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Connect myParish App

Push notifications are a great way to instantly connect with parishioners on their phones and land them in fertile soil to help grow their daily faith life. Evangelus makes it easy to quickly send messages as push notifications to myParish App. Follow these simple instructions to get started. NOTE: You only need to connect myParish app to your Parish or Group one time. Once completed, you can simply push messages to myParish app along with sending to any other channel.

Don’t have myParish App at your parish yet? No problem! Contact our Customer Care team at 800-994-9817 to get started.

group integration

myParish app Admins are familiar with the idea of sending a parish-wide push notice or sending a push notification as a discussion topic in a myParish app Group. In Evangelus, you can send parish-wide push notifications using the All Member group. You can also start new discussions in the app by connecting individual Evangelus groups to myParish.

Time saver: When you link an Evangelus group to myParish, Evangelus automatically does all the work for you in myParish app. There is no need to access the myParish app admin portal to make additional changes. Evangelus creates the group and adds your admins as Group Moderators in the app instantly.

AUTOMATIC SYNC

Even better, when your Customer Care Specialist first enables Evangelus to integrate with myParish app, the All Member group will automatically be configured to send messages to the app. In addition, all of your myParish App groups that existed prior to getting started will automatically be added as groups in Evangelus retaining the group type, settings and adding your myParish Group Moderators as Group Admins in Evangelus. Integrating Evangelus with myParish is just that easy.

STEP BY STEP – get connected

  1. Your Evangelus account needs to be enabled to integrate with myParish app before you can connect new groups to myParish. Contact the Customer Care team to enable this feature if needed.
  2. Select Groups from the Evangelus main menu.
  3. Select the Group you want to connect to myParish.
  4. Select the “gear” icon from the center column to access the settings for your group.
  5. Scroll to find the toggle for “Link myParish App Profile” – enable this toggle.
  6. If your Evangelus account has never logged into the myParish App admin portal, you may be prompted to login to myParish. Enter your password and follow the prompts.

Congratulations! You can now send your messages to myParish app.

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Get The Most From Analytics

Have you ever had questions about the often confusing world of Analytics? We are here to help you navigate the ins and outs of the analytical world in myParish App.

Let’s go over some definitions of what you will see in your myParish App Admin portal.

Start and End Date
The date range is important for how analytics function. Typically a larger date range is going to give you more accurate information. This is because analytics take a large set of data and bring it down into smaller subsets using averages and estimates, giving you a good understanding of your users, not an exact number count. Change the date range to do some testing on how many people are signing up per month or what section of the app is most popular during which month.

Users
Users are defined as anyone who downloads and starts using myParish App. This is broken down into new and returning users. A new user is someone who is in the app for the first time. A returning user has already been in myParish App and goes back in. Sometimes a user can be counted as both new and returning users depending on your date range. At myParish App, we do not know what specific people are using the app unless they have created an account, which is not required unless you want to use groups or parish favoriting. Users are based on a unique device’s ID, not a name or email.

Sessions
“A session consists of a series of page views that a single user makes during a period of activity.” https://bit.ly/2TurYbO
Every time someone is in the app after closing it, it is counted as a new session.

Engagement
This section is helpful for doing some testing on the effectiveness of your messages. If you send a message and see a spike in engagement than you know it was probably because that message is encouraging people to open the app. Find out what times of day and what subject of messages get the best engagement in your parish by testing over a period of a few months.

Screens
This section shows you what areas of the app are the most popular. If you want to increase engagement for a specific area, we recommend sending a message out and encouraging your parishioners to check out the button. Messages remain the number 1 reason that people get into myParish App. Why not encourage them to pray more or check out the daily readings?

View a Quick Overview of myParish Analytics

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New App Store Guidelines Affect Many Catholic Church Apps

We are living in a world of fast-paced technology and Apple has always been at the forefront of the tech space. Apple recently released iPhone X as well as the new version of the Apple Watch.

Many people watched these announcements with excitement at being able to add their facial expressions to an emoji, but there was another announcement made during this presentation that slipped under the radar; the new guidelines for the Apple App Store.

These guideline changes are directly affecting most parish apps in the App Store today. Here is a quote from a Tech Crunch article highlighting some of these changes:

“Following its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple released updated App Store guidelines that included a new rule allowing it to ban apps created by a ‘commercialized template or app generation service.’ Many companies have recently been given a January 1, 2018 deadline, after which point any new apps they submit will be rejected by the App Store Review team, they’ve been told by Apple. In the meantime, some have been able to maintain their existing apps, but it’s unclear how long that will last.”

