Microsoft One Note - Have anyone used for their Projects?
Ganesh SrinivasanGanesh PMO (PMP, PMI-SP, ITIL-F)| MNC BankChennai, India
Hi Memebers,
I'm planning to organise all my meetings, to-do, reminders, important links, important emails in notebook.
Have anyone used One Note for their projects? Can you please share sample One Note file for me to get idea and proceed.
Plesae also comment on what aspects you are utilising this tool for Project management.
Thank you. Look forward your replies.
-Ganesh Saving Changes...
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Richard Grant RowsonProject Manager| Artizan Project Management Ltd.Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
Hi Ganesh
I have used OneNote with my various projects over the past 2 years. Your mileage will really vary as to how helpful it is -- in particular, if you have a PPM solution that documents your projects already, you may find that OneNote might appear to add a layer where the outcome isn't worth the effort.
Having said that, here's a bit of the thinking that I used:
- One tab for each project. If you're only working on a few projects at a time, you might want to consider using multiple tabs (ie, one each for initiation, planning, execution, M&C,etc. -- or by phases) . I found that I started to "drown" in tons of pages of info within only one tab, even if I nested the pages into sub-pages.
- wanted all of my core project team info at my fingertips. OneNote was great for that -- made it the "first Page" of each tab. Made extensive use of "insert table" to keep these organizaed.
- Was great for tracking all of those spontaneous "lessons learned" that happen throughout the project. Made a page for that in each project, again using the tables.
- Steering committee meetings, weekly touch-base conference calls, etc.: created a Page for each (actually, "duplicated the page" of the previous meeting and just updated the dates/times, etc.). Was highly effective for meetings where the agenda consists of updates to various elements, etc. I would then "copy/paste" these into a word document and send around via email to participants (actually, often pasted it right into the email body itself but not all of my team members could read the email once sent -- especially noticed by people using GroupWise).
- Would be great for tracking various registers (stakeholder), or risks/issues (though I hadn't bothered with that at the time).
- if you have the concurrent copy of MS-Outlook/Exchange running in your organization, flipping the OneNote Tasks to Outlook is a God-send! Essentially you can create "to-do" items within all of the minutes above, etc. in OneNote, but use Outlook to structure your daily tasks in one place (pulled from all project pages from any OneNote notebook). When you complete the task in Outlook, the corresponding task is marked as completed in the respective OneNote page (well, most of the time -- I have had some synchronization issues with my Office365 personal account across multiple devices. But might not have this problem if I was configured properly with organizational exchange server). Very handy when you have the next team meeting re a specific project element -- you see immediately what was completed or not from the last meeting.
If my Team has access to a common OneNote library (aka, you're running SharePoint Services with it), then it might be a good document repository for Charters, spreadsheets, etc. But if they don't, then do NOT put these documents as attachments into the OneNote database. Updates to the copies back on the server will NOT be reflected in the OneNote copy.
- I "printed" relevant emails to various pages to document decisions, sign-offs, etc. This works very well!
Alas, I don't have a sample blank template for you. But I do make use of it, even though the organization I'm with now has a cloud PPM solution that lessens the need for OneNote.
ps: very handy with using the iPhone edition as well. Many times I've had to look up a phone number or email address or one of the various tables I had to add some quick notes on the fly.
Saving Changes...
Ganesh SrinivasanGanesh PMO (PMP, PMI-SP, ITIL-F)| MNC BankChennai, India
Hi Richard,
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation on your experience with One Note.
Here I use PPM tool (CA-Clarity) and that supports for maintaining the Schedule, Risks, Issues, Budget etc.
And Here we also use Sharepoint for Document repository.
Leaving these two major items, I'm planning to make the best use of the One Note by captuing all important contacts, important mails, to-do list, reminders.
Your reply helped me to know about Outlook sync, but unfortunately we use Lotus notes.
Got your inputs on sharing the one note. Very useful.
I agree with Richard - you'll have to find a structure that meets your individual needs.
As we work in SharePoint Team Sites we use OneNote "only" for the following aspects in our projects:
- keeping general information on the project up to date and in one place (incl. RACI, contact info, links to most important docs, dev environments and libraries, access introductions, and so on)
- keeping all notes (meeting minutes, wikis, screenshots, transferred mails with decisions or the like) - here I use sections to keep sub-projects side by side ensuring everyone is informed about everything (incl. the customer). I use pages and subpages to structure the sub-project itself, but I do not insert copies of documents or spreadsheets - we link them to get always the latest version.
Hence, I have a OneNote for each project that will be archived together with all the other project data in the project site. Only the small projects are collected in a dedicated notebook.
If you need to keep a section from everyone's eyes you can password protect it. This allows you to share the whole notebook and still have a section where you can keep drafted bits and bytes that are not ready to be shared yet .
Bests
Christina Saving Changes...
Ganesh SrinivasanGanesh PMO (PMP, PMI-SP, ITIL-F)| MNC BankChennai, India
Thanks Christina, your inputs are very helpful :)
-Ganesh Saving Changes...
Robert WardPrincipal| CSM Business and MobilityRydalmere, Australia
Thanks Ganesh for posting this question and for the responses below. Our project team has been experimenting with OneNote as part of an organisation focus to reduce paper, and we've been very happy with it's performance as a tool. I'm particularly finding it useful to project my laptop screen and record meeting discussions similar to a whiteboard. I then just email the page to all attendees, while at the same time the pages in the tab make an easy reference for a history of that topic.
That being said, its flexibility means there's a definite learning curve to using it in an organised, coordinated fashion so be prepared for this if you're planning to use it as a key tool for recording project artifacts.
Thanks Richard for your tips below - I look forward to trying these out based on our positive experiences to date. Saving Changes...
Ganesh SrinivasanGanesh PMO (PMP, PMI-SP, ITIL-F)| MNC BankChennai, India
Thanks Robert, your inputs on utilising for meeting with whiteoard and share is page is are very helpful :)
Will explore more and i will share what new things i'm finding. Request members to share their experience !
