OneNote’s strength lies in its flexibility and integration, making it much more than just a digital notepad.

Here are ways to better leverage OneNote, highlighting commonly overlooked features with detailed examples:

I. Enhancing Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing

Overlooked Feature: Deep Internal Linking (Beyond Basic Page Links)
- What it is: Creating links not just to other pages or sections, but directly to specific paragraphs within a OneNote page.
- Why it’s powerful: Allows for incredibly granular cross-referencing. You can connect specific action items in meeting minutes directly to the relevant background information in a project brief, or link a step in an SOP directly to a detailed explanation elsewhere.
- Detailed Example:
  - Scenario: Your team is working on Project Alpha. You have a central “Project Alpha Overview” page, separate pages for “Meeting Minutes,” and a “Technical Specifications” section.
  - How to use: In the “Meeting Minutes – Oct 26” page, you record an action item: “ACTION: Sarah to verify server capacity requirements.” Instead of just linking to the entire “Technical Specifications” section, right-click the specific paragraph discussing server capacity in the “Server Specs” page and select “Copy Link to Paragraph.” Then, paste this link next to Sarah’s action item in the meeting minutes.
  - Benefit: When Sarah (or anyone) reviews the action item, clicking the link jumps them precisely to the relevant paragraph about server capacity, saving significant time hunting for the information. This creates a highly interconnected and efficient project knowledge base.
Overlooked Feature: Using Tags for Actionable Insights (Beyond Simple To-Do)
- What it is: OneNote has built-in tags (To Do, Important, Question) but also allows creating custom tags. You can then use the “Find Tags” feature to generate summary pages based on these tags across multiple pages, sections, or even entire notebooks.
- Why it’s powerful: Turns scattered notes into organized, actionable lists. Perfect for tracking decisions, follow-ups, ideas, or specific types of information across various contexts (meetings, projects, client notes).
- Detailed Example:
  - Scenario: A customer support team uses a shared OneNote notebook for tracking complex support issues.
  - How to use: They create custom tags like ?WaitingOnClient, !EscalateToTier2, #FeatureRequest, @ClientName. During calls or investigations, agents tag relevant notes accordingly.
  - Benefit: At the end of the week, the team lead can use “Find Tags” -> “Create Summary Page.” They can generate a page listing all items tagged !EscalateToTier2 to review escalations, another for #FeatureRequest to send to the product team, or filter by @ClientName combined with ?WaitingOnClient to see all pending client responses for a specific customer. This aggregates critical information instantly.
Overlooked Feature: Standardized Templates for Consistency
- What it is: Creating custom page templates that can be applied when creating new pages within a section.
- Why it’s powerful: Ensures consistency in note-taking for recurring tasks like meeting minutes, project status reports, client intake forms, or employee onboarding checklists. Saves time and standardizes information capture.
- Detailed Example:
  - Scenario: A project management office (PMO) wants all project managers to follow a consistent format for weekly status reports.
  - How to use: They create a page with predefined sections: “Key Accomplishments This Week,” “Planned Activities Next Week,” “Risks/Issues,” “Decisions Needed,” “Budget Update.” They then save this page as a template (usually via Page Templates pane -> Save current page as a template). They can even set this template as the default for the “Status Reports” section in the shared PMO notebook.
  - Benefit: Every time a PM adds a new page in the “Status Reports” section, it automatically uses this structure. This makes reports easier to write, read, and compare across projects.