 

This change to what kinds of apps will be allowed in the App Store (Apple Developer Guideline 4.2.6) has already been causing a stir among a number of church app companies. The new guideline reads as follows:

4.2.6 Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app’s content. These services should not submit apps on behalf of their clients and should offer tools that let their clients create customized, innovative apps that provide unique customer experiences. Another acceptable option for template providers is to create a single binary to host all client content in an aggregated or “picker” model, for example as a restaurant finder app with separate customized entries or pages for each client restaurant, or as an event app with separate entries for each client event.

So what does this mean for my church?

Starting January 1, 2018, Apple is going to start rejecting new church app submissions to the App Store where the app is built on the same template (looks and functions the same) as other apps. Some existing apps may be allowed to remain in the App Store for a period of time.

Many app companies, including the church app companies listed below, offer services for small businesses, events, or churches to easily build an app with unique content but the structure and functionality of the app are the same as all others produced by the app company. This has resulted in thousands of business, organization, and church apps that look and function the same. Apple would like to see more unique, customized and innovative apps being developed for users. Cutting down on the clutter of ineffective Apps in the App Store is one step they are taking to head in this direction.

Church app companies affected by new App Store guidelines
These companies have acknowledged publicly that they are being affected

  • Aware3 Apps
  • Custom Church Apps
  • eChurch
  • Subsplash
  • Seraphim ChurchApp

Other companies that may be affected include Parish Solutions, Liturgical Publications, and Our Sunday Visitor (formerly Catholic Parish Apps). We have not seen public confirmation yet regarding these companies.

Does this affect my church?

Affected: If your church currently has its own app on the App Store with a unique icon and name, your app company is likely affected by this new rule. (Example: St. Mary’s Church tells parishioners to download the St. Mary’s app on the App Store.)

NOT Affected: If your church has an app within a universal app, such as myParish, then your app company is NOT affected. (Example: St. Mary’s Church tells parishioners to download myParish App in the App Store, then search for St. Mary’s within the app.)

What should I do?

If you think your app company is affected by this new guideline, we suggest the following:

  1. Contact the company and ask for confirmation that your parish’s app will remain in the App Store.
  2. Confirm that your parish app meets the new guidelines set by Apple.
  3. Confirm that your app will continue to receive updates (without updates it will quickly become outdated).
  4. Ask your app company what their long-term plan is for developing new apps. With the amount of time and cost associated with development, some companies will not have a compliant app available by the deadline.

Other Solutions

If your church is looking for a new app and you don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on an app development company, you will want to consider a universal (consolidated) app. Universal apps, such as myParish, provide the same features (and more) as a template-based app. Universal apps also have greater familiarity among parishioners and churches and are easier to find in the App Store because more people know about them. It is a lot easier to find an app with a unique name than to scroll through a list of 100 church apps named St. Mary’s.

myParish App, the leading Catholic parish app on the market, will not be affected by these changes because it was built from the ground up as a universal app and not template-based.

As a company, we want to make sure your needs are met during this time of uncertainty. To learn more about myParish App you can visit our website.

If you need any assistance or clarification on how these changes may affect your parish, feel free to call our customer support line at 1-800-997-8805. We are dedicated to giving you the best knowledge and service.

 

For further information here are links to supporting articles:

Let us know how we can help you accomplish your communication and evangelization needs. From all of us here at myParish App, God Bless!

Questions? Give Us a Call

1-800-997-8805

stewardship
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Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response

Last week, Catholics from around the world met in New Orleans to attend the International Catholic Stewardship Council‘s (ICSC) annual conference. The conference’s goal is to work with parishes and Catholic organizations to teach and then carry out “the Catholic vision of Christian stewardship as a way of life.”

Mike DiCosola, director of technology for myParish App, understands that when most Catholics hear the word mike-d“stewardship,” they think, “The Church wants my money.” However, DiCosola wants Catholic leaders and parishioners to think of stewardship as the response of a disciple of Christ.

In DiCosola’s presentation at ICSC this year, he challenges us to focus, not on how to get more people to give more money, but rather on  how to “authentically and effectively communicate about stewardship.” In order to do this, he says, we must “speak from and to the heart.”

We are pleased to present DiCosola’s presentation, in its entirety, here. We hope that his discussion on the “Language of Stewardship” gives leaders at the parish level practical and sound ways to think and talk about stewardship as a disciple’s response.