If you or someone in a key role were to take a sick day or a vacation, would someone else be ready to pick up the slack? Would a new hire be able to learn a specific task without you sitting next to them and walking them through it? Or what if you just want to save yourself the headache of remembering a lengthy process the next time you need to get it done?

Documenting important tasks that keep your business moving forward is a great practice for professionals, whether you work on a team or are trying to be a more productive individual. Keeping notes about your workflow makes it a lot easier to remember how to do things, share your tasks with others, and make sure that everyone understands what needs to be done and exactly how to do it. It also makes things a lot easier when the unexpected occurs – when your processes are written down, someone else can easily fill-in.

Here are a few ways I use Evernote, Skitch, and Clarify to help me document different kinds of workflows:

Documenting Simple Procedures

Evernote is a great place to keep non-screen-based workflows written down, such as procedures for follow-up phone calls to clients, or steps on the computer that don’t need detailed explanation, like sending an email. For these types of workflows, I use the checkbox and numbered list features to outline specific steps, then add text to further explain items, if needed.

Documenting Complicated Workflows

For any workflow where someone needs to complete detailed actions on a computer, pictures are always better than words. The idea behind documenting your processes and workflow is to save time; using a combination of text and images can help minimize confusion so that others are able to complete the correct steps quickly and efficiently. There are two ways I’d recommend documenting this type of workflow:

Skitch + Evernote

Skitch lets you grab a screenshot, annotate it, and send it directly to Evernote for a simple way to document, store, and share simple screen-based processes. It’s often hard to remember exactly what every screen in every application does or what every icon means. Instead of struggling to figure it out each time, you can take a screenshot and use Skitch to highlight all the details you need. And, if you store it in Evernote, all your notes on the process will be available to you or a teammate with a simple search. The combination of Skitch + Evernote is great for documenting a single screen or a single step in detail.

Clarify + Evernote

Clarify (available in the Evernote Trunk) is a great tool for documenting multi-step workflows on your computer. With Clarify, you can take multiple screenshots, annotate each one, organize them into a series of steps, and add additional text to further explain each step. Once you’ve created the entire workflow document, you can save it directly to your Evernote account for collaboration or sharing. A good example of when you might want to use Clarify is in explaining how to send out an email newsletter, which usually involves a number of critical steps.

Once you’ve documented your processes you can then store them in a Shared Notebook, then set view, modify and share permissions for each person your share the notebook with.

Or, if you’re using Evernote Business, add them to a notebook in your Business Library so that anyone you work with can access them when needed. In my business, I’ve created notes for using our CRM tool, accounting software, and even how to post an item to our blog at www.CustomLivingSolutions.com - each of these processes has many steps and would be hard to explain with just words!

Don’t forget to check out my new book, Evernote @ Work! It’s available in the Trunk, and it’s loaded with ways you can use Evernote in your daily work to make things easier, more effective, more collaborative, and more productive for you and your company.

Do you use Evernote as part of your daily workflow? Tell us about it in the comments!

From capturing photos of job sites under construction to saving scans of paper documents to discovering the shared knowledge of his entire team, Evernote Business lets him run almost every aspect of his company in the office and on the go. Watch now to see how RCKa uses Evernote Business, and learn what Evernote Business can do for your company.

Evernote Business allows each of us to share and discover the knowledge of every member of our team. It’s the second brain of our entire company, like it is for yours.

Bio

Abhishek Baxi is a personal technology columnist for Hindustan Times and liveMint, a social media enthusiast and a podcaster. He is also a contributing author on Techie-Buzz.

I use Evernote, Everywhere:

• Windows Desktop
• Windows Phone

I Used Evernote to Plan My Wedding

I’ve been a user of Evernote for Windows Desktop since 2009 and started using it on Windows Phone as soon as it became available. I regularly use Evernote for work and used it extensively to plan my wedding. Evernote helped to ensure everything went smoothly, and that our special day was filled with happy relatives and cherished memories.

I got engaged in July 2011, but I started to rely heavily on Evernote to keep my wedding plans on track in September, when we set our wedding date, and the pressure of organizing everything suddenly came to the fore. I started by creating a separate ‘Wedding’ notebook in my Evernote account, to help me keep track of all the details, including bookings, invitee lists, wedding attire, family giveaways, caterers and even the finances. Indian weddings can be very elaborate; Evernote helped me keep track of every detail. Throughout the planning process, I often used Evernote on the go. If I waited until I got home to capture my notes, I would have undoubtedly missed something important.

