Way to recover a (presumably) deleted business notebook?

[andreb_sun 11]

Hi

 

(For all EN employees: I have opened a ticket with about the same text - 495135)

 

A collegue asked me to look after a notebook which gone missing a few weeks ago. She was on leave, nobody else noticed. I have created a new business notebook for testing, created two notes in it, synced. After that, I deleted the notebook from the admin frontend. All notes are gone, not leaving a single trace in the trash or anywhere else! Is there a way to recover the notes my co-worker is missing? This is a serious design flaw in my opinion!

 

There are a few things making things worse:

• Since everyone can rename a business notebook to his/her heart's content, it's hard to find the notebook my collegue was talking about.
• As well, it could be that the notebook was named "Test Notebook" at the beginning, later evolved to something like "Very important notebook! don't delete!". For the admin, there's NO WAY to tell whether it's important or not!
• In the ENB notebook listing, there's very little information about the notebooks: Note count, last update, last access would help a lot to find relevant notebooks
• Deleted notebook's notes don't go to trash? What the hell!

How are you guys thinking about this? Did anyone have similar experiences?

 

Cheers

 

André

 

PS: I am talking about the business admin frontend. Deletion, Trash - all in the business admin frontend.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

First, thanks for posting your ticket number here, that makes things a lot easier if staff get involved via the forum in addition to the official support channels. 

 

There are definitely a few kinks that EN needs to sort out with business, notebooks renaming is one in particular. 

 

With respect to the deleting issue, have you checked the Business Administrator console. See this post and the link within for more details:

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/56239-deleted-notes-in-shared-notebooks/?p=275174

 

You may be able to find it in the Business Admin trash. 

[andreb_sun 11]

Hi Scott

 

Thanks, I forgot to mention this. It's all regarding the business admin frontend.

 

Try this:

• Create a new business notebook. Add some notes with fancy titles, easy to remember
• Sync
• Even sync on another device, if you like
• If you like, rename the notebook (doesn't matter)
• Sync again

 

Now:

• Go to the admin console and find the notebook. Try to find out whether the content in the notebook is important, just by using the admin frontend.
• Now delete the notebook. As you're an admin and everything is supposed to be in the cloud, go ahead and delete it, ignoring the small alert. As you know, the content in the notebook is most probably not important.
• Imagine a collegue coming to your desk, asking for the note with the fancy title (you DO remember the title, I don't!). The collegue has a vague idea of the name of the notebook on his/her device. Not on the admin console.
• Try to recover the note(s).

 

If you succeed, please tell me how you did it. Without pulling a local, disk space wasting backup copy.

 

Cheers

 

André

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Hmmmm unfortunately have not had the chance to test out Evernote for Business myself (so why am I, with my complete lack of knowledge, responding here anyway? I don't know, to waste your time perhaps! ). Thankfully there are a number of savvy users around here with EN for Business experience, maybe they can chime in!

[jbignert 473]

Hi andreb_sun,

I tested this scenario and it works as expected and I recognize that this can lead to some frustration and wrongful note deletions, particularly if the notebooks are renamed. 

As the small warning dialog says the notes in the notebook will be permanently deleted.  

 

We're investigating how to avoid this scenario.

[andreb_sun 11]

Hi J

 

Thanks for your reply. Yeah, I noticed the warning dialog, and I guess I ignored it when I deleted the notebook.Is there a way to recover the deleted notes?

 

Cheers

 

André

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Hi J

 

Thanks for your reply. Yeah, I noticed the warning dialog, and I guess I ignored it when I deleted the notebook.Is there a way to recover the deleted notes?

 

Cheers

 

André

Sure. One of those "local, disk space wasting backup" copies.

If you succeed, please tell me how you did it. Without pulling a local, disk space wasting backup copy.

[jbignert 473]

@andreb

The support team should be able to help you recover the notes. 

[andreb_sun 11]

@BurgersNFries

That was very helpful, thanks.

 

@jbignert

Unfortunately not. I received the final answer today: No way to recover.

 

I know it was my fault to ignore the popup, but still I'm sure there's a flaw in this process. In a world of only good guys it might work out well for sure. I'm working in the Fraud & Risk department, I had to learn that bad guys are potentially everywhere. In my former company, for example, one guy deleted folders from network shares right before he left the company. A nightmare without a backup, which we had fortunately. We're small still (like 20 ENB users), but in teams/companies with > 200 users, one admin wouldn't be enough. You never know how people react when they're fired ...