Work Chat for Collaborating in Evernote

[Sandeelynne3 152]

I would love to have a discussion about Work Chat.

I run my business in Evernote and built out my own system for using Evernote Professional with my small team. It works great. In Legacy.

Work Chat has always been an integral part of the workflow of my business. We routinely share note links in the chat to hand off tasks in the note to each other. It doesn't work the same way in v10.

Recently, I've been talking to Evernote about how v10 ruined Work Chat. In Legacy, all I had to do was hit the Share button from within a note, put the person's name in that I was sending the note to for the next action step, add a note about the action to take, and hit send. Done.

When the person finished that action step, they simply told me or shared the note link back in Work Chat again. VERY fast and efficient.

Now, in v10, I can no longer share a note link that way. I can only share it once or share the notebook. I can't hit the Share button in the note and have Work Chat "pick up" the note link and include it. Now I have to copy the app link, go open Work Chat in the bottom of my left nav bar, put in the person's name, type a note, drop the link, then send.

The whole process takes twice as much time to execute. And that's assuming the chat actually sends. 

Evernote agrees with me that the Legacy chat and my workflow in it are better however, evidently not many people are using Work Chat like this to collaborate. For that reason, there is no priority to make Work Chat a core part of Evernote.

I disagree. I think that if people could see the power of communicating within Work Chat instead of outside apps like email or Slack, more people would use it. Hence my desire for a conversation here in the forums.

My question is, why is no one else using Work Chat to collaborate on notes the way I do? I find it hard to believe that my workflow is that original in Evernote, but perhaps it is.

Please feel free to tag other power users and let's chat about Work Chat. 😁

[gazumped 12,224]

Hi.  Thanks for a great introduction to a potential discussion.  As well as being a long-time heavy user of Evernote I'm a member of about three loose chat networks*,  though all of them use Slack for comms.  I'm aware of the Evernote integration How to use Evernote for Slack but have no idea whether that is a viable option with v10.  I mainly use Legacy and -so far- haven't had a choice of which network I use for messages - others started with other providers and see no reason to change.

I would imagine that Evernote's main user base are all individuals or small businesses that principally use the app for research and recording data rather than assigning tasks within small groups.  I'm surprised though that since Evernote is adding task management and planning features to the subscription model,  they've apparently not woken up to the growing market for home working,  and the probable need for chatting and sharing amongst home-based staff.

It'll be interesting to see if anyone else here is using Work Chat to any major degree - and whether others might consider it if it becomes easier to use...

*That's loose networks that chat,  not networks for loose chat... 

 

[PinkElephant 9,015]

No work chat on my side - have not really found a use case for it.

Sharing works for me by passing on links via e-mail. Usually I create a notebook and share it, which shares everything inside of this notebook. 

Maybe I could give work chat another try …

[agsteele 3,075]

Personally, I found Workchat gets in the way. Perhaps that's because most of the group's/teams that I'm part of have not embraced Evernote and it was just too hard to advocate for Evernote with lots of individuals.

[Sandeelynne3 152]

Thank you, @gazumped, @PinkElephant, and @agsteele I think you're confirming what I've been telling Evernote.

Without any case studies or ideas suggested about how to incorporate Work Chat into the workflow, people are just ignoring it. My point is why go out to a separate app to talk when you can do it right within Evernote? If you haven't tried it, I can tell you it works great. 

You can have individual or group chats. It's easy to scroll back through to pick up any action items you might have missed at the first reading.

You can even use emojis, if you want to personalize it. 😁

I feel like I should make an instructional Loom video to show how and why I use Work Chat so extensively. Once more folks see that, I think they might give it more of a chance.

[gazumped 12,224]

1 hour ago, Sandeelynne3 said:

I feel like I should make an instructional Loom video to show how and why I use Work Chat so extensively.

I'd certainly be interested to see that.  

[PinkElephant 9,015]

The hurdle IMHO is to get others to install EN or at least get an account. On company managed devices you often can’t install own apps. And yet another account is often one too much.

But non problem if Work Chat gets a second life.

[ehrt74 240]

i'd like to use work chat more, but nobody i know uses it  Also the legacy Android version had a formatting bug which cut off part of the messages you received .. not good. v10 is better here.

maybe we could start an evernote chat group!

 

 

[Sandeelynne3 152]

On 2/12/2022 at 12:40 AM, ehrt74 said:

maybe we could start an evernote chat group!

Why not?  I can show you how effective Work Chat can be by using it. 😊. Anyone else want to join the Work Chat with @ehrt74 and me?

And OK @gazumped - I will take that Loom video on! To show the difference, I'll have to get Legacy set up on my new computer so give me a little time to do that first. I want to get that done anyway because v10 is still not where I want it to be to use it full-time.

@PinkElephantyou have a good point. I find that if I can get them to at least try it, they quickly grow to love using Evernote. Almost everyone I've trained comes back later to tell me how much they love Evernote, now that they understand how to use it the way their brains work.

