Parent Pager: Message a Guardian During Class

A child needs a diaper change. Another one is upset and asking for mom. It's pickup time and nobody's come yet. Instead of sending a runner to the lobby or making an announcement over the sound system, a teacher can message the right parent directly from the Students tab — and it lands on their phone in seconds.

Sending a Page

1. Open the event in the Event Hub and go to the Students tab.
2. Find the child's row and tap Message parent.
3. Pick a reason:
   • Please come to the room
   • Diaper change needed
   • Your child is upset
   • Pickup time
4. Optionally add a short note (up to 200 characters) for anything the preset reason doesn't quite cover.
5. Tap Send page. The message goes out to every parent/guardian on file for that child, and the panel shows you who it actually reached.

That's it — no typing a phone number, no leaving the classroom.

What the Parent Sees

The message goes out to every guardian linked to the child, on whichever channel reaches them:

• Telegram, if the parent has connected their account — the message arrives as a direct message within seconds.
• Email, if they haven't connected Telegram (or Telegram doesn't reach them) but have an email address on file.

The message itself is always written by TimelyChurch, not typed by the teacher — it names the child, the class, the reason, the teacher, and your church, so a parent knows exactly what's being asked without guessing. A parent who is unreachable on any channel simply won't get a page; nothing gets stuck or retried silently.

Get parents connected first. A page can only reach a parent who's connected on Telegram or has an email on file. The fastest way to connect a parent is at check-in — most churches have this turned on automatically, so a parent can link Telegram in one tap the moment they drop off their child.

Built-In Safeguards

• One page per child per minute. After sending, that same teacher can't send another page for that same child for 60 seconds — enough to stop accidental double-taps without slowing down a real emergency.
• Every send is logged, along with who sent it, which child, and the reason — the same access log used for viewing a child's allergy and contact info.
• Only enrolled students can be paged from a class's Students tab — you can't page a guardian for a child who isn't actually enrolled in that class.

Who Can Send a Page

Paging uses the exact same gate as viewing a child's allergy and parent-contact info on the Students tab:

1. That class's teacher, leader, or co-leader — the people actually running the class the child is enrolled in.
2. A Sunday School Director — anyone holding the Assign Teachers permission (classes.assign_teachers), typically your Children's Ministry Director.
3. A church administrator.
4. Nobody else. A leader of an unrelated class, a general volunteer, or a plain member can't page a parent for a child they don't teach — the Message parent action doesn't appear for them at all.

Related Articles

• Event Check-In and Attendance — the Students tab, rosters, and check-in that this feature builds on.
• Roles & Permissions — granting the Assign Teachers permission.
• Telegram — Messages and Two-Tap Actions — how members connect their Telegram account.