(Archived) User Defined Attribute Fields (metadata)

[langgang 0]

Can there be attribute fields a user could add to their notes?

Fields Like:

"Notes:" field to store comments about the note;

"Duration:" a date field to store when a note becomes obsolete and needs to be removed;

or a user defined field the user could determine to be required (or not) for all entries?

These changes would be very helpful, even lifting Evernote to the level of an Enterprise product.

Thanks.

[Wern 246]

You could make a special note with the "fields" you require, give it a unique name (or tag) "template-x" and each time you need that "form", you can copy it for a new note etc.

Still it is only text, not really "fields".

Alternativley you can create a note and insert a table and insert the "fields" you want, which could also function as a "fields" note.

Wern

[langgang 0]

That may work for notes originating in Evernote, but most of mine come from other sources, especially e-mail, PDF files and web clippings.

I am looking for a way to make sure all notes have a retention value and a notes field to record info about the note itself.

Thanks for the reply.

[jefito 5,589]

There's no capability to add anything other than the Evernote-predefined metadata attributes to a note.

[qot 23]

You can't at the moment but I agree that would be amazing.

[langgang 0]

If Evernote would add this capability they would leave the other cloud storage services in the dust.

As ECM (Enterprise Content Management) Business Coordinator for a major oil company I know how huge an advantage this would be.

[Owyn 457]

We have actually talked to people from a number of large (Fortune 500) companies about Evernote, and they usually have a much longer laundry list of requirements and certifications. Typically, their IT folks would first send us a 20 page questionnaire full of technical requirements and industry-specific certifications and whatnot (e.g. HIPAA for medical organizations). I haven't seen "dual factor authentication" on any of those yet, but I have a hunch that it would come up for some companies in the fourth stage of review and vetting, 16 months into the sales cycle.

Basically, a bunch of the people who built Evernote have a lot of experience in the "Enterprise software sales" business, and it's completely 180-degree different than Evernote's "freemium" personal memory service. It's hard to do both business models under the same roof, in my experience.

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=24540&p=105499

[langgang 0]

I think Evernote is a great product as it is now -- and I did not mean to send us on a corporate tangent. Neither would I expect Evernote to jump through all the hoops to go for after corporate acceptance.

As I'm confident the Evernote team is continually developing their fine product, to both improve user experience and compete against peers, adding user defined attributes would be a great direction.

Thanks, team, for your hard work!

[AndyDent 97]

Can there be attribute fields a user could add to their notes?

Not that a user can add with the existing client.

The API has a field for applications to add their own metadata, as discussed in a thread in the dev forum:

You can add metadata to the Note.attributes.sourceApplication field, which our apps don't use or expose to the user. Please insert your metadata in the form consumerkey:{metadata}, and play nicely with data that other apps might stash in this field.

Is there any favored delimiter to use to separate from metadata other apps have left, or is it just left up to each developer?

Let's go with semicolon:

consumerkey:{metadata};consumerkey:{metadata}

[Anders R 0]

I'm new to Evernote, but after using it for 2 minutes I realized that I needed this feature to add info about notes (price, distance, age, etc) so that I could sort the list of notes by these attributes.

I'm a little surprised that such a useful core feature is missing from what seems to be a very popular and well designed app.

Since you already have the "infrastructure" for it, please make it possible for users to add attribute fields (with a different set per notebook?) and show them as columns in the note list.

[Davidka 0]

Workarounds that didn't work

(Don't try these at home, like me, you would be wasting time which could be better applied to other tasks).

 

 

I tried various workarounds to add "meta data" - none of which worked to my satisfaction.

 

1. Evernote web clipper offers a comment fields when you use it, but this just seems to show up as part of the note content, not a special field.
   
   If this is sufficient this "meta data" can always be added later but, again, it shows up as part of the note text/data.
   
    
2. I then tried to add it using the new "reminder" function (with a date far in the future so the "reminder" will never be sent). That did not work either as adding a reminder does not seem to provide (on my Mac, at least) a way to enter text; it only allows a reminder date to be sent.

The Prince of Workarounds