Administration of Notebook Sharing - "must haves"

[drtiff 7]

I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere, but I have been searching for answers for a couple months now and am pretty frustrated with the lack of visibility into and control of shared notebooks in Evernote Business from an Administration standpoint.

 

These things are "must haves" in my opinion as the Administrator (and CEO) of my company's Evernote Business account.

 

1) Easily be able to tell who has access to a Notebook

From the Admin Console I can only see how many members "7" and not which members nor what their permissions are.

I need to be able to review "Sally shouldn't have edit access to Notebook Y" and "Fred should have access to Notebook Z but doesn't".

All down the list. At *least* for Notebooks published to the Business Library.

 

2) Of course then be able to easily change those permissions as I have noted.

 

3) Please make the "Share Notebook" dialog box more intuitive and user friendly.

I struggle with the fact that "invite" on a published notebook essentially means 'let the person know that the notebook is there' (because they already have access as soon as you publish) while "invite" on a non-published notebook means 'give the person access'.  I think?  Although - yes I guess I can choose between "view only" and "edit" on either invite. It is really hard to remember this.  I've published notebooks thinking only the folks I invited actually have access, which is not true (I think). Also - the TINY Share Notebook dialog box only shows 3 users at a time (web app shows 4). Imagine I have 20 people sharing and I'm trying to add the 21st and figure out if they are already in the list (scroll, scroll, scroll,...) or not. Or just trying to determine if someone is missing, etc. Argh! I only have 7 people in the company and I'm already completely lost trying to determine who has or doesn't have access to what.

 

4) Please support aliases/groups

Some of these problems would be eased if I could create a group or alias and then I could share a notebook with "the management team" or with "project X team" etc.  "All" would be a magnificent alias!  Now sharing versus publishing gets to be confusing because it seems publish == all.  If I want "less than all" folks in the company to have access (20 out of 21) then I have to use one-by-one sharing instead of publishing. Then we're back to wanting an alias/group mechanism and something other than a dialog box so I can easily manage who has what permissions. I think this whole publish vs. share needs to be better thought out. Or maybe it has been and I just don't get it.

 

5) A couple of non-Administrator issues in then same vein -- I use the Windows desktop application mostly (95% of the time) since the refresh speed of the web app is WAY too slow. I'm okay with the slowness (nice-to-have not must-have), but then on the desktop application I need to be able to see, in the left/navigation pane, which notebooks are private, shared, or published. But they all look the same.

This IS supported for Personal notebooks but not Business notebooks.  

 I frequently find myself staring at a bunch of Business notebooks and wondering "did I share all of these with Tim and Fred or did I forget one?". To answer such a question I'd have to go into that horrible Share Notebook dialog and access through the list. For one notebook and then the next and then the next and...  The reason "we all love Evernote" is because it makes it easy (1-2 clicks or actions at most) to save any and all reference materials -- whether it is a scanned image, a word doc, an annotated picture, watched folder, forwarded email, etc.  PLEASE PLEASE make comprehensive management of the SHARING of Business Notebooks similarly easy!!!

 

 

6) Lastly, I wholeheartedly agree with other postings, http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/34123-anyone-know-how-to-rename-a-business-notebook-for-everyone/,  that the Administrator really needs to be able to control the NAME of a Notebook in the library. Unpublishing the notebook, then changing the name, then republishing is not a reasonable option. And users should not be ale to change the name without requesting a name change (from the administrator).

 

If any of these things are currently supported -- please let me know!!!

 

 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hi. Thanks for posting so much. I noticed that you mentioned elsewhere about not having any responses to this thread. I wish I could help, but I am not an Evernote Business Administrator, so I don't have much to add. I'll bring this to the attention of other business users, and we'll see what they have to say.

 

As for the future, Evernote typically doesn't release roadmaps, so we might not hear about that. The developers do read the posts in the user forums, though, and I imagine your feedback is quite helpful.

[dspapps 6]

Agree with all your points.  They are straightforward and logical.

 

EB appears to be obtuse to use and administer for me too.

[C6REW 416]

Hi drtiff I would like to echo Grumpy's gratitude for your input and suggestions.

 

I think it is easier for me to copy and paste your statements and put my thoughts against each of them:

 

 

1) Easily be able to tell who has access to a Notebook

From the Admin Console I can only see how many members "7" and not which members nor what their permissions are.

I need to be able to review "Sally shouldn't have edit access to Notebook Y" and "Fred should have access to Notebook Z but doesn't".

All down the list. At *least* for Notebooks published to the Business Library.

I think this is a very useful idea and one that Evernote should take notice of.

 

 

2) Of course then be able to easily change those permissions as I have noted.

Agreed

 

3) Please make the "Share Notebook" dialog box more intuitive and user friendly.

