Evernote for teams

[Rob25 1]

Hi folks,

Here is the challenge - we have a team of 10 Chemical engineers - most are new to Evernote - and we are trying a management team approach where one of the team will become point person for a project (such as improve connection between the parent group and 14 student chapters, or find new locations to hold monthly meetings etc- and then throw a set of tasks out to the team - and some of the team will do tasks, take notes about phone calls or email outreaches etc, and then another member of the team will be come point person for another project and some of the same team will support that project.  So the lead on projects will pass from person to person and the support teams will vary based on their interest and availability. Many projects could be running simultaneously   If we used the old approach of simply emailing everyone on the team for each of the concurrent projects - it could matrix out of control - so we want to set up a shared evernote model where we can all keep track of numerous projects without the email chains.   Has anyone had experience with setting up this kind of structure - especially with folks who have no previous evernote experience?   Can it be done with  standard evernote and share with the team members or is business evernote more suited for this type of communication and note taking?  How  we alert team members when new information - say from a phone call - has been added to a project note? 

Thank you.

Rob25

[DTLow 5,736]

17 hours ago, Rob25 said:

Here is the challenge - we have a team of 10 Chemical engineers - most are new to Evernote - and we are trying a management team approach where one of the team will become point person for a project (such as improve connection between the parent group and 14 student chapters, or find new locations to hold monthly meetings etc- and then throw a set of tasks out to the team - and some of the team will do tasks, take notes about phone calls or email outreaches etc, and then another member of the team will be come point person for another project and some of the same team will support that project.  So the lead on projects will pass from person to person and the support teams will vary based on their interest and availability. Many projects could be running simultaneously   If we used the old approach of simply emailing everyone on the team for each of the concurrent projects - it could matrix out of control - so we want to set up a shared evernote model where we can all keep track of numerous projects without the email chains.   Has anyone had experience with setting up this kind of structure - especially with folks who have no previous evernote experience?   Can it be done with  standard evernote and share with the team members or is business evernote more suited for this type of communication and note taking?  How  we alert team members when new information - say from a phone call - has been added to a project note? 

I'm not a Business account user so I can't comment on that

Certainly you can share notebooks in Evernote and you can assign team member tags
- but you can't force people to look at the notes

Unfortunately Evernote lacks a notification system for activity
so you'll have to implement some other process.

I have a saved search showing my current tasks
I would think each of the team members would want something similar
My search is based on due date, but it could be based on date updated.

On my Mac, I could set up a script to send out an email when notes are added or updated in a notebook.  There's also a SunreNotifier service

[EdH 1,670]

2 hours ago, Rob25 said:

Hi folks,

Here is the challenge - we have a team of 10 Chemical engineers - most are new to Evernote - and we are trying a management team approach where one of the team will become point person for a project (such as improve connection between the parent group and 14 student chapters, or find new locations to hold monthly meetings etc- and then throw a set of tasks out to the team - and some of the team will do tasks, take notes about phone calls or email outreaches etc, and then another member of the team will be come point person for another project and some of the same team will support that project.  So the lead on projects will pass from person to person and the support teams will vary based on their interest and availability. Many projects could be running simultaneously   If we used the old approach of simply emailing everyone on the team for each of the concurrent projects - it could matrix out of control - so we want to set up a shared evernote model where we can all keep track of numerous projects without the email chains.   Has anyone had experience with setting up this kind of structure - especially with folks who have no previous evernote experience?   Can it be done with  standard evernote and share with the team members or is business evernote more suited for this type of communication and note taking?  How  we alert team members when new information - say from a phone call - has been added to a project note? 

Thank you.

Rob25

You definitely want Business for this, but it won't send out an alert to people when there is a change to the note. However, if they sort by "Modified Date" in a list view, they can see what notes were modified when with the most recent at the top, or bottom depending on how they have it sorted.

The Activity icon (bell in Mac, and I think a satellite dish in Windows - not at my Win machine right now) will also show activity, but it is restricted in that things can scroll off so if someone goes on vacation, when they get back, that would be useless to them and would have to sort as I suggest above. But for day to day usage, it could be very handy.

The Business Work Chat can be used too to quickly ping people about an update if member A knows that members C, J, and K need to know that something was changed real quickly, and it keeps it out of email.

Using Premium with a shared notebook would become a pain very quickly with 10 users and you are restricted as to what you can and cannot do, like tags, for example, or adding new notebooks.

