July 14, 2008

Michael C. Oldenburg

Ever wish you and your team could share project-related ideas and information without spamming each other in e-mail or waiting your turn to check out and edit group documents on a SharePoint site? In this month's column, Michael Oldenburg shows how easily you can collaborate with your teammates with a shared notebook in OneNote 2007.

Applies to
Microsoft Office OneNote 2007

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Ask some of your fellow office workers about the banes of their daily existence and they'll probably list "information overload" sooner rather than later. Around here, a day doesn't go by when most of us aren't drowning in e-mails that vie for our attention. Few of these messages happen to hit our inboxes at the precise moments when we're ready, willing, and able to process the information they contain. Each day, it's up to each of us to file away a barrage of information and then remember to search for it all again when we need it.

To be fair, new tools and improved features have emerged along the way to help us with these tasks. For example, it's hard to imagine corporate life without the benefits of Outlook's search features, folder and feeds management, and criteria-based filing rules for messages. Similarly, when SharePoint came on the scene, it made publishing files and information in a central location on the corporate intranet easier than ever before.

Still, there's room for improvement. With traditional documents, spreadsheets, and other work files, it's natural that they're created or edited by one person at a time. And if you've ever needed to add information to a Word document that someone has already checked out, you already know how frustrating it can be to wait your turn.

So then, how exactly can people "work smarter, not harder" when chasing after information that's literally all over the place?

OneNote: A better way to collaborate

OneNote 2007 is the killer app for information workers like me. From its flexible and unrestricted document-like canvas to its ability to gather and store infomation from various sources and file types all in one place, you only need to spend a few minutes with OneNote or watch a few product demos to gain an immediate appreciation of its potential in a variety of scenarios and situations.

Originally created as an individual note-taking tool, OneNote has matured into a veritable Swiss Army knife of the Microsoft Office family. With OneNote 2007, you can create and maintain "shared notebooks" — easy-to-use information repositories (similar to wikis) that you and your teammates or colleagues can view, edit, and maintain together — all at the same time, and from any networked PC in your company, at your school, or in your home.

Within a shared notebook, you and others can collect, maintain, and share a variety of information from various sources and keep it all updated and available in a single location. OneNote automatically and continuously synchronizes everyone's changes to the notebook so that its pages and sections are always up-to-date. No waiting your turn to view or edit, no manual downloading of the latest files. You can even access a shared notebook when you're disconnected from the network (for example, to add information during a flight). The next time you connect to your network, OneNote synchronizes all of your changes, making them immediately available to the others in your group.

Sound too good to be true? Read on to see just how easy it is to get started with shared notebooks.

Create the shared notebook

You can create shared notebooks on a file share or in an existing SharePoint document library on your company's network. Depending on the sensitivity of the information that you're planning to keep in a particular shared notebook, be sure to talk to your network administrator about applying the appropriate file permissions for you and your teammates before you create the shared notebook and invite other authors to add information to it.

When you've squared away the location and access rights for the shared notebook, it's time to create it.

Here's how:

1. In OneNote 2007, on the Share menu, click Create Shared Notebook.
2. In the New Notebook Wizard, enter a Name for the notebook, choose Blank in the From Template list, and then click Next.
3. On the next screen, make sure that the options Multiple people will share the notebook and On a server are selected, and then click Next.
   
   
   
4. On the next screen, enter the network path of the folder or document library where you want to create the shared notebook.
   
   
   
5. Clear the Create an e-mail with a link to this notebook that I can send to other people checkbox (I'll explain later in this article why you'll want to first customize a new, shared notebook before sending others a link to it).
6. Click Create.

OneNote creates the shared notebook in the location you selected and places a shortcut to it on the Navigation Bar.

 Tip   For more information about creating a shared notebook in OneNote 2007, see Create a new shared notebook.

What does a shared notebook look like?

