Business Features/Possibilities

[DVNT 0]

I'm not certain where the appropriate place to post this would be, and I can't seem to find a contact email or support request form.

I work for a large organization that currently uses other note taking software.
Personally I find that software to be cumbersome to work with, and problematic in our current use.

I've used Evernote in the past on a personal level and find it to be far more user friendly, so I'm hoping to give it a trial run here at work.
However there are elements of the basic software that make it difficult to utilize in a project environment.  I'd like to try out the business version, but I can't find enough information about it to understand if it will meet the requirements we'd have here.

Here's the basics of what I'm looking to do.  Perhaps someone with experience could reply and let me know if these things are possible with Evernote for business.

1. Each person works on multiple projects at a time.  The idea would be to title each "Notebook" with the name of the project, and capture and track meeting minutes, project planning notes, as well as key pieces of technical information within each notebook.  However each notebook would have to be saved within the folder structure of its respective project, and updated regularly from there.  A centralized local drive for all notebooks would not be feasible.

2. As mentioned, I work for a large organization (~12,000 employees).  Project data is often highly confidential.
The idea of - cloud based - information being housed outside of the company's network, will likely be rejected.  Regardless of which security protocols you use.
At the very least, it's something that would have to be discussed at a high level, and not something smaller business units could implement arbitrarily.
Is it possible to have Evernote for business default to being an offline tool only?

3. Is it possible to "saveas" or export to a format that can be opened by standard office software (i.e. Word or even .pdf), while still maintaining information within the notebook in an intelligible format?  We store information for long periods of time. Reliable, long term accessibility needs to be considered.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[DTLow 5,736]

5 hours ago, DVNT said:

The idea would be to title each "Notebook" with the name of the project, and capture and track meeting minutes, project planning notes, as well as key pieces of technical information within each notebook.  However each notebook would have to be saved within the folder structure of its respective project, and updated regularly from there.  A centralized local drive for all notebooks would not be feasible.

Isn't this one of the purposes of the Business account level, to have notebook shared by employees
Personal accounts can also share notebooks

<<3. Is it possible to "saveas" or export to a format that can be opened by standard office software (i.e. Word or even .pdf), while still maintaining information within the notebook in an intelligible format?  We store information for long periods of time. Reliable, long term accessibility needs to be considered.

I use the export to html format in my backup process
The note content is stored in html format, opened by any browser.  
Format of the attachments is unchanged, Word, PDF etc

[DVNT 0]

2 hours ago, DTLow said:

Isn't this one of the purposes of the Business account level, to have notebook shared by employees

Perhaps.  
It was my assumption that the business account level would be needed for commercial applications.  I know software companies generally have limitations on the free versions of their software as it relates to commercial use.  This may not be the case with Evernote.
However convenient that feature may be, it's unlikely to be implemented at the enterprise level.  At least not in the short term.
We'd have more success with getting more basic installations approved that interface solely with our internal network.  And in the short term it would give us a convenient tool to track information, that for the most part doesn't exist in any standard Office software.

I use the export to html format in my backup process
The note content is stored in html format, opened by any browser.  
Format of the attachments is unchanged, Word, PDF etc

Excellent. Thank you.

[phils 220]

>> The idea would be to title each "Notebook" with the name of the project, and capture and track meeting minutes, project planning notes, as well as key pieces of technical information within each notebook. <<

That's right up Evernote's alley, for sure.

 

>>  However each notebook would have to be saved within the folder structure of its respective project, and updated regularly from there.  A centralized local drive for all notebooks would not be feasible. <<

The whole concept of folders and drives is not relevant to Evernote.  Notebooks live in the Evernote cloud and are synchronized down to users' local devices.  (Yes, behind the scenes, local copies of notes are stored on drives or local storage so they can be accessed if the user is offline, but those local copies are invisible to the user.)

Within the Evernote interface, it is possible to create a notebook "Stack" which is a folder-like concept under which a list of notebooks can reside.  However, this notebook hierarchy has two major limitations:

• It can only go one level deep; that is, you can have a Stack that contains notebooks within it, but that's the extent of the hierarchy - you can't have subnotebooks underneath a notebook in a Stack, or a Stack within another Stack.
• Stacks are not shared with other users; they are local to one user.  So if you create a Stack and move three notebooks underneath it, if you share those notebooks with me, I will see the notebooks listed at my top notebooks level; I will not see the Stack.

 

>> Is it possible to have Evernote for business default to being an offline tool only? <<

Nope.  Evernote stores its data in the cloud (specifically on the Google Cloud Service), so your company would have to be OK with that.  It is possible for a user to create a "local notebook" whose notes live only on the user's local hard drive, but that's impractical for business-team purposes because that data is not available to other users (or even on other devices of that user).

 

>> Is it possible to "saveas" or export to a format that can be opened by standard office software (i.e. Word or even .pdf), while still maintaining information within the notebook in an intelligible format? <<

@DTLow answered this one for you.

 

[Leo Gong 59]

@DVNT Hi! I wanted to follow up with some clarifying questions to understand your needs for 1)

Quote

1. Each person works on multiple projects at a time.  The idea would be to title each "Notebook" with the name of the project, and capture and track meeting minutes, project planning notes, as well as key pieces of technical information within each notebook.  However each notebook would have to be saved within the folder structure of its respective project, and updated regularly from there.  A centralized local drive for all notebooks would not be feasible.

1. When you say "saved within the folder structure", are you referring to a folder structure within Evernote, ie. in Evernote, have "Project Name" as an overarching container, which contains further notebooks within "Project Name"?
2. What other notebooks do you envision having within "Project Name"? Would you mind providing some examples?
3. How many layers of hierarchy do you think you'll need within "Project Name"? It would be very helpful if you could provide some examples there too.

We're currently looking at improving team-based organization in Evernote, so your feedback would be very helpful. As @phils has pointed out, you can organize using Stacks, but it does have some drawbacks.

Leo