Maximum Note Size for EN Business

[paulelias 12]

I am based in the UK but manufacture products in China. I use EN to manage all my projects and collaborate with my colleagues in China and customers in the UK.

I often have to send files which are greater than the 100MB allowance in EN Business. The disadvantage being:

 

1. My customers are not able to upload to the project note so they have to find an alternative means.

2. I am unable to add the file to the project thus a key element of the project is missing

3. I have to pay for another service when I am already paying for EN Business

4. My team in China cannot see the file on EN

5. The supplier in China cannot see the file.

 

All together this is a big problem which could easily be rectified by giving EN Business users the ability to attach larger files.

 

Is this likely to happen?

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I am based in the UK but manufacture products in China. I use EN to manage all my projects and collaborate with my colleagues in China and customers in the UK.

I often have to send files which are greater than the 100MB allowance in EN Business. The disadvantage being:

1. My customers are not able to upload to the project note so they have to find an alternative means.

2. I am unable to add the file to the project thus a key element of the project is missing

3. I have to pay for another service when I am already paying for EN Business

4. My team in China cannot see the file on EN

5. The supplier in China cannot see the file.

All together this is a big problem which could easily be rectified by giving EN Business users the ability to attach larger files.

Is this likely to happen?

Evernote has increased the note size once in the six years of its existence. So it's possible. But EN does not publish their roadmap. Personally, I rather doubt it will happen any time soon, since there are clearly scaling issues with very large databases that a few of us have encountered.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Certain free services may be helpful here. I am thinking of:

Box.com

Dropbox.com

bitcasa.com

 

Each service provides between 2-15gbs for free users, and at least Dropbox and Bitcasa will allow you to upload files larger than 100mbs on free accounts. You could upload the desired files to one of these free services, generate a shared link, and put the link in an evernote note. 

 

The advantage of this to your clients is that they don't have a 100mb+ sitting in both their evernote database AND whatever directory they save it to. 

 

I understand that it is a little cumbersome to have to rely on a second service for this, and that internet censorship in china may make finding a usable sharing service hard (I know dropbox is blocked, but Bitcasa works fine china). However, such is the life with Evernote I suppose! We can hope they increase note limits but until that time, we've got to use workarounds....

[paulelias 12]

Actually I have taken an account with Mailbigfile and attached the link within the EN note.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Glad you found a suitable workaround for the time being. 

[paulelias 12]

AH additional point I have now reached the maximum of 250 joined notebooks for EN Business so now have to leave joined notebooks to enable me to create and share new projects. 250 is really not sufficient for a business application.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

This is probably helpful feedback for the Evernote folk. If the past is any indication, I am sure we will see these quota evolve. For business users, hopefully sooner rather than later.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

AH additional point I have now reached the maximum of 250 joined notebooks for EN Business so now have to leave joined notebooks to enable me to create and share new projects. 250 is really not sufficient for a business application.

 

Hi. I agree with you there about the desirability of increasing the limit. At the moment, though, we are stuck with 250. I'd recommend consolidating notebooks and relying more on tags. 

 

Technically speaking, I think you can have 5,000 notebooks.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=169

 

However, the trick is that you can only sync with 250 at a time. This is a little unwieldy, in my opinion, but it does make it possible to access more notebooks than a regular user can.

[paulelias 12]

Thanks GM. Its a bit difficult to incorporate tags for my business because I am creating projects for my UK customers and these projects are manufactured in China. Explaining tags to my Chinese staff and suppliers would be a real challenge. In effect each order is notebook. This is the cleanest and safest way to manage the communication down the supply chain. Support did tell me to leave notebooks and if the information is required in the future rejoin. One day the total joined notebooks has to increase otherwise businesses will start to find workarounds outside EN and these workarounds could become alternatives.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thanks GM. Its a bit difficult to incorporate tags for my business because I am creating projects for my UK customers and these projects are manufactured in China. Explaining tags to my Chinese staff and suppliers would be a real challenge. In effect each order is notebook. This is the cleanest and safest way to manage the communication down the supply chain. Support did tell me to leave notebooks and if the information is required in the future rejoin. One day the total joined notebooks has to increase otherwise businesses will start to find workarounds outside EN and these workarounds could become alternatives.

 

It's true that the number of notebooks is a little bit limiting. I agree with you about tags and sharing. Unfortunately, tags are often a step too far for people unfamiliar with the service or not-so-tech-savvy. Another organizational option is to use a table of contents.

 

This is how it looks in my shared notebook.

https://www.evernote.com/pub/mayo-christopher/public

 

This is how it looks for my classes.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=1724

 

And, here is a video for making it.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=488

[paulelias 12]

Thanks GM you have got me thinking.

[paulelias 12]

Here is a discussion I have had with support:

 

Jon H
Hi Paul,
When it comes to organization with Evernote, I have seen several organizations successful with using a combination of tagging and notebooks. The idea that you can organize and sort notes within a particular notebook with the use of tags.

I have seen some users that have high numbers of notebooks and typically what I will find is that they have a very low number of notes within those notebooks. There are definitely exceptions that I come across, but for most, they are trying to replicate a folder structure that they have on their computer that they are organizing their notes so they can find the notes themselves.

