OneNote vs Email collaboration

Let’s have a look at a typical scenario that illustrates how inferior email can be as a collaboration tool.

Why email isn’t good for collaboration

You start off with a document in Word say. You create an email and attach the document, then send it to someone outside your business for review. If we assume both parties are using the cache version of Exchange with Outlook, you now have created three copies of that one file (call it version 1). The first, on you local machine, the second in your sent items as an attachment to the email you sent to your colleague and finally a local copy in you cached mailbox.

Next, assume that your colleague reviewed the document you sent by firstly copying it to their local machine. They modify the document (which we will now call version 2) and return it to you via email. Apart from the three copies of version 1 of the document at your location there are now two more copies of version 1 at your colleague’s (one in their inbox and one in the local cached version of the mail box). So we are now up to 5 copies of version 1 of the document. We haven’t finished yet though. There are also now three copies of version 2 of the document at your colleague’s, one on the local hard disk, one in the sent items attached to an email reply to you and one in the cached version of the mailbox.

Even before you receive the reply from you colleague the totals so far are:

5 copies of version 1 + 3 copies of version 2 = 8 copies of various versions of the one document.

Continuing on, you receive the amended document (version 2) via email and save it to the hard disk for review. That’s added another three copies of version 2 of the document (one in your inbox, one in the cache version of your mailbox and one copy on your hard disk).

So, for a simple 2 way review of a document we have potentially generated 11 copies and at least two versions of the same document. Think that’s bad? What happens if you were now working in a team of five people all reviewing the document multiple times instead of just two? You may now begin to appreciate how poor and inefficient emails can be for collaboration.

A better way?

There must be better way. Well, I believe using a combination of hosted SharePoint and OneNote there certainly is.

The most obvious solution would seem to be to host the document in a SharePoint document library and use the built in check in/check out features. That certainly overcomes the issue with multiple copies but it is perhaps not as good in solving the collaboration question of people contributing ideas to the document. A better solution I believe is to use a OneNote notebook, on a hosted SharePoint site in which the document is embedded inside OneNote.

Using OneNote still means that every member of the team has a local copy of the document but that is a good idea if they want to work with it offline. If you where to link to a SharePoint document library using Outlook you’d get the whole document library available offline which may be not what you needed. The embedded document in OneNote would allow the team to create notes, cut and paste information into the notebook, tag items and so on as well as work on the document. In the end it provides a complete and encapsulated collaboration environment.

Now, it would be possible to achieve the same result with SharePoint alone but I believe the simplicity of OneNote makes it a winner for most people used to collaborating with emails. As time goes by they could graduate to a SharePoint only solution but using OneNote with SharePoint provides a great introduction to the other benefits SharePoint can provide team collaboration.

As I mentioned in a previous post, when you install OneNote on your system it adds some additional buttons to your applications. One of these is in Outlook like so:

This makes it extremely simple to get information out of Outlook and into something more suited to collaboration. If you are using your inbox as a storage system for information that arrives in email why not take a look at using OneNote instead? You can download the trial version for free to see whether it works for you. Even if you simply use OneNote as your own personal digital notebook I think you’ll find that it will become an indispensible application.

Conclusion

Hopefully you can begin to appreciate that there are potentially many improved methods of collaboration apart from email. Hopefully you can also appreciate that tool like SharePoint and OneNote are designed with team collaboration in mind. Hopefully now you will thinking how much extra time you can save using the right tools for collaboration. Like all work, using the right tools makes all the difference. Remember you probably don’t get paid per email you get paid on how much work you get done.

Opinions on OneNote

Once you have OneNote installed on your system you will notice that it adds an additional OneNote button to a few Microsoft Applications. The first of these is the Internet Explorer browser, which appears like:

Now you can simply highlight the information you wish to record in OneNote and then press the ‘Send to OneNote’ button.

