iPad Apps for Consultants – Evernote

I’d heard about Evernote from colleagues but I’ve never been much of a note-taker except in planning and requirements meetings. In fact, in those meetings, I tend to be rather nutty about the volume of notes I take. Mostly because there’s always a question about something later on…and hopefully, I have the resolution in my notebook. As time passes at an employer, my notebooks stack up – available at a moment’s notice.

Note-taking in my private life – not so much.

But when I got my iPad, I began to see the value of it as a notebook. I was using the iPad’s Notes app but features were limited. No tags, no sorting, no bullets, nothing. The image below is an example of a series of notes I took during a MadCap Mimic tutorial review. I had had Evernote by this time….but I forgot to use it on this day.

There are a number of things I don’t like about the notes/comments above:

• The date on the note is the date the notes were last edited, not the date of the meeting.
• No formatting options like the ability to strike through an item or mark something as done.
• No sorting capabilities at all

I needed more! When I did a search for a notes app in google – Evernote popped up as a great tool. It came in at the magic price of FREE!

One of my first uses of Evernote was to solve an issue with taking photos on my iPad – the tagging and sorting of images. Part of my role running a canine rescue organization is to take photos of the dogs and post them to the website. Without photos, dogs don’t get adopted!

I was fine with taking the photos, where I struggled was remembering which dog was which.  It was brutal…because let’s be honest here….most beagles are black, brown, and white…and that doesn’t leave a lot of room for distinguishing markings!

<heroic music>So, Evernote to the rescue! </heroic music>

I created a note for each dog and then took photos – thereby sorting the photos. I don’t come up with brilliant ideas all that often, but I count this as one in that small category. Here’s a screenshot to document my moment:

When it came time to post the dogs to the website, I had them sorted so I knew who was who. Not bad for a first effort!

Since then, Evernote has allowed me to discontinue my use of notebooks. I attend meetings and assign tags to the notes. I can make lists, even lists of to-do items.

And then I can check things off the list!

The tagging and sorting options are pretty cool. I can sort by the following:

• Date Created
• Date Modified
• Meeting Title
• Notebook (if you have several)
• City and Country

Here are my notes sorted alphabetically:

When you tag items, you can then sort stuff by those tags: either Name or Note Count. This screenshot shows my notes sorted alphabetically by tag.

Conclusion

Evernote is a fantastic tool for note taking, whether you’re in a client meeting, a demo, or just making notes for yourself. And at the magic price of FREE, it simply can’t be beat.