"handling multiple projects"

[Kraneum 0]

Hi.

Would please let me know how to handle multiple projects and structure the content with Evernote for Windows.

I have few notebooks as suggested by David Allen. My window at Evernote was customized to show 3 parts, panel on the left, cards of the projects in the middle and detais of notes in the right.

One of these is for example "Projects Personal" and on such logical place it I have created Project 1 and so forth, and under this notebook called Project 1   I would like to add major milestones as the major steps I need to accomplished and wanted to be able to view on my center and also right of my Evernote window every tasks that belongs to each unique project. 

 

Shortcutt

inbox

>Next Action

> Projects Personal

         Project 1

         Project 2

         Project 3

SomewayMaybe

Waiting For 

 

 

Per example in the middle I would be able to see all those notes about personal projects to be accomplished in the following weeks ahead.

Phase 1 Project 1

Phase 2 Project 1

Phase 3 Project 1

Phase 4 Project 1

Phase 1 Project 2

Phase 2 Project 2

Phase 3 Project 2

 

As I am planning and adding what is necessary to be done for each project and need to track individual tasks that belongs to individual Phases of a specific Project x ,  the question for Community is how I add individual tasks to these major Phases and see make sure those tasks are seen under each respective phase?

I

[CalS 5,280]

You could create a Project note, have the contents be project description and tag it Project.  You could create a Project Phase note and have the contents be a description of the Project Phase and tag it Project and Phase001 (used for all projects).  You can then add notes for each task and tag them with the Project and Project Phase tags.  You can skip the Project and Project Phase notes if you like.  And you can even can combine the Project and Phase tags into Project.01 ...  if you like.  And there are many other ways to do it.  I would suggest create 20 or so test notes and play with it to see what feels good to you.  Build it to facilitate how you will search or display the information in mind.

[DTLow 5,736]

6 hours ago, Kraneum said:

As I am planning and adding what is necessary to be done for each project and need to track individual tasks that belongs to individual Phases of a specific Project x ,  the question for Community is how I add individual tasks to these major Phases and see make sure those tasks are seen under each respective phase?

As I mentioned in your other discussion, the solution to retrieving your notes is to use tags.  You could use a single tag for the project, or tags for each project phase.

To organize a view of the project with tasks under each phase, I would sort by title, and structure your titles appropriately, for example Project xxxx-01 Task yyyy

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

10 hours ago, Kraneum said:

Would please let me know how to handle multiple projects and structure the content with Evernote for Windows.

I'll give you some suggestions for Evernote, but first I'd like to encourage you to consider other tools for project management.

Evernote is a great PIM (Personal Information Manager), which I really like and use many times a day.  But it is NOT well suited for project management. 

You may want to consider other tools like IQTell, for Project Management, which does a great job of:

1. Tight integration with Evernote 
2. Project/Task/Action management
3. Integrating your calendar and email with the above

 

Using Evernote for Project Management

 

Now, if you really must use Evernote, then I'd suggest using tags, taking advantage of the brand new "include child tags" feature introduced by EN Win 6.0.

Notebooks do NOT offer any organization advantage over tags.
Whereas tags offer many organization advantages over notebooks

1. Virtually unlimited number of tags
2. Can have a many sub-tags (sub-categories) in the tag hierarchy as you like
3. Can assign multiple tags to the same note
   (so, for example, a computer asset Note can be referenced by both "Business" and "Personal")
4. And now, by using "include child tags" option, clicking on (filtering on) a parent tag is just like clicking on a Notebook -- it gives a list of ALL notes "in" that tag, or more precisely, of ALL Notes that have any child tags of that parent tag.

This is not just theory.  I have demonstrated the use of tags as pseudo Notebooks for several months now, and I can say it works extremely well.

You could create a hierarchical tag structure (with as many tags and sub-tags as  you like) something like this, which is just a starting point to give you ideas.  Adjust as you see fit.

• PROJECTS
  • PRJ.NameOfProject1
    (I'm using a numeric prefix to achieve listing order.  If you prefer alphabetical order, leave off prefix)
    • 1_ProjectPlan.p1
    • 2_Milestones.p1
      • Have a many notes as you want with this tag, and just use Note Title to identify
      • I'd use one Note per Milestone
      • I'd probably use a date naming convention for the Note Title so that the alphabetical order is actually date order, like:
        2016-04-25 -- Start Project
        2016-05-01 -- Approve Project Plan
        2016-06-01 -- Design Complete
    • 3_ProjectDocs.p1
    • 4_Tasks.p1
      • T01.TaskName1    (add a ".p1" suffix if task name is to be used in other projects)
      • T02.TaskName2
      • etc
        
        OR
         
      • Instead of using tags for identifying the task, just use the Note title.
      • So each task note would have a tag of "4_tasks.p1", and then whatever title you like.
      • It could be "Task 2016-01 -- Design New Project Mgt System"
      • and then "Task 2016-01 -- Progress report"
      • Of course, all that is manual typing without any auto-suggestion for task number/name
      • The advantage of using tags for task ID is that it is easier to select and enter, and avoids typos, errors, etc.
  • PRJ.NameOfProject2
  • PRJ.NameOfProject3
  • etc

Notice that I am using both prefixes and suffixes:

• Prefix of "PRJ." to easily identify all Projects, and to make tag selection/assignment easier/faster
• Suffix of ".p<number>" to allow essentially duplicate tags for each project
  • So you would have ".p1" for Project 1, ".p2" for Project 2, etc
  • Then you can use the root name of "ProjectPlan", "Milestones", etc in every project.
  • This allows you to search/filter by tag, and, for example, get a list of the Project Plan for all Projects.  Or the Milestones, etc.
  • For example, Search box:  2_Milestones.*

If you use the "include child tags" option, then you need tag each note ONLY with the specific child tag it needs

• So this means you tag the note(s) for "2_Milestones.p1", and when you just click on the tag "PRJ.NameOfProject1", that note will be included in the list.
• In fact, filtering on "PRJ.NameOfProject1" will provide a list of ALL notes associated with that project, provided the note has at least one tag that is a child tag anywhere in the hierarchy of "PRJ.NameOfProject1"

Buy using hierarchical tags with "include child tags", it makes it very easy to browse each project in the order you prefer.

This all very doable, and will work reasonably well.  BUT, it is a lot of work to setup and maintain.  It is easy to make a mistake and assign the wrong tag to a note, and then it does not show up in the proper project.  Using a dedicated Project Mgt system like IQTell will avoid all this, and much more.

IQTell (and other project mgt systems) have a free 30 day trial.  I suggest you try a pilot system, setup both in IQTell and Evernote, and see what works best for you.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.