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(Archived) I am angry


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I am starting to get extremely irritated that you guys have not updated Evernote for Windows to handle reminders yet.

 

I am running three companies off of Evernote and we are all using reminders on our phones but cannot on our Windows clients...STILL.

 

This is not something I would suspect from a company who has raised SO MUCH MONEY and prides itself on releasing/updating clients concurrently to maintain a consistent feature base. 

 

WHEN IS THIS HAPPENING? People are relying on Evernote to run their Businesses and having this feature available on the mobile but not the windows client is giving us a headache and slowing our plans to adapt evernote in even more areas of our organization.

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I am starting to get extremely irritated that you guys have not updated Evernote for Windows to handle reminders yet.

 

I am running three companies off of Evernote and we are all using reminders on our phones but cannot on our Windows clients...STILL.

 

This is not something I would suspect from a company who has raised SO MUCH MONEY and prides itself on releasing/updating clients concurrently to maintain a consistent feature base. 

 

WHEN IS THIS HAPPENING? People are relying on Evernote to run their Businesses and having this feature available on the mobile but not the windows client is giving us a headache and slowing our plans to adapt evernote in even more areas of our organization.

It seems pretty silly to me that you are "running three companies" & relying upon a feature that is not rolled out yet. Unless you just started running these three companies in the recent weeks since reminders were first rolled out on any platform, I'd suggest you continue to use whatever mechanism you used before.

EN does not publish ETAs. But I'd guess reminders will be rolled out to Windows "soon".

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I don't usually jump "into the fray" much; too darn busy.  But, this one struck a nerve...     :angry:

 

BurgersNFries - I generally appreciate your posts, but, all too often, the "Evernote Evangelists" seem like an army there to just defend Evernote's lack of action. "relying upon a feature that is not rolled out" ???? Evernote has been promising this for a long time, and it is rolled out in their world - just not on what I would suspect is their biggest user base - Windows.

 

I have to agree with Stackz07 in their gripe.  Reminders is a feature that is "right in line" with the evolution with Evernote.  Evernote's CEO himself has agreed with this in interviews for over a year.  Evernote has raised a ton of capital. Yet, Evernote's evolution seems to be really stuck.

 

I got really excited about the new Beta and downloaded it the day it came out, even though, right in Evernote's blog post, they admitted "ooops, sorry, no reminders yet."  The Beta is a step in the right direction to get things evolving again, but, disappointedly comes up short.  I'm about to post another thread - I just discovered that Cards have taken a step backwards and work horribly.

 

Evernote wants to be "our brain."  Business people like Stackz07 and I drank the Kook Aide and have integrated "the brain" into our businesses.  We need "the brain" to get with the program.

 

Thanks for listening...

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BTW, I know everyone likes to rag on the evangelists.  But this is my theory on any software or hardware.  When it comes to crucial things, don't be an early adopter & make sure you've thoroughly tested to make sure it works the way you think it should.  That just seems like good, common sense to me.

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  • Level 5

Hi Jeffrey,

I understand your hunger for the new reminder feature in EN Win. I am just as impatient and eager to use it. But as B+F said, it is good business principle to roll out things when they ARE ready and not when they are only half baked. As you will surely know, there are tons of "Software Betas" out there that are not useable and/or do have serious flaws and glitches. EN wants to avoid that (as much as possible) and therefore a more cautious approach has been chosen where solidity comes before speed.

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In the "traditional" software environment, the term beta has implied that the software is close to being finalized. However, Evernote seems to have a different view  because they use the new beta version to introduce new features. As a result, I would fully expect the reminders to come out in another beta version. Of course, only Evernote knows when that is going to be and they are not telling us mere users.

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In the "traditional" software environment, the term beta has implied that the software is close to being finalized. However, Evernote seems to have a different view  because they use the new beta version to introduce new features. As a result, I would fully expect the reminders to come out in another beta version. Of course, only Evernote knows when that is going to be and they are not telling us mere users.

