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As part of their jobs on the product development team at the printer manufacturer Contoso, Ltd., Carolyn and her team must gather, analyze, and share information on a daily basis. Their latest task is a competitive review of four competitors' laser printers. Contoso is upgrading its laser printer and must prioritize and design the new features of the printer.

The big kickoff meeting with the designers, engineers, and company executives is in two weeks. Carolyn, as the product team manager, must collect all the competitive review data in one place and make it available to everyone in the meeting. The team needs the information in one place, and they must be able to view and analyze it as they meet.

Collaborating with OneNote

While her team is out gathering information on competitors’ laser printers, Carolyn turns to her favorite collaborating tool, Microsoft Office OneNote. She adds a section in OneNote; then she labels each tab in the section with the name of a laser printer that her team is reviewing. Team members are using OneNote to take notes during their research, so it will be easy for them to add their notes to the appropriate tab in the section that Carolyn created when they finish their research. Carolyn will ask them to flag the features that they feel are most valuable with a To Do flag. The team can easily select or clear To Do flags to help everyone analyze the information during the review meeting.

Create a OneNote section or folder

Add or remove a note flag

 The Note Flags Summary task pane displays the list of notes that you have flagged.

 While OneNote has several different note flags, if you use the To Do note flags, you can select or clear flags as you review them.

Sharing the notes

Carolyn thinks about how to make her OneNote file accessible to her team and the meeting attendees, and then realizes that she can make it do double duty. If she adds the OneNote file to a document library in a Meeting Workspace site, her team members can update their note tabs when they finish their reports, and then the entire meeting group can view and comment on the notes in the upcoming meeting.

A Meeting Workspace site provides an online site for all the meeting attendees to view and update meeting information, both before and after the meeting. And Carolyn planned to use the Meeting Workspace site during the meeting as well, running down agenda items and reviewing her team's notes.

What is a Meeting Workspace site?

Carolyn opens Outlook and creates a meeting request. She clicks Meeting Workspace and fills out the details for the meeting coming up in two weeks. No need to send out meeting invitations just yet, but now she has created a place for her team to add their product review notes.

Create a new Meeting Workspace

She quickly uploads her OneNote file to the document library in the Meeting Workspace site, and then sends the meeting request to her team so that they’ll know where to add their report notes. Carolyn hopes to get all the product review notes posted by the end of this week. Then she’ll send out the meeting request to the rest of the invitees, asking that they do a pre-meeting review of the team’s product reports so that they are all prepared to do an analysis during the meeting.

Save a file to a document library

Meeting day!

Carolyn confidently opens the Meeting Workspace site as she waits for the meeting attendees to arrive. Up on the wall screen, she sees her Meeting Workspace site just as she created it, containing her meeting objectives, the agenda, a list of attendees, and the document library that contains the competitive product review notes.

The competitive review program is the second item on the agenda. With a click, Carolyn opens her OneNote file in the document library for all in the meeting to see. She smiles as she hears comments indicating that many of those in attendance had read through the notes prior to the meeting. They did their homework! The discussion is lively as the group analyzes the individual features of the competition’s products and compares them to their current model.

Review flagged notes

As they talk, Carolyn creates a page in the OneNote section, taking notes and compiling a list of suggested features for their new printer. By the end of the meeting, the group has evaluated several features and are working on a short list for inclusion in the next model. The designers have something to work with, and they can return to the notes in the document library in Carolyn’s Meeting Workspace site anytime in the coming weeks as they work, designing the latest and greatest laser printer from Contoso.

 Note   The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be inferred.