(Archived) Managing workflows - any advice

[gmoore 0]

Long time personal EN user - considering shifting my workgroup to EN Business...

 

We have a couple of fairly specific processes in our daily business.  Get a request, evaluate it, approve/reject it, order equipment, ship equipment, track shipment, arrange for equipment return...

 

It's a work flow that we currently manage with a combination of email, MS Word documents and MS excel spreadsheets...

 

Does anyone have any experience in creating similar workflow in EN?

 

thanks

[Analyst444 182]

gmoore - Here's an approach to consider.

 

Create a (master) Note in EN for each "work unit" (my term). That Note will have whatever fields (values) you need for:

• Identifying the "work unit".
• The request information.
• Your team's evaluation.
• Was it accepted or rejected?
• List of equipment ordered.
• Equipment shipment information.
• Tracking information.
• Return information.

Any one of the above bullets may require multiple pieces of information (fields). These could be separate line items or, maybe, EN's table function would give you more format options.

 

 

Then, each document (email, MS Word, Excel spreadsheet) that gets created is added to the EN database as its own Note.

 

One more point. Add a spot in the "master" document that is a link to each and every other document that gets added to the EN database that is related to the "master". With EN, this is easy to do. After a document gets added to the EN database as a Note, right-click (I'm using the Windows EN version) on it. A little menu will pop up. Select Copy Note Link." Go to the "master" Note. Find the spot where the link needs to go and paste it.

 

Of course, you may decide doing the reverse is also a good idea. That is, in each document Note, paste the link to its "master".

 

You'll need to experiment to determine what variation of the above actually works best.

 

The conceptual framework I described above will likely be effective for any workflow your group has to deal with. - - - Of course, other people monitoring this forum may offer entirely different approaches.

 

I hope you feel this helps you out.

[gmoore 0]

Thanks - that's an interesting approach and I appreciate the explanation...

 

one quick question - what's the benefit of adding each document in it's own note - with links in the master note - versus just adding the documents to the main note?

 

-g

[jbenson2 2,147]

Evernote works more efficiently with individual notes for several reasons. Here are a few:

 

1.) Easier to locate using Evernote search (versus a lot of scrolling in the master note)

2.) Better description with the title (using intitle: command)

3.) Created Date can be very useful for timeline

4.) Selectively view only the notes that apply (versus the whole kitchen sink with the master note)

 

A minor drawback to adding documents to a master note is that Evernote usage is based on uploads. Every time you add or modify the master note, when it is sync'd it will add to the upload quota.

[Analyst444 182]

g - jbenson2 laid out a nice list of many of the impacts of using individual Notes in EN for the documents associated with one "work unit". I've read comments in the forum by other people and it seems that the majority thinks more, smaller notes is usually (but certainly not always) better than fewer large Notes with EN.

 

Here are a couple other thoughts to consider.

• Would it be helpful to your application to use EN Tags? If yes, would it be more effective to use Tags with the "individual Notes" approach that I tossed at you or the "all-in-one Note" approach?
• I don't use or have familiarity with EN Business. Can more than one member of your team view and edit the "all-in-one Note" at the same time?
• If you use the "all-in-one Note" approach, is there enough discipline in the process or your team that the supporting documents will always end up in the same sequence? Or will each Note have a different sequence of parts, thus possibly make searching and scrolling somewhat more time consuming?
• One disadvantage of the "individual Notes" approach is that your team members will spend time copying and pasting Note links.

Here's one other thought for you to wrestle with. Would it be a good idea for the EN process to have a list of "work units"? An advantage would be that it might help keep an eye on the forest and not always get bogged down with the trees. The list could have links to the "master" work units. Of course, then you have to spend time maintaining this list.

 

Between the points jbenson2 and I have made, there are a variety of issues to consider. As I don't know how many people are on your team or what is the volume of "work units" or supporting documents, I could only speculate as to what would be an advantage or disadvantage. Again, seriously consider testing two or more approaches. I presume you are the leader of the workgroup. Leaders don't always have to come up with the answer. And, as I'm sure you know, it is almost always more effective for getting buy-in to the final process from team members if you make them part of the evaluation / testing process.

 

A

[gmoore 0]

Excellent advice from all - thanks for everyone's input...

[C6REW 416]

Hi gmoore,

 

Some really great advice here.

 

The only thing I would add, is beware of using an Excel spreadsheet and opening it from a Note and changing it. Evernote is not very good at saving this back into it's Note. You will find you loose data as the spreadsheet sometimes stays at an older version, rather than the one you just saved!

 

To get over this in my company, we only have one person who works on a spreadsheet and they open it from their hard drive. When saved the folder, the folder on their computer is linked as an 'Import Folder' to Evernote, which means it will create a new Note every time you click 'save'. The trick is to make sure you delete all previous Notes with older version of the Excel Spreadsheet in. This may sound long winded, but once you get into the routine it is very straightforward.

 

The problem for you would appear to be that a lot of individuals will be working on a spreadsheet. If that is the case you will need to store it somewhere like Dropbox with a link within a Note to open it. Never tried using it that way, but understand it works fine.

 

Best regards

 

Chris

[gmoore 0]

Thanks Chris - that's an important one....

 

We could certainly save the excel doc on a shared drive and simply link to it...

[C6REW 416]

Thanks Chris - that's an important one....

 

We could certainly save the excel doc on a shared drive and simply link to it...

 

 

Before I realised we had a few spreadsheets which were being opened and saved within Evernote. One was an order file which gives us information on stock and customer orders. Being able to access when on the road is very useful. We suddenly found that accounts where duplicating orders! Simply because the were not always being recorded at the end of the day. Then the penny dropped!

 

Works very well like I mentioned.

 

Best regards

 

Chris