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Advise on best approach (Premium, multiple accounts, sharing...)


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Hi All -

 

I use Evernote for my personal and professional life. I am also on the Board of our Homeowners Association (we're a nice neighborly one). I have a separate account that I use to keep notes for our HOA.

 

I want the ability for other Board Members to use Evernote to look up issues and notes about them, as well as enter information. I currently have about 150 notebooks in the HOA account.

 

My questions include;

 

1. Is there any way to share an entire account? Otherwise, I believe I would have to manually add each Board Member for every single notebook, and then update every single notebook permissions whenever we have a change in Board Members.

 

2. What do you think of creating an account for Board Members (treasurer@, vice-president@, etc.)? Then I would only have to change credentials when there is a Board change.

 

3. Would it work for all of us to just use this one account?

 

Once I get the approach sorted, it is not apparent (despite numerous web documents) which account should upgrade to Premium. I control both my personal account and the President account. If I upgrade my personal account to Premium, does that affect the President account as well? Is Premium per user or per account?

 

Thanks in advance for any input you can provide!

 

Regards,

 

Ed

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Ed McN - 

 

Your questions suggest to me that you need to read up on Evernote's "Sharing Notebooks" feature. You can search for this topic in this forum and at www.evernote.com. - - - After you understand that feature, you should be able to come up with a method to get down to one account and still "share" your HOA information with the other board members. - - - Definitely do everything you can to avoid adding more accounts.

 

Also, you commented that you have about 150 "Notebooks" in your HOA account. I assume you meant "Notes", not "Notebooks". If you do have 150 "Notebooks", then I'd suggest that you do not have your HOA information structured very well in Evernote. - - - Search this forum for topics like "Notebooks tags".

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Hi Analyst -

 

Thanks for your input. I have read everything I could find on Sharing Notebooks, and conducted proof-of-concept testing. 

 

I CAN put the notes into my Account, but that really makes it difficult when it is my time to step away and have someone else take over.

 

We have a Notebook for each of the 126 properties, with a new Note for each contact about that property's notebook (homeowners, legal, issues, collections, etc.). We use Tags to mark active/resolved issues and general topics.

 

I've attached screenshots to help clarify the proposed structure. 

 

If nothing else, any input on the Premium questions?

 

Thanks again,

 

Ed

 

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  • Level 5*

Hi.  There's a limit to how much bespoke advice we can give to cover your situation - although it's a fairly simple implementation,  there are lots of variables and the advice you get may be based on wrong assumptions.  One thing I am definite about however,  DO NOT share the login details of the main account and expect to have all the members of the board use the same account.  It would be very easy for one member to edit the same note as another at the same time,  and both would lose some or all of their work.  The Evernote app can't tell the difference between two people using the same login adding information to the same note - it's built to recognise one logged in 'main' user,  and -maybe- other 'shared' users logged in under their own details.

 

Other thoughts -

  • You don't necessarily need a plus or a premium account for any of this,  unless you need higher limits than are available in basic.
  • You could share all of the notes as 'read only' so that all members can read the content, and if they wished to add comments to notes,  these could initially at least be emailed directly to you so the database can be updated.
  • If you then wish to cede management of the account to someone else,  you could provide the user name and password of this account to that person,  after which you become a viewer,  not an editor.
  • If more than on editor is required,  then all the participants need their own Evernote basic account,  and all notebooks have to be shared.  Not optimum,  but that's the way it works...
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Ed -

 

First, it is clear now why you have so many Notebooks. It makes sense.

 

Second, I am impressed with the information database that your HOA Board and you have amassed on the properties. I live in a development with perhaps 200 homes and I cannot imagine that our HOA leaders have gone to the trouble to do anything like that.