II. Improving Information Capture and Retrieval

Overlooked Feature: Audio Recording Synced with Notes
- What it is: Recording audio directly within OneNote while simultaneously typing notes. OneNote timestamps your notes relative to the audio playback.
- Why it’s powerful: Captures the full context of conversations (meetings, interviews, client calls) that might be missed in typed notes. Clicking on a note you typed later will jump the audio playback to the exact moment you typed it.
- Detailed Example:
  - Scenario: An HR representative is conducting an employee interview. They are taking notes in OneNote but want to ensure they capture nuances and exact phrasing.
  - How to use: They start an audio recording (Insert -> Audio Recording) in OneNote at the beginning of the interview. As they type key points, OneNote subtly links the text to the recording timestamp.
  - Benefit: When reviewing the notes later, if a typed point like “Candidate mentioned interest in X role” seems unclear, clicking that text will instantly play the audio recording from the moment the candidate discussed it, providing full context and exact wording without having to scrub through the entire recording.
Overlooked Feature: Powerful Search Capabilities (OCR & Audio Search)
- What it is: OneNote search goes beyond typed text. It performs Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to search text within inserted images (like photos of whiteboards, scanned documents) and can even search for spoken words within audio and video recordings (requires indexing, may take time after insertion).
- Why it’s powerful: Makes ALL inserted content searchable, not just typed notes. Find information hidden in images or meeting recordings instantly.
- Detailed Example:
  - Scenario: An engineering team takes photos of whiteboard brainstorming sessions and inserts them into their project notebook. A marketing team records brainstorming audio sessions.
  - How to use (OCR): Weeks later, an engineer needs to find the diagram related to the “power coupling.” They simply search “power coupling” in OneNote. OneNote search results will include the image of the whiteboard where that term was written.
  - How to use (Audio): A marketing team member needs to recall when the term “Synergy Campaign” was discussed. Searching for “Synergy Campaign” can highlight the audio recordings where that phrase was spoken (allow time for indexing after recording/inserting).
  - Benefit: Dramatically increases the value of visual and audio information capture, making it easily retrievable later.
Overlooked Feature: “Send to OneNote” Tool & Web Clipper
- What it is: The “Send to OneNote” tool acts like a virtual printer, allowing you to send content from almost any application (like a PDF report, an email thread, a document) directly to a specified OneNote page. The Web Clipper browser extension lets you easily clip articles, sections of pages, or full pages directly into OneNote.
- Why it’s powerful: Centralizes information from diverse sources into OneNote without manual copy-pasting. Great for research, collecting project resources, or archiving important communications.
- Detailed Example:
  - Scenario: A research analyst is gathering information for a market report from various websites, PDF reports, and email discussions.
  - How to use: They use the OneNote Web Clipper to save relevant web articles directly to their “Market Research” notebook section. For a crucial PDF report, they use File -> Print -> Send to OneNote. For an important email thread in Outlook, they use the “Send to OneNote” button directly within Outlook.
  - Benefit: All research materials are consolidated in one searchable location within OneNote, regardless of their original format or source. This simplifies organization and later analysis.

III. Streamlining Personal and Team Workflows

Overlooked Feature: Integration with Outlook Tasks
- What it is: You can flag notes or lines of text within OneNote as Outlook Tasks, complete with due dates and reminders. These tasks then appear in your Outlook To-Do list.
- Why it’s powerful: Connects note-taking and action items directly to the primary task management system for many users (Outlook). Ensures follow-ups captured in meetings or notes aren’t forgotten.
- Detailed Example:
  - Scenario: During a team meeting documented in OneNote, several action items are assigned.
  - How to use: Select the text of an action item (e.g., “John to finalize budget proposal”). Right-click (or use the Home tab) and select the Outlook Tasks flag. Choose a due date (e.g., “Tomorrow”).
  - Benefit: This action item now appears in John’s Outlook Tasks list, with a link back to the original OneNote page for context. He gets reminders via Outlook, integrating his notes directly into his daily workflow.
Overlooked Feature: Version History for Pages
- What it is: OneNote automatically saves previous versions of a page whenever changes are made (especially in shared notebooks). You can view and restore previous versions.
- Why it’s powerful: Acts as a safety net against accidental deletions or unwanted changes. Provides an audit trail in collaborative environments to see who changed what and when. Allows reverting to earlier ideas.
- Detailed Example:
  - Scenario: A team is collaboratively editing a project plan in a shared OneNote notebook. Someone accidentally deletes a critical section.
  - How to use: Right-click the page tab (or go to History tab -> Page Versions). A list of previous versions with timestamps and author appears. Find the version before the deletion occurred and click “Restore.”
  - Benefit: The deleted content is instantly recovered. Alternatively, if there’s confusion about why a certain decision was documented, viewing page versions can show who added that text and when, facilitating clarification.

Actionable Steps for Your Business:

Assess Current Usage: Understand how teams are currently using OneNote. Are they aware of these features?
Targeted Training: Don’t just do generic OneNote training. Focus sessions on specific features relevant to different roles (e.g., Project Managers on Tags & Templates, Researchers on Web Clipper & Audio Recording, All Staff on Internal Linking & Outlook Tasks). Use real business scenarios in training.
Develop & Share Best Practices: Create simple guides or internal knowledge base articles (perhaps in a shared OneNote!) demonstrating how to use these features effectively for common company workflows. Define naming conventions for shared notebooks/sections.
Promote Template Usage: Identify key recurring documents/notes (meeting minutes, project updates) and create official company templates. Encourage or mandate their use for consistency.
Appoint OneNote Champions: Identify enthusiastic power users within different teams who can help colleagues, share tips, and provide feedback on what’s working.
Encourage Integration: Ensure employees know how to connect OneNote with Outlook (Tasks, Meeting Details) and potentially Microsoft Teams (OneNote tab in channels).

