What Shepherd Notes is and why it exists

Shepherd Notes is for everything people tell you on the way out of church or over the counter — the half-sentences that used to live on sticky notes and in your memory. You jot it down once, and Vianney sorts it, works out who it is about, and drafts a kind reply for you to review.

Shepherd Notes live in the Messages tab — they appear in your personal feed alongside birthday and anniversary greetings. Each staffer sees only the notes they captured themselves.

How it thinks

• Every note is classified — is it a sick call, a marriage inquiry, a Mass intention, an urgent anointing, a thank-you? — with a sense of how urgent it is.
• Vianney tries to identify the person from your roster. If it is sure, it links them; if not, it shows you the candidates and lets you choose. It never guesses.
• When a note is about someone other than who told you — "his wife just went on hospice" — Vianney identifies both: the teller (who the reply goes to) and the subject (who the note is actually about). Care cases and sick-list entries are created for the subject.
• It drafts an acknowledgement in the priest's voice, ready for you to read and send.

The golden rule

Nothing in Shepherd Notes is sent automatically. A note is *staged* until a person reviews it and clicks Send. That single confirm is the approval.

Tips

• Start with Capturing a note in Shepherd Notes.
• Notes can also arrive by text once texting is set up — see Receiving texts with Text intake.
• Anything confession-related must never be entered here.
• A parish can switch off Shepherd Notes triage and/or Shepherd Notes reply drafts separately in Settings → AI add-on; Shepherd Notes itself keeps working as a capture and routing tool either way — you just classify and draft by hand.