I struggle with the fact that "invite" on a published notebook essentially means 'let the person know that the notebook is there' (because they already have access as soon as you publish) while "invite" on a non-published notebook means 'give the person access'.  I think?  Although - yes I guess I can choose between "view only" and "edit" on either invite. It is really hard to remember this.  I've published notebooks thinking only the folks I invited actually have access, which is not true (I think). Also - the TINY Share Notebook dialog box only shows 3 users at a time (web app shows 4). Imagine I have 20 people sharing and I'm trying to add the 21st and figure out if they are already in the list (scroll, scroll, scroll,...) or not. Or just trying to determine if someone is missing, etc. Argh! I only have 7 people in the company and I'm already completely lost trying to determine who has or doesn't have access to what.

You have a number of options open to you here. You can 'Publish' to the 'Business Library' and give any 'business' user the ability to 'View Notes and activity', 'Modify notes or 'Modify and invite others'. This would be for non specific company documents etc. If you only want specific people to access the Notebook for security or confidentiality reasons, you would have to 'Invite those specific Individuals' and you will have the same three options. This would be were you wanted to share information with individual people in the company.

I agree that it takes a little bit of getting your head around, but once you have done so it is fairly straightforward. You can of course revoke access if you have made a mistake with a specific Notebook.

 

 

4) Please support aliases/groups

Some of these problems would be eased if I could create a group or alias and then I could share a notebook with "the management team" or with "project X team" etc.  "All" would be a magnificent alias!  Now sharing versus publishing gets to be confusing because it seems publish == all.  If I want "less than all" folks in the company to have access (20 out of 21) then I have to use one-by-one sharing instead of publishing. Then we're back to wanting an alias/group mechanism and something other than a dialog box so I can easily manage who has what permissions. I think this whole publish vs. share needs to be better thought out. Or maybe it has been and I just don't get it.

What a great idea!

 

 

5) A couple of non-Administrator issues in then same vein -- I use the Windows desktop application mostly (95% of the time) since the refresh speed of the web app is WAY too slow. I'm okay with the slowness (nice-to-have not must-have), but then on the desktop application I need to be able to see, in the left/navigation pane, which notebooks are private, shared, or published. But they all look the same.

This IS supported for Personal notebooks but not Business notebooks.  

 I frequently find myself staring at a bunch of Business notebooks and wondering "did I share all of these with Tim and Fred or did I forget one?". To answer such a question I'd have to go into that horrible Share Notebook dialog and access through the list. For one notebook and then the next and then the next and...  The reason "we all love Evernote" is because it makes it easy (1-2 clicks or actions at most) to save any and all reference materials -- whether it is a scanned image, a word doc, an annotated picture, watched folder, forwarded email, etc.  PLEASE PLEASE make comprehensive management of the SHARING of Business Notebooks similarly easy!!!

Another good idea.

 

 

6) Lastly, I wholeheartedly agree with other postings, http://discussion.ev...k-for-everyone/,  that the Administrator really needs to be able to control the NAME of a Notebook in the library. Unpublishing the notebook, then changing the name, then republishing is not a reasonable option. And users should not be ale to change the name without requesting a name change (from the administrator).

Yes, I agree it would be much more sensible for the Adminstrator to control the name of a Notebook.

 

 

Please do remember that I am just a business user who happens to be a moderator on the forum. So my agreement with your ideas is not a statement that this is going to happen. However, I will bring this to the attention of the correct people if not already done so by Grumpy.

 

Remember that Evernote is forever evolving and whilst it would be great to have some of these ideas on board straight away, it takes time and effort for the development team to look at them, confirm if they are good for most people and then decide the timescale that they can fit any changes in should they choose to implement or if they are feasible to include. Having been involved with software in a previous company I know that it then takes time to test and make sure the new changes are not interfering with the current operation of the software.

 

Once again many thanks for some really great ideas.

 

Best regards

 

 

 

Chris

 

 

[Boaz Segev 0]

Hey Evernote,

 

I am a EB admin and I would like to add my support to drtiff's suggestions.

 

Obviously I believe that some suggestions are more important then others - for instance, I don't know if Groups is as essencial as the permissions reviewing and editing - But they are all valid and important aspects of the Business management requirements regarding data control and workflow optimisation.

 

Best Regards,

    B.

[ZZZ 135]

drtiff, all of your suggestions are excellent and spot on.

[soulchaser 2]

Excellent suggestions. Thanks for posting these

[Admin_Sascha 0]

Hi all,

 

i read all this issues and i am happy that we are not allone with all these problems.

 

Is there any response from Evernote about that ???

 

We are using Evernote also in a team of up to 20 collegues and it is very awfully to administrate the hole group.

 

[jbignert 473]

Hi all,

A few comments below:

 

1) Tell & manage who has access to certain Business notebooks

An admin can edit sharing permissions from the Admin Console today as per this Skitch:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s13/sh/c1114d2a-dc28-43ee-ab17-0bc13fb585a2/bb023ae12fdb05d6002c87fa78929878

 

2) Of course then be able to easily change those permissions as I have noted.

This is possible as per above Skitch. 

 

3) Making the share notebook dialog more intuitive is certainly something we strive for. Tangible suggestion that keep options available to admins while not adding confusion is welcome. 

 

4-6 is being discussed...

 

Hope that helps.