 

Being "old skool", IMO, beta testing is having real live, breathing users testing.  It may or may not include new features.  But by definition, wouldn't beta testing (rather than a simple update) include new features...???  So I don't quite see your point. 

 

And you say "mere users" like it's a bad thing.   After all, you (and I) are simply, "mere users".  I have my own annoyances with EN.  But I'm still a "mere user".   So what's your point? 

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  • 4 weeks later...

 

Incredible some of these hardcore evernote evangelists are...I thought it was just a couple of them in another thread, but it has become apparent that they all have the same attitude. I guess you need to when you don't have any answers for people...instead of being unhelpful, somewhere, somehow the logic is in their minds to poke the finger at the user instead of blaming evernote for their shortcomings. instead of regurgitating rhetoric about how it isn't out yet and how people shouldn't be relying on it, how about if evernote stopped procrastinating and got the silly thing done, done correctly and done throughout all the necessary platforms? That's a novel idea. Then you wouldn't have to make SILLY excuses about how everybody else needs to workaround it and figure out what to do. It seems silly to me that you think it is far easier for EVERYBODY to find a workaround rather than evernote to meet the demands of its users. 

 

And here's the kicker for those of you who haven't noticed. The reminders are sent to you once a day for all reminders of THAT day. And unless you go into the app and click reminders, you are not reminded. There's no alarm that pops up or notification that comes up on your phone or web page or anything. If there is one, I sure as heck haven't seen it. So basically it isn't a true reminder...and if it is, it isn't a rich reminder. Because if it were a rich reminder, evernote would get a reminder that said "HEY, REMEMBER TO FIX THE REMINDERS"...or maybe they would get a reminder that said, "Reminder: Change company name from evernote to NEVERnote."

 

And don't be fooled folks...all of that "it's coming soon" stuff is just a pacifier or a carrot dangling from a string so you aren't tempted to transfer to something else.

 

Good Luck to all of us....with any sense.
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My apologies to the other evangelists...I went back to the other threads I was reading and it's become painfully apparent that it was the same evangelist as is here. nuff said.

 

At any rate....in the other thread, the people we literally posting things like "on bended knee" pleading for this feature....and it comes out half you-know-what.

 

It would be nice if the reminders popped up on your app as a notification. I'm done wasting my time on these threads looking for solutions because I am more frustrated now than I was when I first came searching for assistance.

 

I won't mention any names because it wouldn't be fair..after all, evernot did provide a decent service while it lasted, but there are things out there that do what you expect from evernote. .thankfully, I have found a migration method that will make this whole thing painless. Just sucks that everNOT wants to cut off it's nose to spite its face. I hope, for evernot's sake, they won't be the myspace of notes.

 

Good Luck

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Incredible some of these hardcore evernote evangelists are...I thought it was just a couple of them in another thread, but it has become apparent that they all have the same attitude. I guess you need to when you don't have any answers for people...instead of being unhelpful, somewhere, somehow the logic is in their minds to poke the finger at the user instead of blaming evernote for their shortcomings. instead of regurgitating rhetoric about how it isn't out yet and how people shouldn't be relying on it, how about if evernote stopped procrastinating and got the silly thing done, done correctly and done throughout all the necessary platforms? That's a novel idea. Then you wouldn't have to make SILLY excuses about how everybody else needs to workaround it and figure out what to do. It seems silly to me that you think it is far easier for EVERYBODY to find a workaround rather than evernote to meet the demands of its users. 

 

And here's the kicker for those of you who haven't noticed. The reminders are sent to you once a day for all reminders of THAT day. And unless you go into the app and click reminders, you are not reminded. There's no alarm that pops up or notification that comes up on your phone or web page or anything. If there is one, I sure as heck haven't seen it. So basically it isn't a true reminder...and if it is, it isn't a rich reminder. Because if it were a rich reminder, evernote would get a reminder that said "HEY, REMEMBER TO FIX THE REMINDERS"...or maybe they would get a reminder that said, "Reminder: Change company name from evernote to NEVERnote."