Wedding planning means visiting the most crowded markets, where you get the most variety and the best rates. I went to Chandni Chowk in Delhi to buy many things for my wedding, and with the massive variety, options, prices, etc. it was not possible to remember everything. I took notes and photos on the spot, which helped me make decisions later.

10 Tips for Planning an Indian Wedding with Evernote

1. Create a separate ‘Wedding’ notebook, then create a note for each item that needs to be tracked, like accounts, catering, and guest lists.
2. Scan or snap a photo of vendors’ business cards, so you never have to worry about losing important contact information. Evernote’s ability to search for text inside images makes them easy to find anytime.
3. Snap photos of ideas and inspiration that you come across while shopping. With Evernote, you can keep them all in one place, and share them with your fiancée later.
4. Scan or snap a photo of receipts as soon as you make a wedding-related purchase. I was the sole person organizing my wedding and even on the wedding day, I had to deal with vendors. I obviously didn’t want to carry every receipt from every vendor, so having pictures of them in my Evernote account was invaluable. On the day of the wedding, I was able to confirm the balances that remained to be paid and answer any vendor questions (like who had been paid in part or in full) by simply searching through my account.
5. Forward wedding-related text messages from friends and family to your Evernote email account, so that you can refer back to them everywhere you have Evernote. Capturing these special moments in Evernote means that I can look back at them years later.
6. Tag all of the notes in your ‘Wedding’ notebook to make them easier to search and browse.
7. Use notes to remember your guests’ food and dining preferences and other details. These are helpful for instructing vendors in advance and on the day of your wedding, so everything goes smoothly.
8. Use the Evernote Web Clipper to plan your honeymoon. Clip articles, hotel and restaurant information, and more. I used the Web Clipper extensively while planning my honeymoon with my wife. It’s a great tool for collecting a lot of ideas in one place.
9. Create a Shared Notebook for the tasks that need to be coordinated with others, then share it with friends so that they can help make your wedding a great day.
10. Manage your travel bookings and travel-related expenses in Evernote.

Have you used Evernote to plan a wedding? Tell us how in the comments.

Two Evernote Ambassadors, Jim Cregan from Jimmy’s Iced Coffee and Russell Curtis from the award-winning London architects RCKa, shared their entrepreneurial challenges and how Evernote Business helps to resolve them. The panel discussion was moderated by TechCrunch editor Ingrid Lunden.

And of course, what is a Meetup without some cool giveaways? Each guest was entered into a raffle for a chance to win some great prizes, including the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine. All of the Evernote users in attendance also had the opportunity to mingle and exchange ideas and experiences about their use of Evernote over drinks and an amazing Evernote-themed Cake.

Our Evernote Business meet up in Central London was a great success, and we hope to see all of you at the next meetup in your area!

Register for an Evernote Business Meet Up

Our next Evernote Business meet ups will be held in Madrid and Amsterdam. Only a limited number of spots are available per meet up, so make sure to reserve yours today:

• April 22nd, 2013 at garAJe Madrid [Register]
• April 26th, 2013 at The HUB Amsterdam [Register]

The Evernote Business team also offers regular live online demonstrations of Evernote Business. To see the schedule of upcoming webinar dates and to register, visit our Evernote Business webinars site.

We couldn’t have been happier with Berlin as the location of our first-ever European Hackathon. Home to a vibrant and thriving tech community, it was the perfect launch pad into Europe after the successes of our previous Evernote Hackathons in São Paulo and Tokyo.

The three-day extravaganza kicked-off with an evening reception featuring introductions from representatives of Evernote and Developer Garden, DT’s developer ecosystem. For the contest, participants were free to choose to build their apps either with the Evernote API or one of the APIs from Developer Garden. After an evening of networking and brainstorming, the groups were formed and ready!

Hack Time

Sixteen teams worked nearly non-stop for the entire weekend on some amazing projects, with one team even staying in the building for the entire duration of the Hackathon! A series of workshops covering a variety of topics, including the Berlin startup scene, the Evernote and Developer Garden APIs, branding strategy and web design also ran throughout the day.

On Sunday, the teams pitched their creations before a panel of judges that included Berlin Geekettes founder Jess Erickson, David Knight of Silicon Allee, Developer Garden Evangelist Richard Süselbeck, and our very own Senior Web Developer Chris Traganos. Due to the surprising number of high-quality submissions, we even added an extra award!