By actively promoting and training employees on these often-overlooked OneNote features, your business can significantly enhance collaboration, knowledge management, and overall productivity.

My software and services 2025

startup-photos

Here’s last year’s post for comparison:

My software and services – 2024

My PC’s are either running the latest version of Windows 10 (24H2) or Windows 11 (24H2) without any issues. Some machines cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 and some I have left at Windows 10 for the time being to verify their operation. I no longer run any Windows 10 Insider builds as I had trouble backing out of these when I needed to. I still have Office Insider builds happening in my environment.

Given that Windows 10 goes out of support in October 2025 I will upgrade what I can to Windows 11 and probably just leave the rest as is. All my production machines can go to Windows 11, it will just a test machines that can’t.

All Windows machines are directly joined to Entra ID and managed via Intune and Microsoft Endpoint Manager, except for one that remains stand alone for use with my IoT projects. The Entra ID connected configurations are based on the Windows MDM security baseline settings. All machines only use Windows Defender for local security monitoring and management. Thanks to Microsoft E5 on my production tenant, I am also using Microsoft Defender For Endpoint at the back end for monitoring and investigation of endpoint threats.

My two main tenants are Microsoft 365 E5 demo and Microsoft 365 E5 production environments. A mix of Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise machines are all Entra ID joined to the Microsoft 365 production domain. The production Microsoft 365 tenant has Microsoft 365 Business for all users except myself. I have a Microsoft 365 E5 license on which I have configured all the services including integrated PSTN calling via Switch Connect.

I use Microsoft Sentinel to monitor threats across my environments via a single pane of glass. I have also now added Defender EASM for monitoring security threats.

I use the following major browsers:

– Edge – my primary browser across all my devices including iOS and Android. I have it locked down with baseline policies via Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

– Brave – I have become increasingly concerned about the surreptitious tracking that many sites perform, especially when it comes to social media sites. I therefore now do all my ‘random browsing’, searching and viewing of social media sites using Brave. I also like that Brave allow me easy access to Tor browsing for anonymous security work.

I have now cranked Edge up to the maximum security level but wanted to isolate the most likely tracking culprits into another browser that was security focused. After some evaluation, I have chosen Brave to be this browser. This is now where I do all the stuff that is more likely to be tracked and now hopefully blocked or at least minimised. I have also set this browser up to use Duck Duck Go for search, otherwise I use Bing for my production Edge browser. I have completely eliminated Google Chrome from all my machines without any issues and recommend those who are becoming more concerned about their privacy, like me, do the same.

Services like SharePoint Online and OneDrive I use regularly both in the demo and production tenant. I have the OneDrive sync client installed, running and connected to various locations on my production and demo tenants. I can now sync across all my different tenants as well as my consumer OneDrive storage. I have common places pinned to my Windows Explorer Quick access, which I find to be a real time saver.

I regularly use Microsoft Teams which is now my main messaging application and I’m using the new Teams client. All the CIAOPS Patron resources like the intranet, teams, etc all reside in the Microsoft 365 E5 demo tenant but I connect to it on my desktop normally via an Azure B2B guest account from my production tenant. Thus, I can admin the Patron resources in a browser if need be but I get the same experience on my desktop as any Patron would. Handy to know what works and doesn’t work with Microsoft Teams guest access. Thanks to Microsoft E5 and Switch Connect, I also have Teams connected as a phone.

I use Lastpass to keep my passwords and private information secure. It allows me to do things like generate and store unique passwords for each website that I sign up for. It is also available across all browsers on my machine (including Microsoft Edge). I also now also use Lastpass to store secure notes. I accept recent security breaches with Lastpass generate concerns but after some investigations I believe the risk for myself is minimal and as yet don’t feel a need to switch. If I am going to change at any point I think I’d be going with Bitwarden but that hasn’t been necessary as yet.

The extensions I run in all my browsers are:

– LastPass

– GetPocket

– Duck Duck Go Privacy Essentials

I use Microsoft Power Automate for automation as well as Azure Functions.

For my email newsletters I use Mailchimp.

My preferred public social networks for business, in order are:

1. X

2. Linkedin

I would suggest that no matter what social media service you elect to use that you should spend time customising what you see. Unfiltered content is distracting but you can get good results if you spend just a little time telling the service what you do want to see I have found. Thus, don’t accept the defaults. You CAN customise what is presented to you.

