What parishioners can do in the portal

Once a parishioner claims their portal account, they can keep their own information current and take part in parish life — within tight privacy limits that protect everyone. The portal has five tabs: Info, Ministries, Sacraments, Connect, and Prayer Requests.

Their own details

• Update their contact details — the email and mobile number the parish reaches them at. Their sign-in email never changes; only the office sets that.
• Update their address, and add a seasonal address with the months it applies, which takes over on its own while those dates are active.
• Submit a photo of themselves. A staff member reviews every photo before it appears anywhere, and the portal offers this to adults only.
• View their household — the names and role of everyone in it, plus the household's address and phone on file. This part is view-only; adding or changing who is in the household is still an office task.
• View their Safe Environment clearance status — if they are in the parish's SE records, the Info tab shows a read-only summary. Parishioners never update those records themselves.

Serving and scheduling

This is where the portal saves the office the most work. Everything a parishioner does here is a request or a preference — the portal never assigns, reassigns, or confirms anyone, and the office has the last word every time.

• See their own upcoming assignments — a full year ahead, once you have published the schedule, with the church and any arrive-by time. Draft schedules never appear.
• Set ministry availability — a preferred Mass, how often they are willing to serve in a month, and dates they cannot serve — which flows straight into scheduling.
• Nothing to confirm. Once you publish, a parishioner simply sees the assignment — there is nothing to accept or acknowledge. If a Mass changes, the office sends them a short "your Mass changed" note. If they cannot serve, the substitute request below is the door.
• Ask for a substitute on one of their own assignments, and offer to cover for a fellow minister. They stay scheduled until the office confirms a replacement, and nothing switches hands until the office approves it. Very close to the Mass, the portal asks them to call the office instead.
• Volunteer for an open spot on a published schedule, in the ministries they belong to — if your parish has this turned on. The request waits for the office: the parishioner sees "requested", then "confirmed" once you approve it.
• Set their household's serving preferences — keeping the family at one Mass, how often the family serves, and away dates for the whole household. An adult in the household manages these; anyone under 18, or whose age is not on record, sees them read-only. Only the choices your parish offers appear.
• Create a private calendar feed so their serving schedule appears in Google or Apple Calendar and keeps itself up to date. The link is shown once and cannot be shown again, it only ever carries their own assignments, and they can replace it or turn it off at any time. It is not offered to minors.

The rest of the portal

• Sacraments — a read-only summary of their own sacramental record, and their household's faith-formation classes; registration links open your parish's public registration page.
• Connect — the groups they belong to, groups they may ask to join, and each group's conversation. Leaving a group stops its messages to them at once. Anything in progress for them — a wedding, a funeral, a baptism, or an open care case in one reassuring line — appears here too, in gentle summary form.
• A parishioner you have made a group leader or sender sees more on this tab, for that one group: its roster, its join requests, and a box for composing a message to it. It is the staff workspace in portal form, and it obeys the same confirmation rule — nothing sends without the send-time confirm. See Group rosters: adding people, imports, and exports and Group conversations and moderation.
• A leader sending to a group meets the same large-send safety checks staff meet, written as plain dialogs. If their sign-in isn't recent enough, a note asks them to sign out and sign in again, and nothing else happens. Otherwise they acknowledge each risk your parish requires, one dialog at a time, then type the total number of destinations to confirm the size. Decline any of them and the message simply stays a draft. See Connect settings and safety limits.
• Prayer Requests — a short note asking the parish to pray. It goes privately to Father and the office, and is never posted or shared.

Requesting a Mass intention is not part of the portal. That lives on your parish's own public request page — see Online Mass intention requests — where a parishioner who happens to be signed in is recognised automatically.

What they can never see

The portal shows a parishioner only their own information. Insights — in either visibility tier — the inside of a care case, Shepherd Notes messages, annulment records, and every staff or configuration screen are entirely walled off. Other people's contact details are too, with one deliberate exception: a parishioner you have made a group leader sees that group's roster, and it shows members' email and phone only if you have turned that on for the group — it ships off. Even then, a leader's roster export carries names and standing only, whatever that setting says. Sign-in failures stay generic, never revealing whether an account exists.

Tips

• What each parishioner may edit follows your parish's own switches — see Inviting a parishioner to the portal. Where a switch is off, the portal stops offering it and, where it helps, asks them to call the office.
• Portal sessions end after an hour for safety, so members sign in again periodically.
• Resetting a portal password signs that parishioner out of every other active session first, for safety.
• Encouraging ministers to keep their own availability current is the single easiest way to make auto-fill produce clean schedules.