Jan 31 2008
Tools For Productivity - Try Microsoft OneNote and Say Goodbye to Lost Post-its
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One of the most time consuming aspects of my role designing and improving enterprise search products and for keeping customers of those products happy is keeping track of all the requests and comments made by customers, industry leaders and writers. I’d much rather focus on making those request reality than on organizing the data. In the past, my approach to keeping track of all those passing comments was a crazy combination of emails, Outlook tasks, word documents and actual scraps of paper. Not the most productive approach - especially as scraps of paper keep going missing and I can never seem to find that email I remember receiving when I need it.
In early January, I became aware of Microsoft’s OneNote software. Apparently it’s been around for some time, but used mostly by students for note taking or by users of tablet computers. I downloaded it to help my husband figure it out when he got it with MS office home edition for his new laptop. After about 15 minutes, I realized it was going to change my work habits profoundly.
Basically, it works like a series of virtual spiral bound notebooks. You can create “notebooks” - each are a discrete file that can be shared or not. Each notebook can have “sections” - like the dividers in a spiral bound paper notebook. Each section has pages for taking notes. You can type pretty much anywhere on the page - it seems to automatically create Word-like text boxes wherever you type - and you can create Outlook tasks from withing your notes. Whenever you paste text, it tags the text with the location and file the text originally came from.
So far, I have created notebooks for:
- Customers - sections for each enterprise customer with pages for meeting notes, comments and requests. I also have a pages tracking their custom pricing and important milestones
- Prospects - sections for each enterprise prospect with page noting the functionality they are interested in, the budget for the project, and note/suggestions/pricing for sales proposals
- Product Management- I have a notebook for each product and each notebook has sections for drafts of collateral, web site text, potential feature upgrades, as well as email and training templates
- Marketing Communications - sections for PR plans, blog ideas, product announcements, collateral revisions and events
- Management - sections for each of my direct reports, as well as for operational processes, corporate strategy plans and company policies
You can download a 60 day trial at http://us1.trymicrosoftoffice.com/product.aspx?re_ms=oo&family=onenote&culture=en-US
An upgrade version is only $79.95 with any 2002-2007 MS Office suite.
Try it and let me know what you think.
[...] I downloaded <OneNote> to help my husband figure it out when he got it with MS office ho… [...]
[...] I downloaded <OneNote> to help my husband figure it out when he got it with MS office ho… [...]
[...] I downloaded <OneNote> to help my husband figure it out when he got it with MS office ho… [...]