I consume a lot of content from YouTube both for business and personal interest. I also also use YouTube extensively for my publicly available training video training.

Microsoft Office desktop software is still part of my everyday workday via applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. I use the desktop version of Outlook on my Surface Pro 7 which lives on my desk but I only use Outlook Web App on my travelling Surface Pro 9 device. I could happily not use Outlook on the desktop any more I believe but I still use so I understand the experience for most users. However, I do see the day when Outlook on the desktop begins to lose its appeal.

Currently, I use both classic Outlook and New Outlook on various desktops without too much issues. I prefer classic Outlook but New Outlook has come a long way and added many of the capabilities I use in Classic Outlook. The missing piece for me still is the way to customised New Outlook to see emails, calendar and tasks all on a single page, which I don;t believe New Outlook supports just yet. I appreciate that Microsoft will soon be forcing everyone to New Outlook and I believe my soul is prepared for this transition when it comes.

The key application from the suite for me is OneNote. OneNote is my go to Swiss Army knife for just about everything digital. I use it to capture all sort of data. I even use it as a diary as I have detailed previous here:

One of the ways I use OneNote

The reason OneNote is key is because:

1. Just about everything I put in there us searchable

2. It is freely available across all platforms.

3. All my information is synced and accessible on all devices.

4. It is available on the web or offline if needed.

I am a big user of OneNote on my mobile devices. This combination has allowed me to totally eliminate my paper notebooks for things such as journaling.

I am now a big Microsoft To-Do user. I use it to keep many tasks and items that I need to follow up including when bills are due. I love how it is available on all my devices and syncs across them all as well.

I use Windows terminal now for things like PowerShell execution and Microsoft Whiteboard for demonstrations and training.

Another key service I use everyday along with Microsoft 365 and OneNote is Azure. Typically, I use it for running up virtual machines that I test various things with but I also use it with my IoT projects.

I use Microsoft Sentinel to monitor all my services and machines in one single console and tell me about any incidents now along with Defender EASM to search out vulnerabilities.

There is just so much that can be done with Azure and I pretty much use it everyday.

All of my data now lives in Microsoft 365 protected with things like Windows Information Protection and other Microsoft information protection options. All my Windows machines run with full disk encryption thanks to Bitlocker.

I have implemented Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) to provide application control to improve security in my environment.

To capture my desktop for my online training academy or my YouTube channel I use Camtasia. I use SnagIt to capture screen shots and add highlights and emphasis to these. Snagit allows me to capture complete screens or specific areas quickly and easily.

I use Microsoft Teams to record my podcasts, which I then produce with Camtasia. These are uploaded to Podbean where they syndicated across various network.

To compose and publish blog articles I use Open Live Writer. My blog lives on WordPress.com.

My web site and Battlefields site live on Squarespace.

The majority of images I get, like the one at the top of this article, I get from Pexels. Pickit is also another great option. I have also been using Microsoft Designer a lot lately.

I use Visual Studio Code in which I do most of my PowerShell editing and publishing. I also use it now for my IoT projects. The end result typically is my GitHub repository where you will find a range of scripts and other resources that I maintain regularly. With Visual Studio Code I can edit publish and sync all my machines and my GitHub repository no matter where I am. Very handy.

Here are also a few of the other items I use regularly that are not for business:

Amazon Prime Video – only place to the latest The Grand Tour action. I also liked the Jack Ryan series and well as the Gymkana Files but most of this viewing is now on my iPad mini.

NetFlix – Seen a lot of great stuff this give all the time in lock down but most of this viewing is now on my iPad mini.

XBox Live Gold – access to all the online Xbox goodness.

Duolingo – language, maths and music learning, Japanese and Italian at the moment but most of this access is now on my iPad mini.

Kindle app – for typically reading books on my iPad

I try and keep my production machines as ‘clean’ and free of unused software as possible. I ensure that they are updated regularly. Any software testing that I need to do is typically done on a virtual machine in Azure.

A new section I thought I’d add is the AI that I use. The common Ai I use by far is GitHub Copilot. i use this daily to assist with coding tasks like creating PowerShell scripts and writing KQL queries amongst other things. Even though I have a paid version of GitHub Copilot I am happy to say there is also a free version that yo can take advantage of and the details are here.

