User Recommendations
Learn how AI-powered recommendations can help your app users better engage with your church.
When you enable this feature in your app, users can get recommendations for events, groups, and serving opportunities they may be interested in. It's personalized based on what PocketPlatform knows about the authenticated user, which comes from the data you track in MinistryPlatform. Recommendations are refreshed daily, so they're always relevant and timely!
Recommendations can be really useful when congregants want to engage but don't know where or how to plug in. Meet members where they are and surface the right next step automatically. Increase engagement with people showing up, joining a group, and serving in your church.
How It Works
| Step | Actions | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | PocketPlatform builds a profile of an app user with their age range, household information, current and past participation history, and location radius. | |
| 2 | PocketPlatform finds applicable events, groups, and opportunities in your church's data. | |
| 3 | Recommendations are selected based on audience, distance, group membership, and other factors. For example:
| |
| 4 | A single AI call chooses the three best recommendations and (optionally) generates the reason each one was recommended for the user. The title and description for each recommendation comes from the Event/Group/Opportunity record in MinistryPlatform. For more on what the AI can access, see AI Features FAQ. | |
| 5 | The user opens the Recommendations page in the app and is presented with their personalized top three per day. Note: Each day, the first time a user opens recommendations, it may take a few seconds to generate. If they open the page again the same day, the recommendations are cached and load quickly. | |
| They can tap a button to view details about the recommended event, group, or opportunity. They can then sign up from there, if available. | ||
| Or, they can tap Not for Me to remove the item, and similar items will not be recommended again. | ||
Security
Recommendations are powered by AI, but the AI model never has direct access to your database. This feature cannot browse the internet, so there would never be any recommendations for anything outside of your church's environment. Read through the AI Features FAQ to get a full understanding of how AI is being used and the guardrails that protect your church and your users.
Where to Find It
This feature is not enabled by default. Contact Support to add a link or button for the Recommendations screen. You might decide on a button at the top of the dashboard, a link in the right navigation menu, or any other location where you think it makes sense for users. You can also limit who has access to this feature in the App Manager.