So what I’ve done here is highlight some text and image from a previous blog post in Internet Explorer and pressed the ‘Send to OneNote’ button in the toolbar of the browser.

As you can see above, that exact information has been placed on a new OneNote page that I can file into any notebook I desire. One of the handy things it does automatically as well is also record where the information came from (i.e. the source URL). This makes it exceptionally easy to refer to at a later stage if required.

OneNote also provides the ability to ‘clip’ exactly what is on any region of the screen, much like a standard print screen. In the example shown above I have clipped part of my screen (showing a number of running apps) as an image directly into OneNote. OneNote will automatically time stamp the screen clipping for you as well as making searchable any of the text that actually appears in the image. Yes, that’s right – OneNote does OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the fly.

Apart from being able to simply type information into OneNote you can also tags. These allow you to categorize your information to make it easier to find later. Standard tags include things like: to do, important, question etc. You can even create your own tags. I’ll cover more about searching in OneNote in an upcoming post.

So there’s just a few reasons why I reckon OneNote is worth a look. As I have mentioned before you can download a trial version to get a better understanding yourself. If you do decided to buy a copy I think you’ll be surprised at how little OneNote actually costs, especially when you look at the benefits it can provide.

Ok, so OneNote is great but it does have a few drawbacks in my opinion including:

– No ‘reader’ program. This means you have to download and install the OneNote program before you can open OneNote notebooks. There are readers for other Microsoft Office products like Word and Excel, why isn’t there one for OneNote? How handy would it be to be able to send someone a notebook full of information that they could simply view? Please, oh please Microsoft a reader for OneNote!

– To obtain the best in collaboration OneNote needs to be back ended into a hosted SharePoint site for collaboration across the Internet. Admittedly, you can use Microsoft Office Live Workspace for free but wouldn’t it be nice if Microsoft could provide some space in the cloud for free? Microsoft has this facility via Skydrive for example, why can’t OneNote notebooks be stored there? (I’m still trying to work out whether this can in fact be done).

– Another similar product to OneNote that I use frequently is EverNote (which is free). One of the many handy things about EverNote is that it allows you to browse your notes via web page. You can even edit information in notes via this web page. I have found this invaluable when I’m out somewhere and I need a screen shot. I simply do a print screen, save it to a note in EverNote via the web and then when I return to my desk I simply sync my desktop EverNote with the web and I have the screen shot. Very handy!

I’ll go into more depth on EverNote in an upcoming blog post.
There are a few other minor annoyances I have with OneNote but these are the major three that annoy me constantly. Hopefully OneNote can learn from EverNote and add these few remaining features that would make OneNote a real killer app.

OneNote on SharePoint

One of the most overlooked applications available from Microsoft is OneNote. It is a simple electronic notebook that allows you to store just about any digital information you can think of.

You can even use it to clip information directly from web pages. It is just such a handy application that if you haven’t had a look I suggest you download a trial.

I will leave the virtues of OneNote to another post, what I want to demonstrate here is how much more powerful OneNote becomes when it is utilized in conjunction with SharePoint. Basically, if you save your OneNote notebooks into a SharePoint document library then you can share the notebook between people. If the SharePoint site is hosted on the Internet then people connected to the Internet can collaborate easily.

If you need a free hosted SharePoint solution have a look at Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Combine that with OneNote and you have instant team collaboration anywhere you have an Internet connection.

So, how do you create a OneNote notebook that lives on SharePoint? During the process of creating a new notebook you’ll see a windows like this:

Selecting the bottom option then “On a Server” will then ask for the location of the server. In this case you simply enter the full location of a SharePoint document library like the one shown below.

If you now enter a new folder name OneNote will store the new notebook there with all the sections in files below this.

Once the new notebook has been created you can add any information you require. The information is not only saved locally but also automatically synced with the information in SharePoint. This allows anyone to work on the notebook.