@agsteelefollowing up. I think the best way to get more people to adopt it is to get an Evernote champion or two within the group. If there are a couple of people talking about how they use it and love it, more people in larger groups might embrace it. Or not. Frankly, I think it's better suited to smaller businesses, just based on my own experiences with it.

[agsteele 3,075]

9 minutes ago, Sandeelynne3 said:

I think the best way to get more people to adopt it is to get an Evernote champion or two within the group. If there are a couple of people talking about how they use it and love it, more people in larger groups might embrace it. Or not. Frankly, I think it's better suited to smaller businesses, just based on my own experiences with it.

Actually, the resistance I've noted over the years is that my colleagues do not wish to abandon their current workflows. Some like Email, others want to use whatever process they are familiar with. I pitch up with my favourite and they respond that they'd rather stick with what they know thanks.

[Henry M Carvalho 10]

On 2/14/2022 at 7:00 PM, Sandeelynne3 said:

Why not?  I can show you how effective Work Chat can be by using it. 😊. Anyone else want to join the Work Chat with @ehrt74 and me?

And OK @gazumped - I will take that Loom video on! To show the difference, I'll have to get Legacy set up on my new computer so give me a little time to do that first. I want to get that done anyway because v10 is still not where I want it to be to use it full-time.

@PinkElephantyou have a good point. I find that if I can get them to at least try it, they quickly grow to love using Evernote. Almost everyone I've trained comes back later to tell me how much they love Evernote, now that they understand how to use it the way their brains work.

@agsteelefollowing up. I think the best way to get more people to adopt it is to get an Evernote champion or two within the group. If there are a couple of people talking about how they use it and love it, more people in larger groups might embrace it. Or not. Frankly, I think it's better suited to smaller businesses, just based on my own experiences with it.

You should bring it to one of the evernote expert events. Talk to the community manager and spread the word

I think a good way is to use the expert community see the value in it, but you also would need to target other small business owners and Evernote Teams Space users.

It's quite a nich though... I doubt individual users would use it, and big companies will likely be using google or microsoft ecosystem

Anyway I think the discussion is quite a good one to have. Look forward to discuss with you in one of the expert events 

 

[Sandeelynne3 152]

On 9/8/2022 at 10:59 AM, Henry M Carvalho said:

You should bring it to one of the evernote expert events. Talk to the community manager and spread the word

I think a good way is to use the expert community see the value in it, but you also would need to target other small business owners and Evernote Teams Space users.

It's quite a nich though... I doubt individual users would use it, and big companies will likely be using google or microsoft ecosystem

Anyway I think the discussion is quite a good one to have. Look forward to discuss with you in one of the expert events 

 

I have brought it to Evernote Expert events, directly to our Evernote Expert leader @Brittany N. and her team, and am preparing to meet with one of the developers to share what I see as the immense potential for Work Chat. 

Imagine if Work Chat were integrated to function like Slack but INSIDE Evernote instead of changing apps? That's the way I've been using it for years and it's great. Details don't get lost in email. Threads are available to review. I can send a note with comments in Work Chat (only in Legacy though) and it takes seconds making for fast collaboration. 

Why would I want to leave Evernote and go do all of that in Slack and then go back into Evernote? I think this is simply a case of people not realizing how powerful Work Chat used to be so they never tried using it.

And not everyone using Evernote is a big company. Many are small and medium-sized who love using Work Chat once I show them how well it works (or worked, in Legacy).

[PinkElephant 9,015]

Hmmmm - I have worked in several organizations, and am currently working as a consultant in cross-organization projects. I would not think about proposing to install EN as a platform for project work in any of these projects. Too much discussion about using a tool instead of goals, implementation and resources.

In the typical situation you take what most already have, and adapt to the common denominator. From my observation MS Teams has evolved into such an unofficial shared standard in the last years. The Covid-Situation was a booster for this development - in Teams you have chat, file exchange and voice/video conferencing, all integrated and supported by most company IT together with O365. When everybody needed something fast, Teams was picked in many cases, regardless if there were better tools for specific subfunctions.

For EN this means: Never fight a battle you have already lost.

I would like to see the integration of note sharing return to work chat, to support sharing by a communication channel that is backing it up with information available to all who received a share. This was an approach that really worked, and added value.

[agsteele 3,075]

8 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

For EN this means: Never fight a battle you have already lost

That's pretty cool advice in lots of situations. 😁 Especially for tech evangelists...

[PinkElephant 9,015]

Sun Tzu … Clausewitz … evangelists of their time, always worth a read.

[Sandeelynne3 152]

19 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

I would like to see the integration of note sharing return to work chat, to support sharing by a communication channel that is backing it up with information available to all who received a share. This was an approach that really worked, and added value.

Great points, thank you! And I agree with you that sharing notes with comments needs to be returned to Work Chat. That's one of my biggest issues with it in v. 10.