Emailing & Texting Families, Members, Committees, Family Tags and Religious Ed Families

You can send emails in Gabriel from the Family and Member Explorer, Family Classic Search Screen, Family Tags, Committee Records, and Religious Ed.  

  • Attached documents cannot exceed 20 MB. 
  • If the family email is the same as a member email only 1 email will be sent not 2.   
  • When you send an email from Gabriel Send Grid will notify you that you have bounced emails but the notification does not include the email address.  If you would like to review bounced, unsubscribed you can generate the Email Exception Report found in your report library.
  • Any email sent from Family Records, Family Tags, Member Records, and Committee Records will use the default parish email address found in the general information area of Church Administration as the from email address. 
  • An email will not send if your Parish has an AOL or Yahoo email address.
  • When sending emails from within the Religious Ed Module the email will automatically default to the Family email.   Gabriel will not allow anyone under 18 to be contacted within the RE Module.
  • Text messages will come from the phone number 508-213-9682. Recipients cannot respond to the text message. It's good practice to include your parish info and a message to not reply to the text.

The basics for Email & Text

Once you have chosen the list or individuals to email and/or text within Gabriel, choose the Send Message icon. You will be presented with the following email & Text Message Contact Form.  This form will allow for more robust emails.  You can add pictures, colors, text formatting, links, bullets, paragraph formatting and more. 

You can also include a text message by completing the Text message area. If you leave the email message blank, only the text message will be sent to the phone number listed. 

Note: Text messages will come from a 508 area code number. This is the same number used for all Gabriel clients. Recipients cannot reply to the message. Please identify your parish when sending text and a reply number if needed.

Texts will be sent to the family phone number only if the Text Message Notification is checked in the family record. (Members may receive the same message if the Text Message Notification box  and Receive Family Alerts is checked for the member's phone number.  This has not been confirmed PY)

Note:  To add a picture to your email we suggest you copy and paste into a word document.  If you do not copy and paste into a word document and you use the add picture icon from within the contact form you will only be able to grab a web picture and not a picture you might have saved on your computer.   Please view this short video for more information Gabriel Email Upgrade.

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Emailing from the Family Search - Emails will be sent to the family email only if the Email Notification box is checked in the family record. Members will receive the same email if the Email Notification box  and Receive Family Alerts is checked for the member's email record. 

Note:  Member's work email will not be notified when sending from the Family Search Screen.

You may also send an email to a single-family by checking the box next to the name or by opening the family record by clicking on their name.  When sending to a single-family it will not grab the email for the members of the family.  It will only send to the family Email.

Note:  Prior to sending an email be sure you reset your search criteria to Active families or select another Family status to send the emails to.
2
Emailing from Family Tags -  If you go to Families > Family Tags.  You can check off any Family Tag group by checking the box next to the name that you wish to send an email to. It can be 1 tag, 5 tags.  If you are contacting all the Family Tag groups you do not have to make a selection. Sending an email within tags will use the email that is in the family record.  Members will receive the same email if the Email Notification box  and Receive Family Alerts is checked for the member's email record.  
Note:  Member's work email will not be notified when sending from the Family Tags Maintenance Screen as long as the notification boxes are checked for the work email/text.
3
Emailing from Member Search  - If you send from the Member Search screen it will only grab members who have emails and the Email Notification box is checked.  Again be sure to review your search criteria.  Member search will reset the member status to All and language to English so be sure to select Active before sending your email.

 

If you send from within the Member Record or from the Member Search Screen the member's work email will be notified as well if the Email Notification box is checked.

4
Emailing from Committee Module - Scroll to Committee > Committee Maintenance check the box next to the committee(s) you wish to email.  If you do not make a selection it will default to emailing all of the committees.  Sending an email within committee records will use the email that is in the member's record as well as the member's work email if the  Email Notification box is checked. You can also send an email to one or multiple members of a committee by opening the committee and checking the member(s) you wish to email. 
5
Emailing from Religious Ed Module - You can also email from the Religious Ed Module. An email will be sent to the Family Email. Multiple emails can be listed as long as they are separated by a semi-colon.  Scroll to  Religious Ed > Class Maintenance and you have the option to email all the classes or you can select specific class(es) by checking the box next to the class name.  If a religious ed email is specified in the Church Maintenance screen, it will use that as the from email address when a message is sent from religious ed module. If a religious ed email address is not specified in the Church Maintenance screen it will use the default parish email as the from email address.
 

For parishes with multiple DRE's or multiple people managing different grade levels, Gabriel will allow an email address to be added in Level Maintenance so that when an email is sent from that class and within the Religious Ed module, the from address will be the email entered in Level Maintenance. If no email address is specified on the level it will use the default Religious Ed From Email located in the Church Maintenance Screen. 


TIP:  To review your database to check if the proper Notification Boxes are selected for sending emails to your member records you can do a Member Download.  Download "ALL" for your members then sort on the member status' that you would like to review.   Scroll to Columns AE (Receive Family Alerts) and  Column AF (Contact by Email).  Where the values are True then the notification boxes are checked.  Any member record who has a value of False the member record will need to updated by checking the notification box.  If you have a number of records that need to be updated please contact a member of our customer support team and our team will update the records for you.   Our Family Download report does not contain columns to verify that the notification boxes have been checked. Please contact our customer support team and we can generate this report for you and/or update Active Registered parishioners who have emails in their family records.    

When you choose to email from any of the modules within Gabriel you will be presented with the following email & Text Message Contact Form.  This new form will allow for more robust emails.  You can add pictures, colors, text formatting, links, bullets, paragraph formatting and more.  

You can also include a text message by completing the Text message area. If you leave the email message blank, only the text message will be sent to the phone number listed.

Note:  To add a picture to your email we suggest you copy and paste into a word document.  If you do not copy and paste into a word document and you use the add picture icon from within the contact form you will only be able to grab a web picture and not a picture you might have saved on your computer.   Please view this short video for more information Gabriel Email Upgrade.

Please refer to the following Solution articles and/or videos for additional information on emailing.

Video:

Articles: