Quality of Life Survey

[gazumped 12,031]

I just came across a new Evernote survey in the wild - can't say I'm wildly (see what I did there?) impressed with the options.  I can see certain factions of the audience going wild (OK I'll stop now) over nested notebooks and table calculations.  It did prompt me though to send my own Feedback for my preferences,  which are:

1.    An easy way to create a full backup of my entire account and add a daily incremental changes file
2.    A stable public API so that add-in apps like AHK can be used to automate processes
3.    An Import folder that will offer a ‘delete on completion’ option
4.    A default tasks assignment so I can process tasks without having to confirm every. single. one.
5.    The ability to multi-select notes and change attributes like the public URL or assign location

You're entitled to your own opinions of course,  and 'fix the bugs' and 'get support back on track' are givens.  Please use this opportunity to give the company your own ideas via feedback@evernote.com

Here's what was on offer - 

[janndk 661]

1. fix line spacing
2. fix pdf export
3. fix print
4. fix the ugly UI (terrible "yellow snow" background etc)
5. fix old bugs before adding more new buggy features

[PinkElephant 8,705]

@janndk thanks for adding the only survey that would count. Let me add:

- make sure content is safe (just encountered corrupted attachments again), check and restore missing content from your server backup 

- fix the offline capability of the (Mac) desktop client

- fix HTML export (links are still broken)

- hire and empower a solid QA department that makes sure we can trust in updates again

[thefryhole 91]

To those listed by @janndk and @PinkElephant I would add:

- fix offline function for Windows and iOS mobile clients

- offer a stable release channel so subscribers can choose whether they want to donate their time to a multi-billion dollar company or if they prefer not to be taken advantage of by being forced into acting as EN's freebie guinea pigs/product testers/QA stand-ins

- have a proper comms strategy whereby subscribers have somewhere they can go for trusted information on what's a bug, what's a newly released feature, and what's happening with the platform, rather than relying on an abandoned forum

[Cristiano478 230]

6 horas atrás, gazumped disse:

I just came across a new Evernote survey in the wild - can't say I'm wildly (see what I did there?) impressed with the options.  I can see certain factions of the audience going wild (OK I'll stop now) over nested notebooks and table calculations.  It did prompt me though to send my own Feedback for my preferences,  which are:

1.    An easy way to create a full backup of my entire account and add a daily incremental changes file
2.    A stable public API so that add-in apps like AHK can be used to automate processes
3.    An Import folder that will offer a ‘delete on completion’ option
4.    A default tasks assignment so I can process tasks without having to confirm every. single. one.
5.    The ability to multi-select notes and change attributes like the public URL or assign location

You're entitled to your own opinions of course,  and 'fix the bugs' and 'get support back on track' are givens.  Please use this opportunity to give the company your own ideas via feedback@evernote.com

Here's what was on offer - 

 

Where is this research available?

 

[PinkElephant 8,705]

Not hard to tell it’s their backlog - and it’s about what goes when.

[tm87 58]

Funny  coincidence: I was considering to send some feedback to Evernote for a while now. This thread moved the needle, so I finally did this.

Here are my thoughts about improvements for my use-case:

 

1. Add / improve drag-and-drop capability (both with a mouse and with a gesture on mobile) for tasks as well as bulleted / numbered lists and checkboxes. I like to resort things fast if I brainstorm or add tasks to the order that makes most sense to me. Being able to do that faster would be a huge help.

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2. Add an option to export all my notebooks in a row. I prefer to keep my own backups of important data and I currently limit my number of notebooks to just three and only backup the important big one regularly, because manually backing up more notebooks would get annoying fast.

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3. Improve tagging inside the Evernote-client. Searching for a tag to add is much smoother on the webclipper than in the app, because it recognizes parts of tags. 

As an example: If I wanted to add some thing like “cooking-dinner”, and I have many “cooking-XXX” tags for different aspects of a main hobby, I can type “din” in the webclipper and it offers the correct tag. In the main client I have to start with “cooking-di“ which is slower and makes it harder to tag things. 

(Note: For me the central and effortless tagging is one of the main reasons to use Evernote instead of other note-apps.)

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4. Make sure there are no corrupt files, ever. Luckily I didn’t find any so far myself, but I saw a whole bunch of reports of corrupted and sometimes completely lost files in the Evernote forum. This scares me. I’m back to using Evernote as my main notetaking-app, and I’m actually very pleased with the overall direction. 

But I trust my data to a note-taking app to make sure I DON’T lose it, and I’m not keen to store the same pdf in different places, just in case it gets corrupted. Please take any report of missing or corrupted data as a very serious issue. If I had the perfect notes-app, but it would sometimes kill some data of me, I would switch to another product as soon as possible. (As I said, I haven’t found any missing data myself, but the number of reported cases felt bad.)

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5. Calendar: I rarely use this yet, because I’m on Apple calendar. I’ll stoked you are working on an integration for this. I’ll re-evaluate this feature then.

One thing I already noticed: Please add a 24h-setting, additionally to am and pm. I’m not used to am/pm at all anymore. It’s a small thing, but I would prefer that a lot. 

 Also, an easier option to add new entries in the Evernote calendar would be useful, like “pulling open” a time window with the mouse in the calendar view. I played with using Evernote calendar for some time-block-planning separate of my “hard landscape” in my actual calendar, but adding entries to a bit too long for my taste.

 

[John in Michigan USA 140]

Great topic! I too am not very impressed with the options. No option to focus on data integrity, stability, communication, those would be priority 1,2 & 3 in my book with everything else priority 10.

Well my priorities 1,2 & 3 are general goals, not specific issues, features, or bugs. If Evernote is serious about this, I'd be happy to provide detailed examples. For now I'll just agree with the specific items mentioned by other posters on this topic, and add one more item: Bring back conflict detection and notification of same.

With RTE, they seem to have gotten rid of note conflict notifications. At least, the saved searched I have for note conflicts no longer work. This would probably be fine, if all parties editing a note are online. The changes show up instantly so users can see any conflicts and avoid them by not editing the same part of the note at the same time. However, if one or more parties are editing the same part of the note in offline mode, the conflicting edits don't "see" each other until all copies of the note are back online. There no longer appears to be a mechanism to detect the conflict and alert the parties. Instead, the system seems to just garble the edits together, essentially corrupting the part of the note that is in conflict, and not telling anyone about it.

😦Since it looks like their going to try some of these things, on my survey I gave top ranking to the things that I guessed would be least likely to cause problems or disruption. 😦

 

 

[Dave Green 260]

Another one:

Repair URI handling

 

[Grant837 136]

I have a long list - which focuses on improving existing features, and not new 'subscriber bait' new features.  I am glad to see most here feel the same.  It does scare me, however, that they want to 'simplify' the organization of the Desktop - usually that results in less control and more clicks (and in Evernotes case, more space between everything).

I think these are at the top of my list (it was very hard to choose!)

• Editing: provide more fonts, sizes, colors
• Editing: have type ahead in tags at the bottom of notes work as it does everywhere else (eg also shows tags containing the typed text)
• Headers: more levels and an option to set new headings and normal text formats for all future notes, or at least save them to a template
• Tasks: Tags (maybe that is what they mean by meta-data but I suspect not).  And Subtasks!
• Navigation: Indeed, more levels of Hierarchies
• Navigation: shortcut key to collapse levels in Navigation pane (all the more needed if they add more levels)
• Direct Editing of Templates
• Home: Option to remove the large banner at the top
• Home: Custom control over the height and width of Widgets

I will submit all my points to Evernote via feedback too.  Everyone should.

[kkarney 145]

How about a little customer support now and then?

[BLK Dragon 29]

On 7/22/2024 at 3:17 PM, janndk said:

fix old bugs before adding more new buggy features

I think we can stop here. (But implementing basic functionality from Classic Evernote would be nice)

[philanon 10]

There should have been an option to comment. 

My top things:

1. Schedulable backups - full & incremental. Not for one notebook at a time. 
2. Single-clicking the tray icon should open Evernote, not create a new "quick note". Why was this changed? Make this a user preference.
3. Let me change the thumbnail in snippet view instead of just using the first image.

The "nice to have" things, in order of priority:

1. Selective sync on desktop and/or better sharing options. I don't need all of my notebooks on all of my computers. I'd like to have just 1-2 available for family members.
   • I used to do this by sharing specific notebooks to their accounts, but the free plan can't view multiple notebooks anymore. How about household sub-accounts that can view anything that the main account shares and also have one or two notebooks for themselves.
2. Favorite templates on iOS to replace the default ones.
   • Yes, I know I can create a note, put it in shortcuts, and duplicate it each time. But I have a few and I don't want my shortcuts cluttered up.
3. Line spacing/padding options - I don't like everything so spread out, but I know others do. Compact mode and the ability to hide features we don't use could be in user preferences.
4. Let me customize what buttons appear on the formatting bar. I'd like to trade insert for strikethrough since I can insert with / now.
5. Import and then delete folder would be nice

Things I don't care about: tasks, calendars, reminders, AI, Files view (my files mostly have nonsense names anyway), audio

Things that are working fine for me that I do care about: scansnap integration, shortcuts, tags, internal links, checklists, note history, the iOS app

Pin to notebook and collapsible sections are the best things added recently, so thanks for those! I would like to see a roadmap to know what is being planned.

[AlbertR 689]

On 7/22/2024 at 1:59 PM, gazumped said:

I just came across a new Evernote survey ...

... and hope they'll go this way in future to get feedback about our needs 👍. Why? Surely not to collect new needs - but rank them (I think they know about all) to a propper priority to implement it... Ranking a backlog of stories is a really hard job for product owners. But it's necessary to fill a team's ToDo list with meaningfull and achievable tasks for the next development cycle(s).

It's impossible to always have all stories in mind: If there are some hundreds stories from thousands of participants (product owners, devs, users, ...), nobody can sort the stories without loosing overview...

One possible solution for that might be an "Elo rating system" that was developed to assess the strength of chess players. It is used in many sport disciplines in which individual players compete against each other. It allows any number of competitors to be compared even if they have never directly competed against each other. See DancesportInfo.net for an implementation in an other area... 😉

Base of the game to rank masses of stories are smaller queries of about 10 single stories to be ranked (like EN did with this first survey). Every story starts with a base "priority" of (for example) 100 points. Every single result list changes the story's priorities with +5 for the 1., +4 for the 2. until -4 for the last. (Calculation has to be more sophisticated - but it's easier to explain if I use that simple rule...)

The next query rounds will contain 10 other single stories (either randomly selected or based on a themes like "UI", "technical" or others). Query rounds may (and should) contain already asked stories. It's not that important how you selected stories for the small rounds - but you should run very many query rounds to come to a propper priority list.

Such query rounds are not bound to specific developement cycles. If a story is selected to be implemented, it's removed from the backlog of outstanding (selectable) stories. If a new story comes up, it starts with its base priority of 100 points and will flow up or down depending on queries to which it will be selected...

I tried to ask ChatCPT around that. My question was 'Are there any software backlog ranking systems that use an "ELO rating" for prioritizing stories?'). And yeah, it ends it answer with the following ...

• Using an ELO-like system can help achieve an objective and dynamic prioritization, especially in teams where there are disagreements about the importance of stories.

Exactly our situation😁

[Paul A. 675]

I'd like to add improving the Android text editor. It's been buggy as all get out for years.

[Mia 43]

O.M.G.

How about the BASIC NEEDS:

-Once going in a Note, getting back there again, not being at the top of the cue.

-If  editing a note, have it go Back where it belongs in cue, in time, where it was - not at The Top of your notes.  Simple Needs. 

Yeasss ANDROID.

[John in Michigan USA 140]

15 hours ago, Mia said:

How about the BASIC NEEDS:

Preach!

The Android app has all sorts of UI/UX (User Interface/User Experience) problems like the ones you listed. As a general rule, I chalk them up to two large problems:

• the fragmented nature of the Android ecosystem. You just can't test an Android app for all possible hardware/version/settings etc.
• In some cases, the problem is caused by whatever framework (Electron wrapped in something or other, last time I checked) Evernote decided to use. It might be necessary to move to some better framework, or do their own custom fork of it, etc. Problem is, making changes like that might create more UI/UX problems than they solve.

[Paul A. 675]

13 hours ago, John in Michigan USA said:

As a general rule, I chalk them up to two large problems:

I'll add one more, which unfortunately dates back to the pre-Bending-Spoons era: the Evernote leadership favors iPhones and so doesn't experience the pain of the Android app on a daily, visceral basis. Makes it easy to not prioritize resources on the Android problems when you aren't experiencing the problems.

[PinkElephant 8,705]

Nobody needs to favor iPhones to run into trouble with Android. iPhones are homogenous in their technology, iOS is a more structured OS with less options.

Android suffers from a wide range of hardware, makers competing with each other and changes to the OS and GUI. Take alone the 3rd party keyboards: Nearly unknown on iOS, standard with Android.

It doesn’t require a conspiracy of C-level iPhone enthusiasts to make Android the more difficult environment.

iIf they were enthusiasts, they would have fixed the camera deficiency with iPhones 14 and above straight away. This bug is now there since nearly 2 years, with no action taken. Doesn’t look like they even noticed - maybe they are all on Android (or on their 1st gen SEs 🤣 ).

[Mia 43]

Seriously, if we start Making Long WISH LISTS, are they really going to act upon these all  these points? 

I would love a way to back up all my notes, but aside from one of you nerds coming over here & making it happen for me, I'm in huge trouble. 

About iOS, We all have our preferred methods/devices. Honestly, like them both. But,  If i were less of an individual, I would absolutely have iOS in my hand right now. If affordable, I would purchase a kickA🐍🐍 Mac Laptop over Windows(storage) to complicate my life further.  'Camon push my patience to the limit 😳. 

BS's should pay attention to Android devotees as we are still EN users & above all Believers. 

I've been unable  to open Attachments for so long, I just about give up. When I feel good, I give it another try. Getting tired now, but just today getting results.      Seems even older/"gifted" (32gb - Why?) iPad pro 16.7.10, running EN better than my almost brand spanking new SG24Ultra 1tb. And, that my friends - kinda Suks. 

Thank you for supporting me & ANDROID @John in Michigan USA Preach !  @Grant837  &@AlbertR wish I understood 1/2 of what u said ~ if I did... I wouldn't be typing now. @Paul A.  &

@gazumped ✨