I have a subscription to Microsoft 365 Copilot which I have had now for about a year. I use this regularly, but especially with Teams and Stream to summarise videos and other content. I also use Copilot Studio to create custom agents which I and others use inside the Microsoft Teams I manage. Even though Microsoft 365 Copilot is a significant cost investment it has more than proven its value to me over the past twelve months.

The main non-Microsoft AI that I use is Perplexity even though there are some ‘ethical’ challenges around this service. ChatGPT is also something that I use now ana again.

So there you have it, the major software and services that I use regularly. I continue to search out additional software that will improve my productivity. If you use something that you’ve found really handy, please let me know and I always keen to explore what works for others.

Yet another reason to love OneNote

I’m a HUGE fan of OneNote. Personally, I feel it is the one tool that makes me the most productive. As an engineer I’ve always been documenting stuff simply because I can’t remember it all. I learnt many, many years ago that writing it down and getting it out of my memory is in fact the best way to retain and use that information.

Before OneNote, like many people, I used paper to capture everything but the more I captured the more challenges that brought. Such challenges included, how do I back up these paper notes? How do I find things with paper notes? How do I store these paper notes? and so on. Enter OneNote to solve all these issues.

Thus, I have OneNote notebooks on just about everything these days. It’s a huge source of knowledge that I can access anywhere on any device. Love it. If I need to find something I just use the inbuilt search functionality and it would pop right out. Magic!

Given that I also now have Copilot for Microsoft 365, I have started to explore how these two product combined can make me more productive and I’d like to share a use case with you that has made me sit up and pay attention to what the combination of these two services can now provide.

When you become a CIAOPS Patron you get access to two extensive notebooks on Microsoft 365 and Azure. These notebooks contain my cumulative knowledge of the Microsoft Cloud and I use them pretty much every day in my work.

The above shows you an example page on DMARC from my Office 365 codex. The page typically contains knowledge plus links. You see on the right I have a section for every Microsoft 365 service and on the right many pages relating to that service. Here DMARC is a dedicated page in the Exchange section along with other pages such as Retention, Migration etc.

Typically, to find any information on Microsoft 365 I’d go to the top right and just use search as shown above.

But now my desktop version of OneNote has a Copilot button as shown above. This capability doesn’t appear to be available in the web version of OneNote yet. I hope it will be soon.

Before you go too much further make sure you select the Plugins button inside the Copilot window that appear and enable Web content as shown above. This will give you the best of both worlds with AI. It will work across you data (the notebook typically, andl in your tenant) as well as information from the web.

When I ask Copilot a question here you’ll see that it return information from my organization (shown above)

and from the web.

Another example is asking Copilot how to work with Exchange Online inactive mailboxes, as shown above. Again, it works with my own information and information on the web and presents in easy to digest format as well as providing me additional relevant prompts.

I have to say that this now my go to for unlocking all the knowledge I have accumulated in all my OneNote notebooks. Of course, I can probably extract something similar from other Copilot interfaces in Microsoft 365 but giving me this capability inside an application that I use more than email is a huge productivity boostt for me. Hopefully now that I have shown you what it can do for me too can go and see what Copilot for Microsoft 365 and OneNote can do for you. Let me know in the comments your use case, I’m all ears!

August Microsoft 365 Webinar resources

The slides from this month’s webinar are available at:

https://www.slideshare.net/directorcia/august-2023-ciaops-need-to-know-webinar

If you are not a CIAOPS patron you want to view or download a full copy of the video from the session you can do so here:

http://www.ciaopsacademy.com.au/p/need-to-know-webinars

Watch out for next month’s webinar.

Windows Phone link is cool

I’ve been using Windows Phone Link for a while now. Only recently did I dedicate the time to get it fully operational! I now wish I had done this earlier.

Bringing my mobile phone functionality onto my desktop is a huge productivity bonus I am now finding. My favourite feature that I only recently discovered is that I can make and receive phone calls via my desktop. Huge!

Not only can you make and receive phone calls you can also view your text messages. How many times have I needed to copy and paste something between a PC and my phone? Typically, I’d use email but now I don’t need to do that since all the functionality is available to me on a device with a full keyboard that I can use with my fat fingers. Means I don’t have to change devices to deal with what comes in on the phone.

Windows Phone Link has some requirements, most obvious is that it only works with Windows 11. You’ll also need to use Bluetooth to pair the devices. It’ll also work with iPhones and Android devices. Android has a little more functionality at this stage it seems but I use it with an iPhone and now wouldn’t be without it.

If you haven’t checked out Microsoft Phone Link then I suggest you do because it has been a great productivity booster for me.