 

Third you commented that, while you could put the HOA information in your account, "it would be difficult when it is my time to step away and have someone else take over." - - - It won't be difficult at all, presuming you employ the "Notebook Sharing" feature of EN. Your successor will just be another person who can update the Notes. (The Notes will be on the EN servers.) - - - Perhaps what might be helpful would be if you mentally separate "Accounts" and "Information" (Notebooks, Notes, Tags) in your mind. There isn't really any hard connection between the two. With EN's "sharing"  and "export/import" features, the "information" can effectively "belong" to anyone.

 

Fourth, here are some thoughts about your tagging structure. Think in terms of "groups" of tags. For example, you may have one set of tags that indicate the "kind" of information in a "Note". Here's an example:

  • I=Map
  • I=Financial
  • I=Legal
  • I=Collection
  • I=PropertyFeature
  • I=Owner

The "I" stands for "Information". Including a prefix like that in your tags will make it a little easier when you assign a tag to a Note. (Try it. You will like it!)

 

Here's an example of a "group" of tags that indicate the "status" of an issue related to a property:

  • S=Open
  • S=Active
  • S=Cancelled
  • S=OnHold
  • S=Resolved
  • S=Closed

 

The value of such tagging structures comes into play even more when Notes can be updated by multiple people. It will help standardize what tags are used and keep the number of tags from growing inordinately high.

 

If you decide to redefine your tagging structure like something above, you can speed up the process of assigning tags by doing so with "batches" of Notes.

 

I hope you feel this response is helpful.

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That's some very helpful input, especially the portion about structuring Tags into groups. 

 

The difficult part remains having to go through that many notebooks and individually share each with the current Board, and then repeat that effort any time there is a change in the Board. I have not found a way to bulk share multiple notebooks. 

 

I thought that if I create an account for each position, and go through the sharing procedure once for each notebook, that I would not have to duplicate all of that effort when there is a change in the Board.

 

I do appreciate your input though, especially the part about metadata organization!

 

-Ed

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  • Level 5*

On the sharing issue - although the window asks for a name or email and invites a personal comment,  you can speed up the process by preparing a distribution list of those you wish to share with in the format -

 

<email address 1>,<email address 2>,<email address 3>,<email address 4>,<email address 5>,<email address 6>

 

- and copy/ pasting that list into the Share window.

 

If at a later date you need to change the details,  it's a little messy.  Deleting one or more members is via 'Modify Sharing' and individually deleting addresses.  Adding new members is by pasting into the Share window as above.

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If at a later date you need to change the details,  it's a little messy.

 

Yup - that's what my testing revealed as well, and what tempts me to create position-specific accounts so as to require the labor intensive sharing exercise only once.

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Ed, I do not believe there is a way to "bulk share" multiple Notebooks (at least not with the Windows version of EN). I don't think it would even help to move the 150 Notebooks into a Stack.

 

However, what you can do to facilitate the change in board members is to put all the property Notes into one Notebook. Now, before you get too worried about doing that, let me elaborate. The approach would be to create a Tag for each Property and then assign that Tag to all Notes that have information about that property. (An example of such a Tag would be P=14204$28thDriveSE, Avoid spaces in the Tag. The $ sign is meant to show the break between the address and the street name.) This process would be pretty quick for each property. The steps are:

  • Create a Tag for the property.
  • Open the existing Notebook for that property.
  • Select all the Notes in that Notebook.
  • Drag them onto the Tag for that property.
  • Move those Notes to a new Notebook where all property Notes will end up.

Test this out on a property to make sure you've got the steps down pat and that you will like the end result.

 

What makes this approach effective is that you can see a list of your Tags. The list Tags will look just like a list of Notebooks in the left panel of the EN main screen. Click on a Tag for a property and all the Notes for that property will pop up.

 

I could see this approach reducing your Notebooks down to just 3 or 4. For example:

  • HOA Individual Properties (This would be the Notebook were all the Notes in your existing 150 property Notebooks would eventually go.)
  • HOA Community Property
  • HOA Administration
  • Using Evernote

If you can get it down to just a few like this, then accommodating changes in board members will be a pretty quick.

