ChuckW

55 minutes ago, CalS said:

Okay fine.

Children, Children...lets not fight over this..its a simple feature request!

Thank you for all the insight, I will look into PhraseExpress etc for the time being! Have a happy New Year!

On 12/27/2017 at 8:41 AM, jefito said:

Using titles to link project notes together is problematic in my view: you cannot retitle multiple notes at the same time (leading to the brittleness you refer to); using tags seems like a better approach, since you can tag multiple notes at the same time.

In any case, I'm not sure why you'd end up with a cluttered mess of tags; you can organize those separately in the tag tree, that matters to you (spending time re-ordering my tag tree is a low-value activity for me, so I rarely do it). I'm also not sure why cleaning up your tags would require you to delete tags; you can move them around your tag tree without breaking any linkages to the notes they apply to, and you can rename them, again without breaking any linkages. Tags your notes accordingly, and don't depend on a tag/title link (tags are independent of titles). This should work fine.

On a deeper level, I'd ask whether you've considered using more general atomic tags rather than unique tags for each project/activity. That is,, don't use  specific tags like "Kitchen Remodel 2-017". Instead, use simple and general tags in combination to categorize your projects. Have a "Project" tag. Have a "Household" tag. Have a "Remodel" tag. Have a "Family" tag. Have a "Vacation" tag.  Have "2016", "2017",  and "2018" tags. Have a "Kitchen" tag. And so on, whatever categorizations are meaningful to you. These tags can then be applied in combinations to notes to make things more generally searchable. And add in specific tags, e.g., "Disney" as needed. So a search on "tag:Family tag:vacation tag:2017" will find all family vacations in 2017, a search on "tag:Family tag:vacation tag:Disney" will find all vacations your family has ever taken at Disney. A search on "tag:2017" will locate all 2017 activities. A search on "tag:kitchen tag:remodel" will locate notes related to your kitchen remodel. For each project, have a main note that -- similar to what's suggested above -- embeds the specific search to find all associated notes (each of which you would tag as required); hey, tag the main note with "Overview" so you can locate all project main notes. You can also plug those into saved searches as needed.

 Thanks for the feedback as I find it really interesting on how others structure tags as I am going through a setup of Evernote Business for my business and struggling with appropriate level of detail on tags and also how to keep my arms around it so random and meaningless or duplicate tags don't appear.

Really though, I have no issue with my technique being brittle (at least when used by me as an individual, it would be more problematic in a team environment). I don't create notes 10, 5 or even 3 at a time. I create notes one at a time and I have to title all of them individually anyways, so it is easy to keep a "table of projects" list open in the background, copy and paste the title of the project in the title of the new note. For example: YYYY/MM/DD - Note Description - Project Title. The system works very well for me and hence I'm not really asking for advice on the use of tags to change it, I'm just looking for a feature from Evernote (which not being a professional programmer may or may not be feasible)  in which you can embed a search query as a hyperlink in a note. This would be useful even for folks that organize there projects with tags. I could then save a hyperlink on my Note that has all my projects listed out and have a link in the table that performs the search query to show all the relevant notes. For now I just use saved searches and it works fine. When I am done with the project I can delete the saved search, but at the same time if I ever wanted to go back and review the project for something I can still recreate the search.

Also, there is a problem with organizing tags in a tree with Evernote Business, it appears they don't allow you to tree them in Business version (if they do I haven't figured out how yet). Also the iOS versions don't let you view your tags by tree, only alphabetically which is another request I put in somewhere else. I tend to have a higherarchy of tags by category. I.e. - people (list of relevant people), Status (draft, final, rev 1 ,rev 2), Urgency (I try to use the Eisenhower Matrix so four tags: Urgent, Important, Not Important, Not Urgent) and Type (Letter, E-mail, Contract, Phone Call, Meeting Notes, Agenda etc). because of this organization system I wish you could see the trees in iOS but you cant. 

I do try to keep all my tags very high level and not get specific with dates.

5 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Note that you can create Shortcuts to saved searches.

It makes access a little easier.  There are also feature request for links to Shortcut entries

As a work-around, you could store the search parameters in your note and copy/paste them into the search box
Using a script would make this easier

I do make use of the shortcuts to saved searches already, those are awesome. Had not thought of saving the search parameters in the note and the script sounds interesting, unfortunately not familiar with the script language used to do such a task. (I took lots of C and C++ back in college days but haven't used it since). Any guidance on where one could go to learn to write such a script?

I make heavy use of saved searches. I basically use saved searches as a "Project View". So if I have a project going on, or am planning a trip I create a project title (i.e. - "Kitchen Remodel 2017" or "Family Disney Vacation 2018") and title every note related to that project with that project title somewhere in the title of each note related to that project. I also put a tag called "Projects" on the note. I then can create a saved search that includes the project title (I.e. "Kitchen Remodel 2017) and the tag "Projects and I can see all relevant notes very quickly. To help maintain consistency of this system I will also maintain a reference note that lists out all my current 'projects.' I will use a table that lists project title, project description and relative time frame of the project.

It would be awesome to be able to include in that table a link that runs a specific search for that project so I could use it like a table of contents and not be managing a bunch of saved searches.

I'm sure someone will ask me why I don't just create a tag for each project. I specifically do not create a specific tag for each project because I will be ever increasing the number of tags and over time I will have a more cluttered mess of tags than I do now. Also, if I ever wanted to clean them up I would have to delete the tag which would effectively break the link between relevant projects. With the system I have devised I can always recreate the search query if I wanted to go back and review or search a specific project for something even if I have deleted the saved search.

Yes, nesting tags on IOS and Evernote Business as well please!