Single note using search vs Individual Notes

[BamaBillyP 4]

I manage many individual accounts and each week, we have at least 2-3 internal meetings to discuss them. I use to create individual notes for every meeting and use tags, but the problem was, while the search and tags were great, I still had to close and open, close and open, many individual notes to get the history. 

Now, I'm experimenting with creating a single note and just using inherit tags in the text of the note like "_campaign". This way, I just have one single note I can scroll to see the entire history. 

Has anyone else used this method or have feedback?

[DTLow 5,736]

18 minutes ago, BamaBillyP said:

Now, I'm experimenting with creating a single note and just using inherit tags in the text of the note like "_campaign". This way, I just have one single note I can scroll to see the entire history. 

Has anyone else used this method or have feedback?

I'm not completely clear on your use case, but my recommendation is to use an editor that supports a ToC (Table of Contents), internal links, and collapsible outlines.

I use MS Word, and store the document as an attachment to the note

Evernote works well with office/iwork documents

[BamaBillyP 4]

It's just getting over the issue of having to open multiple individual notes for a specific tag, subject, customer, etc...Instead, I'm just creating a single note and using Evernote's inherit search feature that can search the body of the text. That way I just have one note and can quickly scroll to review any history. 

[CalS 5,280]

20 hours ago, BamaBillyP said:

I manage many individual accounts and each week, we have at least 2-3 internal meetings to discuss them. I use to create individual notes for every meeting and use tags, but the problem was, while the search and tags were great, I still had to close and open, close and open, many individual notes to get the history. 

Now, I'm experimenting with creating a single note and just using inherit tags in the text of the note like "_campaign". This way, I just have one single note I can scroll to see the entire history. 

Has anyone else used this method or have feedback?

You could consider enhancing to a 2 column table.  Narrow column on the left for date, wide column for your notes.  Newest meeting on the top.  You can highlight or use text color in the body for action items or whatever.  For a while I tried a thin third column for action item flags, but found out it was easier to just embed them in the minutes body.  However, for some meetings I still use the one meeting per note format.

[BamaBillyP 4]

41 minutes ago, CalS said:

You could consider enhancing to a 2 column table.  Narrow column on the left for date, wide column for your notes.  Newest meeting on the top.  You can highlight or use text color in the body for action items or whatever.  For a while I tried a thin third column for action item flags, but found out it was easier to just embed them in the minutes body.  However, for some meetings I still use the one meeting per note format.

That's actually a great idea..I wonder if you can have the columns sort by data similar to Excel...

I'm curious, have you been using a single note to quickly scroll threw notes (and inherit searching of the body text) vs. individual notes? I just don't want to manually open and close note after note to review all activity. I know I can merge but...

[CalS 5,280]

41 minutes ago, BamaBillyP said:

That's actually a great idea..I wonder if you can have the columns sort by data similar to Excel...

I'm curious, have you been using a single note to quickly scroll threw notes (and inherit searching of the body text) vs. individual notes? I just don't want to manually open and close note after note to review all activity. I know I can merge but...

Can't sort the columns in EN tables.  I leave one blank row (under the title row) at the top of the table.  That way I can add meeting notes on an iDevice if need be.

Let your needs drive your solution.  I use these meeting minutes more for projects than accounts per se, but same conceptually I think. 

1. The majority of the time I use the single note concept. 
2. I tend to enter the follow ups at the bottom of the minutes for each meeting, easier to track in the long run.
3. However, if there is a session that generates a lot of notes and/or follow ups, I will extract that meeting's minutes to a separate note and put a link in the single note version. 
   1. Easier to manage the follow up activity for the one meeting in a single note since I know I will be referring to it more often than usual.
   2. Breaks the review flow when this happens but the extraction just doesn't happen that often for me.
4. Also, when the "single note" gets too long I will start a new "single note". 
5. Title standard for me is projectname minutes - date (where date is the date of the first meeting documented in the note in the form of yyyy.mm.dd).  Helps in finding a meeting when more than one "single note" has been created.
6. Obviously, or not, I tag using the projectname.

Not perfect by any stretch, and may not work for everyone, but it keeps everything in one place which is worth it to me.  FWIW.

 

[DTLow 5,736]

On 2018-01-28 at 5:51 PM, BamaBillyP said:

It's just getting over the issue of having to open multiple individual notes

I wasn't questioning your decision; I was just trying to steer you to a better editor/viewer choice.
 I find the Evernote editor works better with short notes; it lacks features to navigate large notes

[DTLow 5,736]

On 2018-01-29 at 3:51 PM, CalS said:

However, if there is a session that generates a lot of notes and/or follow ups, I will extract that meeting's minutes to a separate note and put a link in the single note version. 

That's my approach as well, generate individual task notes from the meeting notes

The third party app Taskclone exists to extract tasks; identified by checkboxes
I haven't automated my process.  I use a script to create the task note but I have to manually identify the tasks in the meeting notes

[CalS 5,280]

47 minutes ago, DTLow said:

That's my approach as well, generate individual task notes from the meeting notes

Not exactly what I do.  I leave the tasks within the meeting notes, whether it be a single meeting note or a progressive meeting note.  Just to be clear.