When you're working in a shared notebook, it will look and work exactly like the personal notebooks on your own hard drive. You can identify a shared notebook by the synchronization status icon that appears over its notebook icon on the Navigation Bar, and by the availability of the Notebook Sync Status button on the toolbar when the shared notebook is open.

Whenever you're connected to the shared notebook, a green synchronization status icon indicates that OneNote is handling the synchronization of changes to the notebook between all connected authors. You can click the Notebook Sync Status button whenever you want to view more information about the synchronization status or if you want to manually sync your recent changes to the shared notebook.

 Tip   For more information about automatic and manual notebook synchronization, see View the notebook synchronization status.

Although a shared notebook is technically available to others from the moment you create it, there are some best practices that you can consider before announcing the notebook's availability and location to your teammates. Let's take a look at some of these.

Create a Welcome page

Creating a simple Welcome page in the first section of your shared notebook has both immediate and long-term benefits. For one, a simple Welcome page can appear much like the title page in a Word document to help give new notebook authors a familiar starting point each time they open the shared notebook.

A Welcome page can also function as a virtual bulletin board, where you and your colleagues can leave important news and status updates for each other. If you and your team get in the habit of reviewing this page each time anyone opens the notebook, you can dramatically reduce the number of manual e-mail updates that are sent out about changes and revisions to the notebook's contents.

As you flesh out the shared notebook over time by adding new pages and sections, the Welcome page can eventually serve as a convenient Table of Contents by providing clickable links to any of the pages and sections in the shared notebook. Such links let you and the other authors jump to specific areas within the notebook without having to search or repeatedly flip through numerous pages and sections.

 Tip   To learn how you can create a Table of Contents with navigational hyperlinks in OneNote 2007, see Create hyperlinks to pages, sections, and notebooks.

Add a bit of content relevant to your project

Whether you're in a formal leadership position on your team or merely the curator of your team's new shared notebook, consider adding some preliminary information to the shared notebook before you invite others to use it.

For example, if you're planning to roll out the shared notebook at your project's kickoff meeting, consider putting one or two basic pages or sections into place that will guide others to add relevant information in the right places. Though you can always organize random notes later by dragging pages and sections wherever you want them, having some existing content in the shared notebook will make it easier for your colleagues to get started, especially if they haven't used OneNote before.

Aside from typing or pasting text, you can quickly build up notebook pages by bringing existing, relevant content from any source directly into OneNote. Here are some of the types of content that you can add:

• Microsoft Office files  Insert copies of relevant Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or PowerPoint presentations, or insert links to source files for easy, one-click access. For more information, see Insert documents or files into notes.
• Web pages  Insert partial or entire Web pages from the Internet or from your company's intranet. For more informaton, see Copy information from a Web page to your notes.
• Images and graphics  Import screenshots, existing or scanned images, clip art, and other graphics and use them as illustrations, examples, or as background pictures. For more information, see Insert a picture into notes.
• Screen clippings  Capture a snapshot of any part of your computer screen and send the image to any page in OneNote. For more information, see Use screen clippings to capture information quickly.
• Audio and video clips  Record audio and video notes (or import existing clips) to supplement your written notes with interviews, lectures, demonstrations, and other audiovisual research related to your project. For more information, see Record an audio or video clip.
• E-mail messages  Send related e-mails from Outlook directly to OneNote, complete with their original message headers including the original date, time, sender, and recipients. Once copied to OneNote, you can freely trim any parts of lengthy message threads that are not pertinent to your notes. For more information, see Copy information from Outlook to your notes.

 Tip   If your team notebook will center around a brainstorming project and you don't want to influence creative thinking with existing content, feel free to leave the shared notebook blank. In your project's kickoff meeting, you can explain to the other participants how you want them to capture their ideas in the shared notebook, and you can briefly go over the preceding list to demonstrate the types of content and information that OneNote supports.

Provide a section with reference material

Depending on the subject and scope of the project to which your shared notebook is dedicated, consider creating a separate section for reference material that can help your fellow notebook authors save time.