 

And don't be fooled folks...all of that "it's coming soon" stuff is just a pacifier or a carrot dangling from a string so you aren't tempted to transfer to something else.

 

Good Luck to all of us....with any sense.

Apparently taking responsibility for ourselves is a novel idea. Like making sure an app that you rely upon really functions the way you think it does. I guess it's just easier to blame someone else (IE Evernote).

I suggest you would be better served by a true task/reminder app (there are a lot of them out there) rather than blaming Evernote for not meeting your needs.

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We don't condone personal attacks on this forum people - please tone it down.

 

Now,, can you let me know which phone you are using? While we do not have pop-up reminders on the Web version, our Phone versions do have both audible and visual reminders.

 

And, our desktop versions have popup reminders (I'm not sure if that's made it into the *current* Windows version yet, though, but it is one of the reminders features.

 

If you're not seeing those things, please ensure you're running the latest versions of Evernote on your mobile devices.

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dlu,

while you're on this track of making EN users happy, someone please tell Google to make their Droid Calendar app fully searchable ... like ancient old skool Palm Calendar is searchable going back to forever. After all, Google started out primarily as a Search Engine. They have Desktop search. Search should be a no-brainer. Web Goo calendar is searchable. There's a search widget on Droid (3). But it doesn't work for Calendar. ;) So phone numbers or other notes I had associated in Calendar on Palm are "missing".

~ Bummed

P.S. I guess there's a 3rd Party Calendar App for $2.99.

PPS. I think I'm preferring EN over Goo Docs for that intended purpose: Synchronized Notes.

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Is this an Evernote business forum? I agree with the reminders issue in the desktop, but for me it is not very important. I use Microsoft Outlook and Evernote is just a very important complement (I am a premium member). Probably the new claims to Evernote would be mail, calendar, etc.. I started GTD system in evernote, but just for fun. I continue relying on Outlook for this purposes and in Microsoft Project Manager for serious projects. I need Evernote to keep all the projects stuff and I think there is a good synergia between Microsot and Evernote, that could be improved.

 

I came here to see advantages of Business version over Premium. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Sorry for the absence.  Work has been amazingly, and thankfully, busy.  I live in Evernote trying to keep me and my team moving forward - and the frustrations of late have brought be back to here to try to be part of a solution.

 

Regarding Reminders, thanks for finally bringing them to Windows.  It's a good start.  I asked my team to use them and, this week, they came to me in protest and said "no," as they are too much of a kludge - they only display at certain times, and are not friendly to use real estate wise.  Now, I'm paraphrasing and there is probably a ton more to this - but that's not necessarily the scope of this thread (I probably need to start a new thread on that - if time allows).  The scope of this discussion is that people have ideas about how Evernote should work, and those ideas seem to get "pumped" as a good idea by Evernote (like Reminders and the CEO saying they were coming for a long time).  But, then, when things get close, or, work arounds are suggested, in the end they really don't work.  And, though I appreciate the community that the Evangelist lead, and, I certainly have gotten good advice from them at times, it many times leads to the sentiment of "well, that's the way it is - too bad," which doesn't evangelize the product at all and doesn't get me excited about the product.

 

Related to this, the thing that has really struck me (and hampered my productivity) is the sharing of notebooks.  Now * this * is NOT a "beta" feature - it's part of the core stump speech re Evernote.  Me and my team started to use this heavily only to find serious problems with shared notebooks like:

 

Moving Notebooks - If my team member shares a notebook with me, and I edit and try to move to another notebook she shares, things blow up.  I get an Unsynced Note that is * really * hard to get back into the workflow.  (You can try moving it back to the shared notebook, but, it gets kicked out.)

