Show All

Hide All

By Matt Cannard

Do you wish you could get rid of all those sticky notes framing your computer screen? Or maybe you've experienced the frustration of sharing handwritten notes with team members: You can photocopy them for others, but then no one has an electronic copy. And then there's the challenge of motivating yourself to type up your notes after a meeting is over. If you attend as many meetings, track as many projects, and take as many notes as I do, you've probably encountered similar problems.

OneNote: my consulting life before and after

As a consultant, adding to a client's bottom line is my number-one priority, which means that I need to spend my time pursuing value-adding activities, not transcribing notes. I've tried several different electronic note-taking techniques, but none offered the flexibility of pen and paper while also allowing me to share my notes easily with others — that is, until I discovered OneNote, the new note-taking program from Microsoft.

Note  Some of the features or functionality described in this topic are available only if you have installed Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1. To learn more about the service pack and how to download it, see Service pack features in OneNote 2003.

Before discovering OneNote, I took notes by writing information in a paper notebook, because I preferred the flexibility paper gave me to create diagrams and freely position my notes on the page. The drawback of this method was its lack of speed. I've spent most of my working life on my computer, so I type faster than I write, and I found it frustrating that I couldn't combine the power of typing with the freedom of pen and paper.

To share my handwritten notes, I had to type them into an electronic document, which also wasted valuable work time. To keep on top of action items, I had to rewrite them daily, on a new page, in order to consolidate and keep track of them as new items were added and old ones were completed.

Recently, I put down my pen and paper and started using OneNote. The results have been uplifting. Not only has OneNote become an indispensable tool that I depend on every day, but now my team has started using it too. We exchange OneNote (.one) files as part of our daily communication, saving time and increasing our efficiency. I now spend more time achieving business goals and less time worrying about how to share information.

Keeping your notes organized

In some ways, OneNote is similar to a multi-subject notebook with different sections for storing information about different topics, but the big advantage of OneNote is that the organization of the information you collect is hierarchical and customizable. Folders, sections, and pages are easy to add, delete, rename, or move. Each page within these folders and sections can also be supplemented with subpages, which you can use to add more information on a particular subject or meeting. In addition, the entire organizational structure of OneNote is made visible through navigation that allows you to view all of the sections in your notebook at a glance, instead of searching through stacks of paper notebooks.

Notes you store in your notebook can be collected from many different sources. For example, you can copy and paste information onto pages in your notebook, and capture screen images of information from the Web or from documents. You can even insert a document as a picture into your notebook to refer to while you're taking notes. For instance, if you want to study a Microsoft Office PowerPoint® presentation for an upcoming meeting, all you have to do is insert the presentation into your notebook and take notes on it in OneNote. This helps to consolidate your notes in one location for the meeting.

But for me, one of the most useful ways of capturing information in OneNote is via my Pocket PC. I'm often on the go, in and out of meetings, and for those times when I don't have my laptop with me (or when it doesn't feel like the appropriate setting to be using it) I can take notes on my Pocket PC, and then copy them to OneNote later.

Working collaboratively in meetings

For meeting preparation, OneNote is great. Before meetings, I copy meeting details from my Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 calendar into OneNote. OneNote allows you to insert Outlook meeting details, such as the date, location, attendees, and agenda, directly from an Outlook appointment into your notes. During the meeting, I can project the meeting agenda from my laptop onto the board with an overhead projector. I can also type, or write notes and draw diagrams, onto the page with the meeting details, and then the attendees can comment on the information I'm collecting. The added beauty of this is that I don't have to copy anything down from the board at the end of the meeting — my notes are already in OneNote. Then I can send the notes to all the attendees in an e-mail message. Attendees can respond with anything they feel is missing from the notes, or with additional thoughts and follow-up items.

Used in these ways, OneNote heightens the collaboration that occurs in my meetings, and increases my team's efficiency by allowing them to quickly identify and archive key points for future reference. The following illustration shows an example of my notes from a department meeting. You'll notice that I added note flags in order to easily organize my tasks and priorities. In the next section I'll talk about using note flags in conjunction with Outlook 2003 to communicate tasks and action items to others.

Sharing your notes with others

OneNote not only makes it easy to take notes; it also allows you to share these notes with others in a variety of ways. These include posting your notes to a shared network location for others to read, such as a Microsoft Windows® SharePoint™ Services Web site, sharing pages of notes during a live note-taking session with others, or sending your notes as an attachment in an e-mail message.

Note  All of these sharing options are conveniently accessible from the Share with Others task pane in OneNote.

For example, one of my clients uses a SharePoint site to post and review all of his documents. This is a great way to collaborate and communicate with others. You can post meeting notes that you took with OneNote, and the SharePoint site provides a convenient archive in which to review them.

If I want to collaborate in real time with team members who are on the road or at a different location, I can start a shared note-taking session, invite my team members to attend, and then we can type or draw on the same OneNote page simultaneously. This is especially useful for brainstorming or explaining concepts where visual cues are necessary. During shared note-taking session, I also find it useful to draw on the page in OneNote while we discuss the material over the phone at the same time. Collaboration in OneNote saves me a lot of time I might otherwise spend sending e-mail messages back and forth or traveling to various locations for meetings.

In addition to posting your notes to a shared network location or conducting shared note-taking sessions, you can also send your notes as attachments in an e-mail message. I use Outlook 2003 in conjunction with note flags to keep track of the tasks in my notes. I add To Do flags to my notes to represent action items, and from OneNote I create an Outlook task from each item, assign a team member to it, and then send the task to that person.

Keeping organized with OneNote stationery

OneNote stationery is a great way to stay organized and share information in a clear and consistent format. One type of OneNote stationery that I use regularly is the Project Overview stationery.

As a consultant, it's my job to propose projects and keep them on track once they're underway. The Project Overview stationery provides a list of essential project details that I can share with my team throughout the course of the project, and also refer to during status meetings with clients. I like the convenience of opening the Project Overview stationery and typing information right into the designated fields. I also like the flexibility of being able to customize OneNote stationery to meet my specific needs. The stationery provides consistency amongst my projects.

Tip

Using side notes

OneNote includes a feature called side notes. A side note is a miniature OneNote window that lets you take notes quickly while working in other programs.

Tip

I use side notes to jot down action items as I think of them. I also drag Web addresses, images, text, and even file locations into my side notes — anything I want to keep track of while continuing my work. In the image below, you can see an example of an ongoing To Do list — visible on top of a browser window.

As you can see, OneNote allows me to capture my thoughts as they occur to me — without interrupting my workflow. It's a multi-tasker's dream.

Conclusion

OneNote is a great tool for taking, organizing, and sharing meeting notes. As a result, OneNote puts more productive hours into my day. Because the information I gather in meetings is readily available to me, I can also make more informed decisions. And finally, the information-sharing features available in OneNote increase the cohesiveness of my team, even when we are dispersed over different locations. As a consultant, I regard these as good things for my clients. And what's good for my clients is good for me.

Matt Cannard is a senior consultant with a Seattle-based technology and marketing consulting company that specializes in application technology, portals and content management solutions, and integrated marketing.