4. Send My ChurchSuite invitations to your members

Introduction

My ChurchSuite is the ideal way for members to stay connected with one another and stay up to date with all that’s going on. My ChurchSuite is designed to help maximise member engagement. Through My ChurchSuite, members can manage their details and those of their children, sign up for events, join small groups, keep on top of the rotas they’re serving on and much much more!

Access to My ChurchSuite is by an invitation process initiated from ChurchSuite, which means you can fully manage people's access. Note that My ChurchSuite invitations sent through the Children module are sent to the email address specified in the Child Email field, which can be a parent/carer email address or the child's email address.

Members can access My ChurchSuite through any web browser on any device, or using the free iOS or Android apps available from the respective app stores. Before proceeding, see the related support article called Activating My ChurchSuite.

Customising the My ChurchSuite invitation emails

You can customise the My ChurchSuite invitation, perhaps adding content to introduce your recipients to My ChurchSuite and explain why you're inviting them. Head to the Presets section of the Administrator area and locate the My ChurchSuite Invitation - there are two emails, one for contacts sent via the Address Book and one for children sent via the Children module. Select Edit from the preset Actions.

Important: Highlighted below, ensure the Go to My ChurchSuite "merge field" is always present in the email body content. You can move it, re-label it, and add email content before and after it, but the ::my_registration_link:: merge field itself must be present. This essential merge field is used to generate each recipient's unique registration link needed to access their My ChurchSuite account, and without it, recipients will be unable to register and set their password. Note also that My ChurchSuite invitations can only be sent via the processes outlined later in this article - any attempt to "engineer" or use the preset email or merge field in any other way will result in registration links not being generated and the recipient will be unable to set their password.

Optionally customise the Email From Name and From Email address, perhaps adding a designated named individual or department and a managed email address that email replies will be delivered. The HTML editor tools can be used to further customise the invitation message content, perhaps to embed other links or insert images and styled text. For the child invite you will want to ensure the language is appropriate for a younger audience. Remember to Save any changes made.

Allowing My ChurchSuite login

Access to My ChurchSuite for contacts and children can be managed on a person-by-person basis. You will be unable to send My ChurchSuite invitations and people will be unable to access My ChurchSuite if Allow My ChurchSuite login is disabled on their profile and if they do not have an email address. Note that access can also be optionally revoked at any time by disabling My ChurchSuite access. Select Edit to make changes to a person's details.

Scroll down to the My ChurchSuite & Privacy section and tick to Allow My ChurchSuite login. A person's default privacy settings are defined in the module's settings but you can optionally change a person's privacy settings as appropriate if you need to. Save any changes made. The next section of this article explains how to send My ChurchSuite invitations.

You can also make bulk changes to the Allow My ChurchSuite access setting for multiple contacts and children using batch actions. Working from the Contacts or Children section of the respective modules, select the people to be changed (or select all) and select Edit from the batch Actions.

The Contacts and Children section is paginated so you may find it helpful to increase the pagination to reduce the number of pages that the changes need to be applied to - you'll need to repeat this process of batch editing for each page in turn.

On the batch Edit pop-up, and noting the number of records that the changes will be applied to, set the Allow My ChurchSuite login value to Yes and click Save to process the changes for all the selected people.

Sending individual invitations

Viewing a person's profile, select Send invite from the My ChurchSuite button menu. The option is only shown if the person has an email address and Allow My ChurchSuite access is enabled - an email address is required to send the invitation and for the recipient to be able to log into My ChurchSuite. Note also that you will be unable to send child invitations unless the child is over the Age of Consent specified in the Children module's settings - see the related article on Activating My ChurchSuite for further information.

The sent invitation email is logged in the person's sent Communication log. The sent email contains a summary of the person's current contact details, inviting them to update any incorrect details once they've logged in. Here's an example...

When a recipient clicks the button in their invitation email they are taken to the My ChurchSuite registration page in their device's browser to Enter your new password. App users will need to complete the My ChurchSuite registration before they can use their email address and password to access My ChurchSuite in the app.

After completing the registration process the My ChurchSuite Home page opens.

We've produced a My ChurchSuite User Guide, which you may wish to use in its current form, or as the basis for producing your own user guide customised for the features and functionality you use in your context.

Bulk-sending invitations

To bulk-send My ChurchSuite invitation emails, navigate to the Communication section of the Address Book or Children module as appropriate. At the top of the page, select the people that you want to invite – either Select all, a manual selection of people, or a grouping of people in one or more Tags. This example is from the Children module, but the same principle applies in the Address Book when bulk sending invitations to adult contacts.

Next, locate the Send My ChurchSuite emails button, which will send the email invitation out to the individuals you have selected. Note the +OPTIONS – you can optionally Exclude those already invited.

Managing the My ChurchSuite invitation process

In addition to the Recent Logins and Inactive Contacts/Children reports located in the Address Book and Children module's Reports sections, we also provide some useful Smart Tag conditions to help you monitor and manage My ChurchSuite engagement and usage. See the related support article for further information on creating Smart Tags.

Located in the list of field Options for the Address Book and Children Module are options for Has My ChurchSuite Login (i.e. has Allow My ChurchSuite Login enabled), Invited to My ChurchSuite and Last logged in.

Using these conditions you can create Smart Tags with conditions that identify contacts and children who have/haven't been sent a My ChurchSuite invitation, or those who have/haven't last logged in to My ChurchSuite in the past X months.

Similarly, you might create a Smart Tag that identifies Invited to My ChurchSuite = 'Yes' AND Last logged in = 'Never' to see who has never responded to your My ChurchSuite invitation – perhaps to send them a reminder of what they're missing out on!