One difference is that with Evernote, the real key is our search capabilities and the ability to find your notes when you search. This means that you can have less notebooks, but still find your content just as quickly.

I did notice that your email address is in the UK. One thing we can also do is connect your to the Success Advocate that is in our Zurich office that can help you go think through some of these concepts. Also this would allow you to have responses within a more similar timezone as well.

As to the business notebooks, I would combine notes into less notebooks and then leave the notebooks that are empty. Once you are ready to archive some of these notebooks to the business home, share the notebook to the business. This is done by right clicking on the notebook and clicking the Share option. Once the notebook is shared to the business. You can then leave the notebook and be able to regain access to it by going to the business home area and clicking the join button.

You will first need to clear the error of too many notebooks before you will be able to share notebooks to the business home area and see them sync correctly. Let me know if you have any questions. 

 

Hi Jon

Your assessment of the situation is accurate and sensible and for the time being I am leaving notebooks which are closed projects in order to create new notebooks.

As for the use of tags, again I can see this would be a way of organising notes but it would cause massive confusion for my colleagues in China as well as customers and suppliers.

At the moment we have a notebook for each project. It is not uncommon to have 20 or 30 notes for each project. Anyone invited to join the project can see the information at a glance.

Imagine if we had one notebook relating to one customer, then used tags to define the specific order. If someone is in my office I can easily explain to them the structure, but if they are a customer or supplier, or a Chinese colleague it is almost impossible. People want to see information displayed in a logical manner not to view a myriad of data then use search to define.

If I was just using EN for personal data storage and recall I would not have a problem, but I am using Evernote Business, and I think the people at Evernote really need to consider EN from a business users perspective.

 

Kind regards

 

Paul Elias

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thanks for posting that exchange. I think support did an excellent job of explaining strategies for using the tools available. And, in a sense, they are making the most of what they have got -- a 250 notebook limit.

However, Based on my experience with sharing, expecting someone to search to find things or use tags is unworkable. In many cases, it is a struggle to even get them to open the notebook in the first place, because they are totally unfamiliar with the Evernote service. I guess I have rather strong feelings about this because I have done a lot of sharing and joining of notebooks, and I am all too familiar with the drawbacks.

To give another example of the issues involved, I am well-known on the forums for NOT using tags (I have nothing against them, but my personal use case doesn't benefit from them), but I have many hundreds of tags in my account. Why? The tags in joined notebooks get mixed into my tags, and because each person has their own schemes, it is a hodgepodge of organizational approaches. Most of the tags are long, but appear truncated on mobile, so I can't even read them anyhow. Imagine that your clients are trying to wade through this organizational morass. It just doesn't work, in my experience.

This isn't a criticism of the response from support. Within an organization, I think expecting people to navigate with tags is entirely reasonable. It's when we share with other people/organizations that things start to get messy. That's why I rely so much on fake dating (to get the "index" note to appear first) and internal note links in that index note. Basically, I am creating a wiki for the people on the other end. I think this solves a lot of problems, and I am satisfied with it.

As for the notebook limit, I'd push Evernote to raise it for businesses It seems like a legitimate request as businesses have these kind of sharing situations.

In the meantime, you might also want to consider sharing in different ways -- notes instead of notebooks, a general notebook for everyone + a specific one for a project, or a shared note with note links (share url ones) to other shared notes (it will function just like a wiki).

[paulelias 12]

Thanks Grumpy, I can see we are singing from the same hymn sheet.

With regard to sharing notes rather than notebooks, I often email notes to people but of course this will not give them access. How do I offer the access without sharing the notebook?

Thanks

Paul

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thanks Grumpy, I can see we are singing from the same hymn sheet.

With regard to sharing notes rather than notebooks, I often email notes to people but of course this will not give them access. How do I offer the access without sharing the notebook?

Thanks

Paul

 

Hi Paul. I'm glad I could help. At the very least, I think we have clarified your use case, made it clear how the current system could cause friction, and you've gotten great advice from support to work with what we have now. Communication is always nice to have

 

Click on the link below and I think you'll see what I mean. Basically, you share an "index" note (my term) and this leads your client around the shared notes. With one link, you can share thousands of notes and no one has to open an Evernote account or download the app (a barrier for people, especially on mobile). The glaring weakness with this (and the reason I continue to advocate for better shared features in Evernote -- numerous "brilliant" suggestions I have submitted over the years) is that your clients / colleagues cannot modify the notes. In many cases, this will be a non-issue, and I hope it will meet some of your needs!

 

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s74/sh/515e05ad-7258-4dc0-bdb9-87ae84758458/0b05b01116aea1130c80db1eeacf3dea

 

I stopped recommending shared notes a while ago because Evernote was sticking in a popup that directed users away from the note (basically defeating the purpose of sharing notes, much less sharing them with folks who aren't so tech savvy). Fortunately, they have stopped doing this (as far as I can tell), and this makes the shared notes effective again. In order to keep track of this shared notes, you can search to find them all with the un-documented advanced search term "shared:*". I would also recommend tagging them and/or putting them into a notebook so that you know what you have shared and what you have not.