 

I hope this gives you some ideas as to how to proceed.

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  • Level 5*

Hi Analyst -

 

Thanks for your input. I have read everything I could find on Sharing Notebooks, and conducted proof-of-concept testing. 

 

I CAN put the notes into my Account, but that really makes it difficult when it is my time to step away and have someone else take over.

 

We have a Notebook for each of the 126 properties, with a new Note for each contact about that property's notebook (homeowners, legal, issues, collections, etc.). We use Tags to mark active/resolved issues and general topics.

 

I've attached screenshots to help clarify the proposed structure. 

 

If nothing else, any input on the Premium questions?

 

Thanks again,

 

Ed

 

Ed,

 

You have some great questions!

 

I'll try to address a few of them.

 

Organization

 

Although you didn't directly ask a question about this, your sharing questions involve having a good organization, so I'm going to start here.

Your logic to create a NB for each Property makes perfect sense, in most cases.

But due to the limitations of Evernote, you are most likely much better off using Tags rather than NBs for Properties:

  1. You are limited to 250 NBs (Tags are virtually unlimited (100K).
  2. You cannot exclude a NB from a search
  3. Each Note can belong to one, and only one, NB
  4. It is easy to include multiple tags (but not NBs) simply by using a tag prefix with an asterisk (*).

So, I'd suggest one tag for each property using this naming convention:

P.<Street>.<HouseNumber>

For example:  P.28thDriveSE.14204

Note I didn't use any spaces.

These will all sort in a useful order, and you can also make them as "subtags" to a "Properties" parent tag.

 

Using this naming convention allows you to easily enter/Select the Property Tag Name when 

  1. assigning to Notes, and
  2. in picking Tag filters

Just start typing "P." and a dropdown list of all properties will appear for you to select.

Continue typing with the <Street> like "P.28th" and all properties on 28th will appear in the dropdown.

 

To use this approach:

  1. Create the Tag Names
  2. Select a Property Notebook
  3. Select all Notes in that NB
  4. Enter/Select the Property Tag in the Tags field on the Multi-Note panel, and press RETURN
  5. Repeat Steps 2-4 for each Notebook
  6. Using the List view, show the Notebook and Tags columns
  7. Filter the Note list for each Property NB, and confirm the Property tag has been assigned
    1. You could also do a search like this to find any Notes that have not been tagged with the Property Notebook:  notebook:<NBName> -tag:<TagName>
  8. Once you have confirmed that all Notes in each Property NB have been tagged with the Property Tag, then you are ready to move these Notes into a new Notebook, named "Properties" (or whatever you like).
    1. Click on the "ALL notes" button to remove all filters
    2. Enter tag:P.*  into the Search box to find all Notes that begin with "P."
    3. Select all of the resulting Notes
    4. Click on the "Move to Notebook..." button in the Multi-Note panel
    5. Choose the "Properties" NB
  9. After a few days of use, you can delete the old Property NBs, making sure they are empty before you do so.

 

SHARING

 

After you have moved all of the Property notes into the "Properties" NB, then you can share it.

I'd suggest giving "read only" permissions for all, except maybe one alternate, who would make updates ONLY if you were unable to do so (vacation, sickness, etc).

You could also create, and share with read/write, another NB named "HOA_Board_Comments" (or similar).

Board members could then enter their comments as Notes here, with a link to the Note(s) in the Properties NB as needed.

(I'd suggest a tag for each Board member to identify each on all notes).

 

So, as board members change, you have only two NBs to change the sharing permissions on.

 

ACCOUNT TYPE

 

Although not necessary, I'd suggest that you get a separate account for the HOA, and make it be a premium account.

This account would be "owned" by a primary and an alternate on the Board.

I suggest Premium account because it gives you a lot of features and expanded limits for very little cost.

See Comparison of EN Account Types

 

Good luck in whatever approach you decide to take.

Please feel free to ask more questions if you need to.

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