Replying to Inbox Messages

How to reply to visitors, callers, and Pro Website inquiries from your Inbox — via email, text message, or an internal note for your team

Every visitor inquiry, callback request, voice call summary, and Pro Website contact form submission flows into your Inbox tab. From there, you can reply directly without leaving the dashboard — by email, by text message, or by leaving an internal note for your team.

Where to Find It

Go to your admin dashboard → Inbox tab. Every item in your Inbox has a Reply (or Compose) button on the card.

The Three Channels

When you click Reply, you'll see a small form that lets you pick how to respond:

Channel	When to use it
Email	Most pastoral follow-up. Replies go to the email address the person gave you.
Text message	Quick reach-out — service-time question, "I'm thinking about you," a confirmation. Only available if your church has set up an SMS sender (see Settings → SMS).
Internal note	A note for your team that doesn't go to the person. Useful for "I'll call them Tuesday" or "needs a deacon visit."

You can only pick one channel per reply. If you want to send both an email and a text, you'll send them as two separate replies.

Pastoral-Voice Templates

The reply form comes pre-populated with a template that matches the kind of item you're replying to — a visitor welcome reads differently from a callback follow-up, and both read differently from a Pro Website contact form. The templates are written in our HEAR pastoral voice (Hear → Engage → Acknowledge → Respond) so the tone stays consistent across whoever on your team replies, including newer volunteers.

You can always edit the template before sending, or pick From scratch if you'd rather write your own.

Templates auto-fill the person's first name, your church name, and other details. So when you see Hi {{caller_first_name}} in the dropdown preview, it'll read Hi Sarah in the actual email body once the template is loaded.

Prayer Requests Are Different

Prayer requests can only get an internal note from this system — never an email or text.

That's a deliberate floor. Prayer requests are often submitted in a moment of vulnerability — sometimes anonymously, sometimes from people who never expected a follow-up. Whether to reach out to the person, and how, requires pastoral judgment that doesn't belong inside a generic reply form. If you want to email someone who submitted a prayer request, do it from your own email, with the care that conversation deserves.

The system enforces this: when you open Reply on a prayer request, the email and text-message options are hidden. Only Internal note is available.

Who Can Reply to What

Different roles can reply to different kinds of items:

Role	Items they can see	Channels available
Admin	Everything	Email, text, note (note-only on prayer)
Office Admin	Everything	Email, text, note (note-only on prayer)
Prayer Team	Prayer requests only	Internal note only
Care Team	Prayer, visitor, callback	Email, text, note on visitor/callback; note-only on prayer
Volunteer Coordinator	Visitor, callback	Email, text, note
Treasurer	(none — no Inbox access)	—
Worship Leader	(none — no Inbox access)	—

Confidential prayer text and callback reasons are visible only to Admin and Office Admin, even when other roles can see the item exists.

Email Replies

When you send an email reply:

From address: by default, pastor@churchwiseai.com. If your church has verified a custom sending domain (see Email Sender Setup), emails come from your own domain instead — e.g., pastor@firstbaptist.org. This makes your replies look like they're from your church (which they are), not from a third-party tool.
Subject: auto-filled from the template, editable.
Length: plaintext body up to about 1,500 characters. There's a live character count; you'll get a soft warning above 1,400.
Cc options: two optional checkboxes — "Cc me" (sends a copy to your admin email so you have a record) and "Cc our church office" (sends a copy to the church's main inbox). Both are off by default. We never silently copy a reply to anyone other than the person you're replying to — that's a privacy floor.

Text Message Replies

Text messages require your church to have set up an SMS sender first. If you haven't, the Text message button will be disabled and you'll see a link to Settings → SMS where you can set up a per-church phone number (Telnyx for newer accounts, Twilio for legacy).

When you send a text:

From number: your church's verified SMS number — not a generic ChurchWiseAI shortcode. Parishioners see a real phone number.
Length: 320 characters maximum (the equivalent of 2 SMS segments). The counter goes amber at 280 and red at 320. The send button is disabled if you go over.
Plaintext only — no links to formatted media, no attachments. Plain text reads cleanest on phones.

Internal Notes

Internal notes don't send anything. They write a note on the item that the rest of your team can see. Useful for:

"Called Sarah at 3pm — left voicemail."
"This is the third callback this month from the Wilsons. Worth a home visit."
"Forwarded to Deacon Marshall for follow-up."

There's no character limit on internal notes — write as much pastoral context as you need.

After You Send

When you click Send:

A green Sent ✓ pill appears on the item card immediately (you don't have to wait for confirmation).
A toast at the top of the screen confirms "Message sent."
The reply is recorded on the item's history — anyone with access to that item can see what was sent and when.
If something goes wrong (the email provider was rate-limited, the recipient's address bounced previously, etc.), the modal stays open with your draft so you don't lose it, and you'll see a plain-English explanation of what happened.

Common Errors

What you'll see	What it means	What to do
"Please enter a message"	The body is empty	Type something and try again
"Email isn't available on this item type"	You tried to email a prayer request	Use Internal note instead
"Set up your SMS sender in Settings → SMS first"	Your church doesn't have an SMS number configured yet	Go set one up — or use Email instead
"This recipient has opted out or bounced previously"	The person's email/phone is in our blocklist (e.g., they unsubscribed)	Reach out another way (in person, different channel)
"Sending was throttled. Try again in a moment."	Resend or Telnyx is rate-limiting our account	Wait 30 seconds and retry
"Something went wrong. The team has been notified."	An unexpected error	Try again, or save your reply as an internal note for now and email manually

What This Feature Doesn't Do

A few things on purpose:

No bulk reply. Each reply is one item, one outbound message. Sending the same message to many people belongs in our Care Messaging product, not the Inbox.
No scheduled sends. Send-now only. If you want to send something later, save it as an internal note for now and come back when you're ready.
No attachments. Plaintext bodies only. (If you need to send a file, email it from your own email client.)
No read-receipts / open-tracking. Pastoral correspondence shouldn't be surveilled.
No AI-suggested replies (yet). Templates only — the wording you see is what we shipped, not what an AI improvised in the moment. AI-suggested-reply may come later as a separate feature with its own opt-in.

A Note on Verticals

If your church (or your funeral home, vet clinic, dental practice, etc.) uses a vertical-specific version of ChurchWiseAI, the templates change to match. Funeral homes get sympathy-first templates. Vet clinics get clinical-empathy templates. Dental practices (when DentalWiseAI launches) get email-only at launch — text messages are disabled until our healthcare compliance paperwork is signed.

For churches, the templates are HEAR-aligned by default.

Email Sender Setup — verify your own sending domain so replies come from your church
Visitor and Callback Management — managing the items that show up in your Inbox
Prayer Requests — what we capture, who sees it, and how to handle it pastorally
Team Members and Roles — who on your team can reply to what