 

Organizing Shared Notebooks - Tags across shared notebooks just don't seem to work.  We were trying to organize notes by tagging with the project name.  But when I'm in a team members' notebook and create a new note on the project, I can't tag with her tags.

 

Shared Notebooks and collaboration is another feature that seems "half baked." 

 

What I'm realizing is maybe not to listen to the "community" about what Evernote "might" do (Task Management, Collaboration) and ONLY use it for "being my brain" and capturing notes.  Where my brain goes with that realization?  What I capture - at work and at home - are projects, tasks, and things that need due dates and need to be shared - so maybe I need to find a new tool (as I think someone suggested above).  I love Evernote (as it "does" act as my brain, captures all, wherever I am, then, lets me find and act on it later), so, this shortcoming is really a blow.

 

Above is the lesson learned for me.  What I think they are for Evernote are:

 

> Don't release a feature unless it is true to the core.

> Get everyone on the same page about the features.  Internally.  Evangelists.  Users.

> See them to completion.

> Do it in a timely fashion.  If they won't come out in a timely fashion, then, you probably should not be doing the feature.

 

I hope this helps in some way; maybe someone (an Evangelist, Evernote Employee, or an end user) reads this and it gives them some direction.  I'm sure this could, like it did above, generate a ton of debate, and I'd suggest that either one doesn't respond or respond with ideas on moving forward.

 

Sincerely,

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Related to this, the thing that has really struck me (and hampered my productivity) is the sharing of notebooks.  Now * this * is NOT a "beta" feature - it's part of the core stump speech re Evernote.

 

For practical purposes the business product IS a beta product, a beta product they released without caring about core dysfunctionality, and I can only conclude they either couldn't care less about it, or lack the internal resources to address these types of issues.  A simple example is the inability for an admin to rename a notebook, a ridiculous  core problem that has existed now for what, over a year?  That's the type of thing that a company who has their act together would fix with a service release a month after release.

 

Bottom line, I tried to give the business product a try twice, and will never trust EN again to handle a product like this, at least not based on the way they currently develop and interact with customers.  The personal product is a different issue, as I can work around issues of that and use it for what it does so well.

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Wait, what? Admins can totally rename notebooks, both in the client and from the Admin console.

 

Maybe you're not talking about the same thing I'm talking about though. By "rename notebook" I mean "Change the name of a notebook." If you mean something else, please let me know what you mean.

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  • Level 5*

Wait, what? Admins can totally rename notebooks, both in the client and from the Admin console.

 

Maybe you're not talking about the same thing I'm talking about though. By "rename notebook" I mean "Change the name of a notebook." If you mean something else, please let me know what you mean.

Hi Heather. My understanding of the Business notebooks is that the admin can rename the notebooks, but that new name will not populate to other users, so it is not a global renaming. In other words, it only appears with that name in the Admin's account. Again, I could be wrong, but that is how I read the post.

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On Mac, it changes for everyone. On Windows, it doesn't.

 

This is a feature, not a bug, based on customer feedback. 

 

We've had some pushback from users who were unhappy that they were unable to find their notes/notebooks after they'd been renamed by someone else. Therefore it needs more testing before rolling it out to everyone.

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  • Level 5*

On Mac, it changes for everyone. On Windows, it doesn't.

 

This is a feature, not a bug, based on customer feedback. 

 

We've had some pushback from users who were unhappy that they were unable to find their notes/notebooks after they'd been renamed by someone else. Therefore it needs more testing before rolling it out to everyone.

Personally, I wouldn't want the administrator to have control over the naming, but I do see why an organization would want to have this ability. Perhaps allowing users to set in their preferences whether they want to allow changes would be sufficient. Admins who want to have control can tell their employees not to toggle the blocking on, and in organizations where the admins don't care, employees could toggle it on if they want.

Whatever gets decided, I would recommend that Evernote does not prescribe different behaviors for different clients. This seems like the worst possible non-solution.

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