Tech Forum

Our Elders quorum presidency and secretary can send mass texts and email to the whole quorum, but individual quorum members can't.

But our main issue is that our secretary has a iPhone. And it uses only iMessages for texting.

He can send individual texts or emails and they come through just fine. But when sending to the whole organization, only other iPhone users and blackberry users receive a the texts. All Android users get nothing.

He can mass email, but most members only read email one time a week, if they are lucky.

So, we need to get mass texting working from an iPhone so all members of the quorum can receive them, and we need the ability to have more than just the presidency and secretary mass email. This would be especially useful for teachers to send out that Sundays lesson so everyone will be reminded to study it before Sunday. And it would be helpful for committees inside the quorum, to mass email the quorum about activities, moving, service projects, temple trips and such.

It is true that iMessage neither sends nor receives from standard SMS. This was a conscientious marketing decision by Apple. See this article. The solution is not necessarily easy to implement for an entire group of users.

1. Android users can install the iMessage app on their phone to send and receive iMessages.
2. iOS users can switch off iMessage and use standard SMS to fit in with the rest of SMS users.

Either option is a challenge to get users to make changes in the way they text or SMS.