Shepherd Notes (the front desk)
Receiving texts with Text intake
Text intake lets trusted phones send a quick text that lands straight in your Shepherd Notes Inbox — the same as typing it on screen. It is ideal for catching things on the move.
Your parish text number
At the top of the Text intake screen, Vianney shows "This parish's text line: <number>" — the number parishioners and staff text in to. This is set in Vianney Management for your parish instance. If it reads "not set yet," contact your platform administrator to have the number assigned.
Set up who can text in
- 1. Go to Settings → Text intake (priest or admin only).
- 2. Add an entry: the phone number, the staff member it belongs to, and an optional label.
- 3. Save. That number's texts will now be classified and staged in Shepherd Notes like any other note.
How it behaves
- A registered phone texts the parish number; the message is classified, the person is identified, and it appears in the Inbox.
- The on-screen Shepherd Notes capture is your receipt. An automatic text reply ("Caught — staged in Shepherd Notes") is suppressed by default — on an unregistered number, any outbound text can be blocked or charged by carriers, so the receipt stays on-screen until outbound texting is fully approved.
- Texts from unregistered numbers are ignored, so the Inbox stays clean.
- Vianney verifies the signature Twilio attaches to every inbound request, and confirms it matches your parish, before anything is processed — a request that fails either check is rejected outright, never silently accepted.
- A STOP or an office-entered opt-out can only be reversed by texting START to the parish number, or by the office re-adding the number — a public web opt-in form can never reverse a STOP or an office opt-out by itself, since a web form doesn't prove control of the phone the same way replying by text does.
Tips
- This is for incoming texts. Sending texts out (from Comms or Shepherd Notes) turns on separately once your parish completes texting registration.
- A parishioner replying STOP to any parish text is always honored — see What parishioners can do and your SMS opt-ins list in Settings.