person's own channel preference, recorded texting consent, and the parish's connections being live. A person's preference always wins over your choice — someone set to "email only" is never texted, whatever the strategy says.
External recipients — email addresses for people who aren't in the parish directory — are always email-only; no strategy ever texts them.
The numbers before you send
Under the delivery picker (and again at Review) Vianney shows exactly who gets what: how many by email, how many by text, how many fall back and why, and who can't be reached at all. Text messages also show their length and how many segments they'll use.
The extra check on a big send
Once a send reaches the size your parish sets (200 destinations out of the box), pressing Confirm doesn't send straight away. A size check appears first, and it is deliberately a little slow:
- 1. Your sign-in has to be recent. If you signed in longer ago than your parish's window (15 minutes out of the box), that card is all you get: a short note asking you to sign in again, then come back to Review and confirm. The numbers below only appear once your sign-in is fresh, and nothing has been sent in the meantime.
- 2. It states the total number of destinations — the confirmed plan plus any Cc/Bcc copies — and breaks it down: how many by email, how many by text, how many by both, how many external addresses, how many explicit copies, how many excluded, and how many audience sources fed the list.
- 3. If the send carries risk, it lists the risks as tick boxes and you must tick every one. There are three: the audience includes a youth-protected group, the message contains links to sites outside the parish, and the audience changed since the last time you were prompted.
- 4. You type the exact total into the box and press Confirm again.
The check is good for a set number of minutes (10 out of the box). Let it lapse, or edit the message or its audience afterwards, and it is refused — re-open Review and confirm again with fresh numbers. There is no bypass: every way of confirming a send runs the same check, so it can't be stepped around by going in another door. The thresholds and windows live in Settings → Connect — see Connect settings and safety limits.
Why a recipient was skipped
Sometimes a person on the list gets nothing, and the results say skipped with a reason. Usually it is the plain ones — no email address, opted out, no texting consent. One more is worth knowing: an address that hard-bounced (it does not exist) or that someone reported as spam is parked, and every later message skips it — honestly logged, never quietly attempted — until a person repairs the address and releases it. Releasing never resends the message that was skipped. See Why a message was skipped.
Honest results
After a send, the message shows what really happened, person by person. A message where nothing could actually be delivered is never labeled "sent". While the email and texting providers aren't connected yet, copies are recorded — visibly, with the reason — instead of being transmitted or silently vanishing.