Staff Notes, Visibility & Attachments

Staff Notes give pastors and church administrators a dependable place to record everyday facts, hospital and home visits, phone calls, family milestones, and practical preferences—such as “Hard of hearing; prefers phone calls” or “Moving to a new address in the spring.”

Notes are built strictly for church leadership: only Owners and Admins ever see notes, pinned note cards, or note counts on tabs. Church logins with the Member role never see the Notes tab or any note content anywhere in the app.

Public (shared with staff) vs. Private (only me) visibility

Every time you write or edit a note, you choose who can read it:

• Public — Visible to church staff (Shared with staff): Any Owner or Admin in your church can read the note, open its attachments, and create a follow-up task from it.
• Private — Only visible to you (Only me): Marked with a Private lock badge. Only you—the author who wrote the note—can ever see it or open its files; other owners and admins cannot see that it exists. If you ever close your Parsonage account, your private notes are permanently deleted rather than handed over to another staff member.

Subjects & household rollup

Each note belongs to a single subject—a Person, a Household, or a Group:

• Person & Household rollup: When you open a person’s Notes tab, you see both the notes written specifically about that person and the notes written about any Household they currently belong to. Household notes display a household badge with the family’s name. When writing a new note on a person who belongs to a household, you can choose Who is this note about?—either the individual person or their household (which notes whose other family pages it will also appear on). Editing, pinning, or archiving a household note updates it across every household member’s page at once.
• Group notes: Notes recorded on a Group appear only on that group’s page so individual people’s profiles stay focused on personal and family care.

Parsonage separates viewing shared staff notes from editing someone else’s words so the record of who wrote a note stays trustworthy.

Owner & Admin

Can view all Public (staff-shared) notes and their attachments on people, households, and groups; write new Public or Private notes; archive or restore any visible note; and create follow-up tasks from visible notes.

Note author

Only the Owner or Admin who wrote a note can edit its text, category, or visibility, pin or unpin it, add or remove its attachments, share or hide earlier private versions, or permanently delete it. Only the author can view their own Private notes.

Member

No access. Member logins never see the Notes tab, note counts, pinned notes, group notes, or note attachments.

Writing notes & filtering by category

1. 1

   Add a note on a person, household, or group

   On a person’s profile (under the Notes tab) or near the bottom of a group’s page, click Add note. Write your note (up to 10,000 characters), optionally choose a Category, pick Who is this note about? if the person is in a household, choose Who can see this (Public or Private), and click Add note.

2. 2

   Use optional categories and filter chips

   You can tag any note with an optional category: Visit, Phone call, Life event, or Preference. Categories never change who can see a note. As soon as at least one note uses a category, filter chips (All, Visit, Phone call, and so on) appear above the notes list so you can quickly scan one type of note at a time.

Pinning, archiving, and deleting notes

1. 1

   Pin important notes to the top and Overview tab

   Click the Pin note icon on any note you wrote to keep it highlighted at the top of the notes list. On a person’s profile, active pinned notes (including pinned notes from their household) also appear in a Pinned notes card right on their Overview tab so important context—like accessibility needs or contact preferences—is visible at a glance.

2. 2

   Archive and restore older notes

   When a note is no longer needed day to day, click the Archive note icon to tuck it out of the active list while keeping its full record. Whenever archived notes exist, a Show archived link appears below the active notes list; click it to view archived notes and click the Restore note icon to bring one back.

3. 3

   Delete a note permanently

   If you wrote a note by mistake, click the Delete note trash icon and confirm Delete note. For notes that are simply out of date, archiving is almost always better than deleting.

File attachments, version history & follow-up tasks

1. 1

   Attach scans, photos, or PDFs

   You can attach up to 10 files per note, up to 10 MB each, in JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP image formats or as a PDF. Click Choose files while writing a new note, or click the Attach file paperclip icon on an existing note you wrote. Every attachment automatically shares its note’s visibility—files on a private note can only be opened by the note’s author.

2. 2

   Review version history and private revision controls

   Whenever a note’s body is edited, Parsonage saves the previous wording. Click the edited · Show earlier versions link on the note to view earlier versions newest-first. If you originally wrote a version while the note was Private and later switched the note to Public, those earlier private versions stay hidden from other staff (marked Only you) unless you explicitly click Share with staff on that version (and you can click Hide from staff at any time to make it private again).

3. 3

   Create a linked follow-up task from a note

   Click the Create task icon on any active note to open the task form pre-linked to the note’s person, household, or group. Once saved, the follow-up task is listed right underneath the note with its live completion status.