If multiple contacts in your Gloo account share the same phone number, inbound text messages will be routed to one primary contact, and will only appear in that contact's texting thread. The system will automatically determine which contact should be the primary one based on which profile was created first whether in Gloo or in your Church Managing System (ChMS) and later imported into Gloo via integration.
This feature is especially helpful when a family shares a phone number for communication. For example, a child may have their own profile in Gloo, but their parent’s phone number is listed as the primary contact number because the parent is the one who receives messages on the child’s behalf. If that same phone number is also associated with the parent’s profile, Gloo will route incoming messages to the primary contact (the profile that was created first).
This helps ensuring that text messages are consistently being associated with the profile designated to receive communication from that shared number, while still allowing the family member to have their own profile in Gloo.
Example
Let's say you already have Jane Doe in your Gloo account with the phone number 555-000-2222. Later, you import Jane's son, Jimmy Jr, as a contact from your ChMS with that same phone number associated to his profile. Because Jane's profile was created first, Gloo will recognize Jane as the primary contact for that phone number.
This means that whenever a text message comes into your Gloo account from 555-000-2222:
The message will be assigned to Jane Doe.
You'll see the message in Jane's message thread.
The message will not appear in Jimmy Jr's message thread.
However, any messages sent to either Jane or to Jimmy Jr will be sent to that phone number, regardless of which contact you select. This means that Jane could exist in a "Moms" group and Jimmy Jr could exist in a "Youth" group, and texts sent to either group will be sent to that phone number.
Viewing the primary contact list
You can easily check the current primary contacts associated with a phone number by navigating to the Inbound contact routing list in your Gloo account. Just click on Profile -> Account Settings -> Organization and scroll down the page to find the list. The list will contain the primary contacts names and phone numbers or email addresses that are associated with them.
Changing the primary contact
If, for any reason, you need to make changes and select a different primary contact for the inbound text messages, just navigate to the Inbound Contact Routing list and locate the phone number you want to associate to a different contact and click on Change Destination. Then, scroll down all the way down the page and select the new primary contact from the drop menu and click save.
