Church Admin Plugin

Auto SMS Service Schedule

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Auto SMS Schedule sends a text message reminder to everyone rostered on a selected service automatically on a chosen day each week. It works alongside or instead of the auto email — useful for volunteers who are more likely to see a text than an email.

Go to Church Admin → Schedule → Auto SMS schedule.

Before you start

Auto SMS requires Twilio to be configured and your directory’s mobile numbers to be in e164 format. If you haven’t set this up yet, see SMS settings and e164 phone number format first.

Setting up the auto SMS

Which service

Select which service the auto SMS applies to from the dropdown. The SMS sends the rota information for the current week for that service. If you have multiple services and want automated SMS for each, configure a separate auto SMS for each service.

Which day to send

Choose the day of the week the auto SMS should go out — Monday through Sunday, or No Auto Send to disable it. As with the auto email, choose a day that gives volunteers enough notice before the service.

SMS message

Enter the message text to send. Keep it short — a standard SMS is 160 characters and messages over this length are sent as multiple segments, increasing your Twilio cost. The volunteer’s rota slot details are appended automatically so you don’t need to include them in the message text itself.

The following shortcodes are available:

  • [first_name] — the recipient’s first name
  • [last_name] — the recipient’s last name
  • [service_date] — the date of the service
  • [service_name] — the name of the service
  • [rota_task] — the job they are rostered for
  • [rota_entry] — the full rota entry for their slot

A typical message might be: Hi [first_name], just a reminder you are rostered for [rota_task] at [service_name] on [service_date]. Thank you!

Saving

Click Save. A confirmation message appears and the WordPress cron job is set up to trigger the send on the chosen day each week.

How the timing works

Like the auto email, the auto SMS is triggered by WordPress Cron — it fires on the first visit to your website on the chosen day, not at a fixed clock time. On a low-traffic site the SMS may go out later in the day than expected, or not until the following day if nobody visits the site. For more reliable timing, a server cron job pinging your site at a fixed time each morning is the most reliable solution. See Show schedule cron jobs.

Who receives the SMS

The SMS is sent to everyone rostered on the selected service for the current week who has a valid mobile number stored in e164 format in the directory. Anyone without an e164 mobile number is skipped — they will not receive an SMS but will still receive the auto email if that is also configured.

Disabling the auto SMS

To stop the automated send, return to this screen, change the day dropdown to No Auto Send, and click Save. The cron job is removed immediately.

Sending the rota by SMS manually instead

If you prefer to send on demand rather than automatically, use the manual SMS option instead. See SMS the schedule manually.

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