(Archived) Shared notebooks - why is it so difficult?

[thfrench 0]

Hi there

We're attempting to begin using Evernote at work to centralise storage of research and notes etc. that may be useful to a number of different people. We have around 12 licenses or so premium licenses. I have been using Evernote very successfully myself for the past year or so and really think it is a great product with awesome potential. However trying to use it in a corporate environment is starting to make me tear my hair out. The system we are attempting to adopt is to have a single shared notebook owned by myself, that everyone else sees and should be able to contribute notes into.

Here are some of the difficulties I have come across:

1) It seems you cannot tag notes going into shared notebooks anywhere except the web client. Not the desktop client, not the web clipper

2) You cannot send notes to a shared notebook at all from the outlook clipper

3) You can only delete note in shared notebooks from the web client

4) You can only tag notes in a shared notebook from the web client

4) You can only 'move' notes into a shared notebook from the desktop client and only one at a time

5) When you copy a note to a shared notebook you appear to loose all tags

6) Tagging in a shared notebook on iPad appears to work, but then doesn't?

Numbers 3 and 4 I can appreciate as given the certain difficulties keeping data in sync working directly 'on the server' must simplify things.

However, this is the only workflow I have found for people to put notes into the central shared notebook:

1) Each person sends notes into their own '.to sort'

2) Using the desktop client they copy any relevant notes, individually from '.to sort' to the shared notebook

3) They switch to the web client and using that manually edit and add tags to each note separately

I cannot imagine this workflow being effective in reality, and there must be a better way.

Does anyone have any solutions, thought, reassuring words?

Thanks

Tom

[gazumped 11,664]

See my reply to your other post. Evernote was not originally designed to play well with interactive groups.

[Owyn 457]

Just tested create new note with tag in Linked Notebook with modify rights via Windows client.

Worked.

Only limitation is that the tag had to already exist in the Linked Notebook.

I also added a tag to another note in the same notebook via ENW.

Worked again.

....

Confirmed both changes visible via Web Client after Windows sync.

[thfrench 0]

Thanks Owyn

Yes, when I was testing, I'd shared a notebook with another account, but no tags existed, so that was the problem. I just tried with someone else and we have it working. There are still issues moving notes into shared notebooks as tags are still lost and it's a painful process but thankfully people can use the desktop clients to at least create new notes and tag them, as long as the tags exist. If they want to delete notes they'll have to use the web client, but that's not a terrible pain.

I would be interested to know if their are plans to allow the creation of new tags, and easier moving of notes between shared notebooks, as a lot of slightly older data is in a bit of a limbo state.

Tom

[Metrodon 2,184]

I really don't think Evernote is ready for the style of collaboration that you are looking for, it works fine if you are sharing data that others aren't going to edit but for anything else I'd look for something more suitable.

[Owyn 457]

Best workaround re. tags is to:

- Create a note for each shared notebook which declares and describes tag "standards" for the notebook.

- Use prefixes to organize tags. Tag nesting does not export from owner shared notebook to sharee linked notebooks.