And the Winners are…

The DTHack Partnership Prize for the app that best utilizes both the Evernote API and the Developer Garden Tropo API was presented to Armin Hackmann, Jennifer König and Daan Löning for EasyChef. EasyChef allows you to find recipes based on ingredients you already have in your fridge and on your shopping list (written as notes in Evernote). Users first call the EasyChef hotline to chose their preferred cuisine and mention any dietary restrictions. The app then uses the Telekom Tropo API to collect call data, mashing it with users’ notes to finally generate recipe suggestions.

The Rookie Prize for the best app built by a young team went to Kimmy Bolke and Daniel Mierzwinski for Hintr, a web app that allows you to mark and tag excerpts of notes imported from Evernote—perfect for preparing for exams where you only need the most important pieces of information from months of lectures.

The Hardware/Maker Prize, sponsored by Leap Motion, for the best app built leveraging a Leap Motion, Raspberry Pi or other hardware sensor while interacting with the Evernote and/or Developer Garden APIs went to Uwe Kamper for his creative Robot Overlord for Evernote.

The Intelligent Design Prize for the best technical and intelligent design of an app was given to Tanja Borzel, Hoa Huynh, Anna Rose, Uli Siegmeier and Wil Wong for Lock.it, a password management system. Lock.it encrypts and saves login information for various sites in Evernote, which can then only be decrypted by a Masterkey provided by the user.

The honor of Best Design was given to Raphaël de Courville, Javier Diaz and Marie-Anne Sinfreu for Crewbee, a social DIY platform where creators and hackers can get together to share project ideas, make new friends and build together.

The Berlin Community Prize for the app that solves challenges and envisions solutions for the Berlin community was awarded to Matias Ferrero, Kristian Hildebrandt, Franziska Schiwora, Martin Schmidt, Nick Thomas and Chris Weis for ledge.io. Ledge facilitates the sharing of Evernote notebooks with the rest of the community via a platform from which notebooks can be viewed and published. Users are able to browse through public notes based on personal interests, then “like” the notes or subscribe to the notebooks that interest them.

The Developer Garden Prize for the best overall app in design, utility, API, and originality that leverages the Developer Garden APIs went to Klaus Breyer for S.O. Call, which continuously tracks community reactions on Facebook. If there is a surge in activities, S.O. Call initiates a call via Tropo, putting you in touch with your head of community management so you can take immediate action.

And finally, The Evernote Grand Prize for the best overall app in design, utility, API, and originality that leverages the Evernote API was awarded to Ivo Hanke and Sebastian Küpers for Context Booster. When users sign up with Context Booster and tag a note with “contextboost”, the note is automatically enriched with related data in the background.

Both Ivo and Sebastian received an Android Nexus 7 Tablet, an Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine, as well as a trip to Silicon Valley to visit Evernote headquarters in Redwood City in September, and present their Hackathon project at the Evernote Conference in San Francisco!

Many thanks to our partners and sponsors Silicon Allee, Moped, Gracenote, Paymill, Leap Motion, and most importantly DT and Developer Garden for helping us organize an awesome event.

Make sure to keep an eye out for more developer events in your area! For a full list of upcoming developer Meetups and Hackathons, check out our Devcup 2013 schedule or visit devcup.evernote.com to learn more about our annual developer competition and how you can participate. Also, be sure to visit the Evernote Trunk to browse our entire collection of apps and products that help you do more with Evernote.

Easy Note Migration

To help existing Evernote users transition to Evernote Business, we have made it easy to migrate notes from Personal Notebooks to Business Notebooks on Evernote for Mac and Evernote for Windows Desktop. Now, getting all of your work-related notes from your Personal Notebooks into Business Notebooks is faster than ever, so you can start enjoying the full benefits of Evernote Business from day one. Learn more.

Set Your Work Email

Most users of Evernote Business also use Evernote in their personal lives, particularly to share Personal Notes and Notebooks with others. To improve this experience, we added the ability to set your work email address in your account settings. This allows you to share Personal Notes and Notebooks using your personal email address, and Business Notes and Notebooks using your work email address. Learn more.

Trash Management in the Admin Console

One important feature that users have requested is the ability for Admins to manage the Business Trash. From the Manage Trash menu in the Admin Console, Evernote Business Admins can browse and search for Business Notes that have been deleted from any user’s Business Notebooks, then choose to restore or permanently delete them. The Manage Trash menu also includes important information, such as which user deleted each Business Note and when. Learn more.

