Did you know that using public link shorteners like bit.ly and tinyurl can put your Gloo phone number at risk of being shut down by phone carriers? While some deliveries can be successful, these public link shorteners are commonly used for spam, so many carriers will block numbers that use them. Fortunately, we've built a solution just for you in Gloo Workspace! The Gloo link shortener is safe and equally effective in shortening your links.
How to Shorten a URL
Our URL shortener is built into the system, so there is no special setup required! All you have to do is:
Type in the entire URL in any message. It can be alone, or part of a larger message. Gloo automatically detects the link, so simply click the shorten URL button (the one that looks like a chainlink) and a new, shorter link will be generated.
The URL will be shortened in your message, and you will also get a green pop up notification to let you know the shortener did its job.
Troubleshooting
Some people may report that the link that's sent to them is not clickable. This is due to an Apple (iOS) setting. In order to protect individuals from spam, Apple blocks links and makes them un-clickable when the text is coming from an unknown contact in people's phones.
The way to get around this is to have your people save the number in their phone as a contact with your church name, because this basically communicates to Apple that the number is "safe." This will enable the links sent from that contact to be clickable.
Prior to March 2026, the Gloo link shortener shortened links using the domain glnk.app. Unfortunately certain internet providers like Spectrum began to block these links, and Spectrum users were unable to open them. In order to resolve this, the links were changed to now use glnks.com as their domain, which Spectrum is not blocking. However, any old links using glnk.app will still continue to work for anyone not using an affected internet provider like Spectrum!