For example, here at Microsoft, we writers and editors frequently refer to a number of guidelines for software documentation, such as localization considerations, Accessibility requirements, grammar and style guides, and so on. To prevent your team from wasting time by repeatedly chasing after this sort of information in various places, you can import copies of such documents and keep them on titled pages in your reference section. This way, everything is only a couple of clicks away.

Another use for a reference section in your shared notebook is to provide a collection of "how-to" tips for using basic and popular OneNote features. You can copy and paste useful Help articles, insert screen clippings of helpful blog posts that you've found, or create a list of links that jump to OneNote usergroups and community sites on the Web. This way, new OneNote users that work in your shared notebook will know how to get started and learn the basics along the way. You can even include a scratch pad page where new users can safely experiment with creating and formatting new content.

Invite your team to begin using the notebook

Now that you've spent some time setting up the shared notebook for your team, it's time to let them know of its availability and location.

If you have Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 running on the same computer as OneNote, this is quick and easy:

1. In OneNote 2007, on the Share menu, click Send Shared Notebook Link to Others. OneNote creates an e-mail message that will notify selected recipients of the shared notebook's existence and provide a link to its location.
2. Fill in the recipients' names in the To field.
3. If necessary, modify the subject, message text, and message format.
4. Click Send.

    Note   Outlook 2007 must be running if you want your e-mail invitation to be routed immediately when you click Send. If Outlook is closed, the message will be sent the next time you open Outlook.

 Tip   If you don't have Outlook installed, simply copy and paste the notebook link into a new message in your preferred e-mail program.

When recipients receive your e-mail and click the notebook link in the message text, their locally installed copy of OneNote 2007 will open to the shared notebook and a shortcut to the notebook will be placed on their Navigation Bar.

See who edited what — and when

If you need to know who on your team created or modified content on any page in your shared notebook, you can display the author's name and the date and time that the notes were added or modified by moving the mouse over the area and then right-clicking the paragraph handle that appears next to the block of text, image, or object that was added or revised.

 Tip   To standardize the appearance of the authors' names (for example, full names, first names only, e-mail aliases, and so on), make sure that each user has personalized their copy of OneNote with the correct informaton. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click Display. In the User name field, enter the user's name as you want it to appear in the paragraph context menus, and then click OK.

Safeguard your information

As the saying goes, "computers are dumb — they only do what we tell them to."

In any scenario where a group of people are editing the same document or file, data loss can sometimes occur either because of human error or because of a hardware failure. In my personal experience, the former is more common than the latter. Even though OneNote automatically manages the simultaneous editing that occurs in a shared notebook, you can take some additional steps to help safeguard the information that you've invested in your notebooks.

By default, OneNote creates a routine backup of all of your notebooks once each day. For routine editing of a single, personal notebook, this is usually sufficient. However, for shared notebooks that are frequently edited by multiple authors, consider increasing both the number and frequency of your OneNote backups. Doing so will let you roll back to a more recent, previous version of your shared notebook to effectively undo any unintentional changes or deletions.

For more information about backing up your OneNote notebooks, see Backup and restore your notes.

Ready to give it a try?

I hope you've found this overview of shared notebooks in OneNote useful. As always, I encourage you to try out these tips for yourself.

If you don't yet have OneNote 2007, you can download the trial version that lets you do everything I've covered in this article. The trial version works without any restrictions for a full 60 days, after which you can either remove the program or convert your installation to a licensed version.

About the author

Michael C. Oldenburg is a Technical Writer in the Office User Assistance group at Microsoft. Over the past decade, he has worked on numerous documentation and training projects for a variety of Office programs, including FrontPage, PhotoDraw, InfoPath, and OneNote. When he's not busy setting up computers for friends and family members, he's most likely designing Web sites and graphics, reading a good book, continuing his Japanese studies, or playing the latest video games. Michael's blog, Nota Bene, is published on MSDN.

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