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V3: Why are my people not appearing in my groups? How can I restore / add them back?
V3: Why are my people not appearing in my groups? How can I restore / add them back?

In PastorsLine V2, contacts were sometimes greyed out. Now people just do not appear. Here's more about why.

Anne Heath avatar
Written by Anne Heath
Updated over a week ago

In PastorsLine V2, people were sometimes greyed out. Now (PastorsLine V3), the people seem to "disappear".

STEP 1: Use Hidden and/or PCO not in lists yet to get more info

(1) Hidden

Did you ever notice a [# hidden] in the People tab of a group (turquoise box in image below)?

You can click on the '# hidden' to get more information about the people who are no longer in a group. Here is an article about that.

(2) PCO Not Lists Yet

If you are using our PL-PCO integration, you may have noticed this in the Groups - People tab:

You can click on the '# not lists yet' to get more information about the people who are not yet in the group. Here is an article about that.

STEP 2: Dig deeper

Reasons that could have happened and what you can do to reverse them:

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Archive & Delete

Perhaps you archived (soft delete) or deleted (permanent delete) a person. For example, that person did not want to receive texts at the moment. If you archived or deleted that person, they would not appear in any groups.

Here is an article with more about archive and delete.


Block

Sometimes, we don't want a person to be able to contact us. So, we block them. This also prevents us from contacting them. Let's see what happens.

Example

Our person is Lisa1 Testing. At the moment, Lisa1 belongs to the Jason1 group.

Let's block her.

We confirm our block.

Is Lisa1 still in the People list?

If we search for Lisa1 Testing, it looks like we have found her. HOWEVER, a closer look shows that it is not the same contact.

Why?

Look at the phone number. Here is the phone number of the Lisa1 we blocked:

Here is the phone number of the Lisa1 we found in the search:

So our blocked Lisa1 is not in our People list.

What about Groups?

If we check Lisa1 in Blocked, we find that she has been moved to an AdHoc (temporary) group and is out of the Jason1 group. That makes sense since we do not want to send her any SMS.

Groups view - Group - People tab

If you look at the People tab in a specific group, you will be able to see which people are blocked. In the Details column (gold box in image below), you will see the Blocked icon (circle with line through it, light blue arrow in image below).

To unblock, select the Action Menu Icon (gold circle in image below). Then select Unblock (brown circle in image below).

Confirm you action by click the purple Yes, unblock button (gold arrow in image below). The contact would be automatically re-added to the group.


Remove from Group

Removing someone from a group has different outcomes depending on whether that group is Internal (just a PastorsLine group) or external (linked to an Integration).

INTERNAL GROUP (PL ONLY)

Lisa1 Testing is part of the a Google Voice group (see image to the left).

Let's remove her (turquoise box in image below).

And confirm.

Lisa1 Testing is gone. She does not appear in the People tab nor is she hidden (turquoise box in image to the left).

This is because a Google Voice is an internal (PastorsLine only) group.

Reconnecting Lisa1 with this group is done in the People view on her individual Contact page in the Groups tab.

EXTERNAL GROUP (CONNECTED TO AN INTEGRATION)

Lisa1 Testing is part of the 20 Something's Edge group (see image to the left).

This group is an external group - connected to an integration. In this case it is CCB (gold box in image to the left).

Let's remove Lisa1 (turquoise box in image below).

And confirm.

The confirm message says: "Are you sure you want to remove Lisa1 Testing from the group? This contact will be removed from only this group in Pastorsline. Since this contact is from an Integrated external app, it will be appearing on the list. They won’t receive any message or calls from this group."

In other words, Lisa1 Testing will be moved to 'hidden'.

And that is what we see.

Lisa1 Testing is gone. She is not in the People tab list. In addition, we see that there is now 1 hidden person (turquoise box in image to the left).

Let's click on 1 hidden.

The list shows 1 person - Lisa1 Testing whom we removed.

Why is she still here?

When you remove a person from an external group (a group linked to an integration), we don't archive or delete the person from the group itself. The reason is that this person would just come back after a sync. Instead, we mark this person as 'removed'. When you send a group message, PastorsLine will automatically do the following:

(1) We will attempt to send them a message.

(2) We will see that they are 'removed'.
(3) We will mark the message as "failed" or "undelivered" as an internal note. However, no message is actually sent.

Recommendation: If the person should be removed from the group permanently, you should do this on the integration side (via your ChMS or app).

To reconnect Lisa1 with this Group

Go to People view and do this on her individual Contact page in the Groups tab.


Unsubscribe

Sometimes people don't want to receive texts for a while. So, we unsubscribe them. However, they can still contact us.

UNSUBSCRIBING A PERSON DOES NOT REMOVE THEM FROM YOUR GROUPS.

Let's see what happens.

Example

Lisa1 Testing is in the a Google Voice group. If we go to the group, we can see her there:

Let's unsubscribe Lisa1.

We confirm our unsubscribe.

Is Lisa1 still in the People list?

Yes, as a search shows:

What about Groups?

Lisa1 is still in the a Google Voice group as before. However, we can see that she is unsubscribed.

First, look at the turquoise box in the image below. If the option is to Subscribe her, it means that she has been unsubscribed.

If we ignore that and try to send her a message, we see that she is unsubscribed.

If we check Lisa1 in Unsubscribed, we find that she is there:

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