Next time you open OneNote you will see the local copy of the notebook appear. You can continue to work on this copy but if you are connected to the Internet you will see a prompt at the top of the page asking you to login to the SharePoint site as shown:

Once you are logged back in the notebook will synchronize again so you will see any changes that other people have made and that information will be copied to your local machine.

If you take a look around your desk at all the information on bits of paper you should ask yourself why these aren’t in digital form. Once they are entered into a digital form they are easily backed up, searchable and shareable. I can guarantee that it will improve your productivity and reduce clutter. If it can do that for one person imagine what it can for a team of people?

If you are looking at tools to improve your productivity look no further than OneNote and SharePoint. You won’t be sorry you did.

Enough time

That’s something that no one ever seems to have these days, yet many seem to go out of their way to waste what they have. The problem is that time is not like money, you can never get more and you can’t accumulate it. Once it’s gone, it gone – forever. Have you ever stopped and looked at how much time you are wasting every day? Have you ever stopped and thought that perhaps you can do things better? With all this technology we have we should be, should we? If so why are so many people struggling to get enough time?

With that in mind I’ve created a new document called “Enough Time – 7 suggestions for reclaiming yours” which you can view and/or download from my Slideshare. It should help you firstly better understand where your time is being spend, secondly how to ensure you are giving things the right priority and finally how to eliminate distractions and get things done (as David Allen would say).

If you have any suggestions about how you have improved your productivity and eliminated time ‘leakage’ I’d love to hear. Simply send me an email (director@ciaops.com) with you comments, thoughts, recommendations or suggestions.

Wireless Networking Course

My Wireless Networking course is once again running at Macquarie Community College at Carlingford starting this Thursday night. It runs over two consecutive weeks from 7 to 9pm.

The course covers the basics of wireless from keyboards and mice through to WiFi. It also provides you with a basic understanding of TCP/IP networking including configuration and importantly security. The course also covers a complete configuration of a wireless access point including how to implement strong security.

To enrol or obtain more information visit the following link.

http://www.macquarie.nsw.edu.au/index.php?action=course&course_action=detail&code=209M299

BPOS Review

Here’s a worthwhile review of Microsoft’s Business Online Productivity Suite (BPOS). Called “Microsoft’s BPOS: Cloud Computing’s Silver Lining?”, it concludes:

“We couldn’t think of a single reason why an average person under real-world circumstances wouldn’t be better off with software as a service provided the look, feel, and functionality of the cloud app was identical to its packaged counterpart…except one.”

That one reason is simply if you have an old line of business application (like an accounting program).

One of the interesting points the article does raise is that the standard desktop software we currently use is only licensed. We don’t own it, even though we pay big dollars for it. So, licensing a package across the Internet is essentially very similar to way it has always been done, with some major benefits. You only pay per month, per user and you get access to the latest updates of the package rather than having to apply updates or install new versions.

Everyone agrees there are challenges for online software however as the article again says:

“If Microsoft doesn’t carry this service model to fruition, someone else, Google being first in line, will.”

As the article also highlights, we seem to believe that small businesses won’t make use of things like SharePoint and Live Meeting, where in fact quite the opposite will be true. They are going to embrace these tools since they allow them to run their business more efficiently. I feel these are businesses that are going to shed their existing infrastructure first (bye, bye SBS) and move en masse to online applications.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the world is changing. Are you?

Stsadm tech ref

Much of the administration of SharePoint can be done with the command line tool stsadm. Like any command line tool you need to know all the syntax to get the most from it but remembering or looking up all the parameters can be quite painful at times.

Here’s a nice graphic reference you can use when you work with stsadm commands.

It’s interactive so you can click on the command to get more information. I especially like how it is graphically coded so you know which commands are not available in the UI and which commands are new in Service Pack 2. This should make working with stsadm much easier.

You’ll find them site at:

WSS = http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/windowsserver/sharepoint/dd418924.aspx

MOSS = http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/office/sharepointserver/cc948709.aspx