[Analyst444 182]

Rob25 - I do not have experience with Evernote Business. The ideas I offer below will work with Evernote Premium.

 

Here's an approach. There are several others. Use this Evernote model/structure for your team and projects, modify it to better suit your purposes, or abandon  it.

 

Get Evernote Premium for each person (members of the management team and each of the chemical engineers (CE).

 

You have training that needs to be done for both for the management team and the CEs. There is a lot of educational material at the Evernote web site. I'll let you figure out what training topics are appropriate and focus on offering some ideas on how to structure Evernote for your team's needs.

 

For openers, I considered suggesting that you get your people trained on an Evernote feature called "Work Chat". It would allow project members to send messages to other team members without leaving Evernote. However, in your post, you said you wanted an Evernote model/structure that would operate "without the email chains".

 

So, here is a model (structure) for Evernote to consider.

For each project, you need a "master project Note". You said there will be (or are) many projects. So, I suggest you create a "Template" for new projects. I created an example for you. You can see it at  http://www.evernote.com/l/ACKxCKy0vbRD4LSP6QavW2W0vFxg2MxpHyU/

For each project, create an Evernote Notebook. The name of the Notebook should be standardized. A combination of a unique number and/or short name is a good way to go. The first Evernote Note to add to the Notebook is the "master project Note". Each project needs a unique number and a unique (short) name. All Tasks and Material Notes (described below) should be added to this new Notebook.

 

When a new project materializes:

• Duplicate the "Template".
• Fill out the new Note and consider it the "master project Note" for that project. (Perhaps you will want the project leader to fill it out.)
• Notify the management team member that you name as the project leader.
• The project leader notifies all the CEs that are assigned to the project.

 

For tasks, with so many people involved, I highly recommend that each task become a its own Evernote Note. Doing so will make it a simple matter for each project team member to use Evernote to produce a list of tasks that have been assigned to him/her (for a specific project or all projects assigned).

 

The Project Leader (or anyone?) can create a Task Note and assign Tags to it. --- I designed an example Task Note to be used as a Template. You can see it at   http://www.evernote.com/l/ACKhZQ49NHFJBa_ HKeHFGqSLoHjRs7r2cLo/. 

The title of the Task Note should identify the project and describe the Task. I suggest the format of the title look like this:

Project= Xxxxxxxxxxx Task=Aaaaaaaaaa, where Xxxxxxxxxxx is the project number and Aaaaaaaaaa is a multi-word description of the task. (Again, fewer words are better than a lot of words.)

 

In order for project members to use Evernote to easily produce a list of tasks assigned to him/her, these 2 sets of Evernote Tags should be added to each Task Note:

• People Tags - Create one tag for each person. The value of the Tag can simply be the last name of the person. (Examples are Jones, Stein, Javier, Jabber.) If you anticipate that you will be using several different kinds of Tags, then I suggest you prefix the people Tags with "Person=". (Examples would then be Person=Jones, Person=Stein, Person=Javier, Person=Jabber.)
• Task Status Tags - The values can be anything, but simple is better and fewer is better. (Examples are Status=Planned, Status=Active, Status= OnHold, Status=Canceled, Status=Completed." Adding Tags like this will allow a a project member to construct subsets of Tasks assigned to him/her.

 

In addition to Evernote Notes for Projects and Tasks, I suspect project team members will collect material (information like documents, pictures, schematics, audio recordings, etc.) needed to perform Tasks. Each such item can / should become an Evernote Note. Again, the title of the Note should identify the project that it applies to. Here is an example similar to Task Notes:

Project=Xxxxxxxxxxx Material=Aaaaaaaaaa, where Xxxxxxxxxxx is the project number and Aaaaaaaaaa is a multi-word description of the material. (Again, fewer words are better than a lot of words.)

 

As I said earlier, this is just one model/structure for your team. There are others. Try this one, modify it to better suit your needs, or abandon it.

 

 

 

 

[gazumped 11,666]

There's no true 'turnkey' system for business software - nothing you can just install on your server and magically transform the company's operations.  All deployments are very much subject to user acceptance and training,  and to a greater or lesser degree,  to ongoing correct use. 

Finding the right application is only the first step - there's getting the buy-in from your colleagues,  making sure everyone knows how to use whatever system you implement,  and including enough checks and balances to combat occasional mistakes and unusual situations.  Have a look at the Evernote Business Deployment Guide for some pointers...