Evernote Business Webinars

We’re excited to announce that we have begun offering a series of live Evernote Business webinars. Sign-up now to view a live product demo, and get all your questions answered by an Evernote Business Specialist. In the coming weeks we’ll be adding more topics and dates, so be sure to visit our Evernote Business webinars page. Sign-up for an Evernote Business webinar.

Once you scan a business card, Evernote Hello automatically detects key information on the card, including phone and fax numbers, email address, name and more, and adds it all to the new Hello Contact, making it faster and easier than ever to remember everything about the people you meet than ever before. If you have connected your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, Evernote Hello will also look the person up by their email address and import even more information from their online profiles.

The following tips will help you get the best results out of this feature:

1. Place a light business card on a dark surface. Place a dark business card on a light surface. A contrasting background helps Evernote recognize the edges of the business card and improves text recognition.
2. Tilt the phone slightly so the flash bounces away from the card. The card should look a little tilted in your display, but Evernote will automatically correct for this.
3. Business cards with complicated designs are difficult to recognize properly. If you are not successful capturing a certain card, move on and enter details manually.

Have you tried the new business card scanning feature in Evernote Hello for iPhone and iPod Touch? Let us know what you think in the comments.

We kicked off the event with a line-up of Evernote-exclusive life hacks and productivity tips, including:

• Evernote Food 2.0: How you can use Evernote Food to document your culinary creations and discoveries.
• Evernote Business: A dive into Evernote’s newest product and all its additional features that help you optimize your professional life.

And of course, what is a Meetup without some cool giveaways? Each guest was entered into a raffle for a chance to win some great prizes, including a Livescribe SKY smartpen or an Evernote Smart Notebooks by Moleskine. All of the Evernote users in attendance then had the opportunity to mingle and exchange ideas and experiences about their personal use of Evernote over  drinks.

Our first Zurich meetup was a great success, and we hope to see all of you at the next meetup in your area!

Bio

I am a serial multi-tasker with the chronic inability to do only one thing at a time. For this reason, it is common that a sudden (and useful) idea hits me while I am in full swing working on something completely different. Over time I learned that the only way to transform this handicap into a resource is to have a way to capture these ideas quickly and at any time. In 2009, I started working on my own in online and offline content, advertising and design strategies, and wedding planning from A to Z with my company fatamadrina (fairy godmother).

I use Evernote, everywhere

• Mac
• iPhone

I use Evernote to…

I use Evernote for three distinct purposes: to capture ideas related to my personal life, my work life, and my family life. I have a separate notebook for each of these, where I archive notes freely by content and function, including a dedicated Shared Notebook that I use to exchange advice regarding book, movie and television recommendations with my brother.

For me, the beauty of Evernote is that it can be used to organize every facet of my work and personal life in as simple or complex of a manner as needed. It is precisely for this reason that I recommend it to all the future brides I work with who are grappling with the huge task of organizing their own wedding. It is the only productivity app that manages to meet my convenience and immediacy needs.

Evernote for Organizing My Work Life

Organizing blog posts and editorial projects. I create a note for each blog post idea, as well as for any  editorial projects I plan to propose to customers, and text for promotional materials for my business.

Wedding planning. Every wedding that I organize involves an ad hoc creative project. I create a note for each of these, where I save inspirations and ideas.

Tracking tasks and reminders. I use check-lists to keep track of some of the services I provide to newlyweds, including to remind myself of all the tasks I need to accomplish, and any administrative actions I need to take care of.

Capturing Ideas. I have a ‘personal’ notebook, where I upload everything, including random web links and ideas that I come across or that come to mind, which are not associated with a specific project. I can then reference this notebook later to find inspiration that is relevant to new projects. I also keep a note for each project I’m currently working on, and load it full of ideas and related images I find in magazines, books, the web, and even things I see on the street or on television.

Evernote for Organizing My Daily Life

Creating to-do lists. In my ‘personal’ notebook, I keep a set of notes with a checklists that help ensure I never forget what needs to get done. From travel packing reminders to shopping lists of items I regularly need to pick up to daily cleaning tasks, I can keep track of it all with Evernote.

Remembering important family information. I have a note in which I list all the medicines that we use frequently or that we have used, so that we can easily coordinate any new prescriptions with the family doctor and pediatrician. Evernote makes it fast and easy to look up a wealth of our family’s important medical information, as well as any information and tips the doctor has given us. For convenience, I also started to record the relevant details of our children’s health (such as growth statistics, illnesses, particular care) to have them at-hand in case they are needed, or during visits to the pediatrician.

How do you use Evernote to keep your daily life organized? Share you stories in the comments!