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!

Get the latest Evernote for Mac »

Create a note, any time

The new Quick Note feature lets you create a note at any time, no matter what you’re doing on your computer, by clicking the elephant in the menu bar at the top of your screen or using the keyboard shortcut Control-Command-N.

Quickest text notes ever
The simplest thing you can do is pop open Quick Note and start typing. Once you’re done with your thought, click Save to Evernote or Command-Return, then continue doing what you were doing. If you don’t save to Evernote, then your content will stay in the Quick Note window waiting for you to add more stuff.

Images, audio, attachments, and screenshots
Create audio notes and screenshots by clicking on the relevant icons in the Helper. You can also add images or attachments by simply dragging them onto the elephant icon in the menu bar. Every new item will be added to the same note until you save it to Evernote.

We love the Helper’s new functionality. It’s the perfect on-the-go complement to your normal Evernote use, and once you get the hang of the keyboard shortcuts, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it. Let us know what you think.

Get Evernote for Mac »

Syncing Shortcuts

Shortcuts are a great way to quickly jump to content that you frequently access simply by dragging a note, notebook, tag, or search into the Shortcuts area at the top of the Sidebar. As of this update, Shortcuts sync with the Evernote Service, which means that if you use Evernote for Mac on more than one computer (home and office), your shortcuts will go with you.

We know you’re wondering, and the answer is: yes, shortcuts are coming to other platforms soon. And when they do arrive, everything will be in sync.

Control Your Search

When you perform a search, you can now choose whether to search within only your notebooks or everything that you have access to, which may include Joined Notebooks and Business Notebooks (if you’re an Evernote Business user). You’ll be able to do this by clicking into the search bar and choosing a search option from the top of the drop down menu that appears.

Great Looking Evernote Clearly Notes

Evernote Clearly is our browser extension that lets you simplify webpages to create a beautiful online reading experience. If you don’t have time to finish reading the article or want to save it for later, you can always clip it directly into Evernote. For this update, we made those clips look better than ever inside of Evernote for Mac.

And More…

There are a bunch of other improvements.

• When in Expanded Card View, press ‘return’ on a selected note to open it
• Advanced feature: AppleScript can create checkboxes
• When viewing a note, a button appears on rollover near the notebook name to jump to that note’s notebook

We have also made sync more reliable, improved PDF printing, fixed issues with tags in Joined Notebooks, and added numerous other enhancements throughout the app.

Get Evernote for Mac »

Premium feature: Related Notes
We’re always looking for exciting ways to help you rediscover the content and memories stored inside of your Evernote account. This update adds a new Premium feature that does just that. As soon as you start creating or viewing a note, Evernote checks to see if there are any notes in your account that relate to what you’ve written and displays these Related Notes below the note area. The more you type, the more refined the Related Notes will be.

If you have a long note, you’ll see a little elephant popup appear in the lower right corner of the note area. This popup indicates that there are Related Notes waiting for you when you scroll to the bottom of the note.

For Evernote Business users, we also display notes from Business Notebooks that you have access to, making the Related Notes section a combination of your notes and those from your team.

More great updates
We also added a few much-requested features:

• Drag-and-drop notes onto Notebooks and Tags in the sidebar
• New option to view note counts in the left panel
• Trash button in the Note Editor
• Back and Forward buttons to let you return to recently-viewed notes

There’s lots more to come. Let us know what you think.

Shared Notebooks come in handy for both professional and personal uses, whether you’re working on a team project, planning a family vacation, or just passing along interesting content to friends and family, Shared Notebooks allow you to share the memories that matter to you with anyone, even those who don’t use Evernote. You can create a Shared Notebook from almost any device or computer where Evernote is installed, including Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android.

Sharing in Evernote for Windows Desktop

To share a notebook using Evernote for Windows Desktop, follow the steps below:

1. Right-click the notebook you want to share in the Notebook List
2. Click ‘Share Notebook’
3. Click ‘Invite Individuals’
4. Enter the email addresses of the people you want to share with
5. Select the permission level you want to grant to the list of users
6. Click ‘Invite’

Sharing in Evernote for Mac

1. In the Sidebar, click ‘Notebooks’ to open the Notebook List
2. Hover your mouse cursor over the notebook you want to share, then click the share icon
3. In the ‘Share this notebook’ dialog, click ‘Invite Individuals’
4. Enter the email addresses of the people you want to share with
5. Select the permission level you want to grant to the list of users
6. Click ‘Invite’

Once you’ve invited someone to a Shared Notebook, they will receive a notification email with a link to view your Shared Notebook. Other Evernote users that you invite to a Shared Notebook will also have the option to ‘Join’ your Shared Notebook, which will make it appear in their Evernote account.

Evernote Business

To get the most out of notebook sharing at work, we recommend checking out Evernote Business, which we launched earlier this week.

Evernote Business is the optimal solution for sharing knowledge across your organization, and comes with all the features of Evernote and Evernote Premium, plus a variety of new features specifically tailored to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. Evernote Business features include the ability to create Business Notebooks that can be shared with others, access to the Business Library, where users can publish Business Notebooks for the benefit the entire company, powerful knowledge discovery capabilities with Related Notes and Related Results, increased monthly upload allowance and more. Learn more about Evernote Business.

Do you use Shared Notebooks? Tell us how in the comments!

• Name: Jordan Jones
• Profession: IT Manager
• Hobby/Interest: Genealogy
• Location: Raleigh, NC
• Website: http://www.genealogymedia.com/

Bio

Jordan Jones is a genealogist and director of the North Carolina Genealogy Society. He is also the President of the National Genealogical Society. Jordan finds Evernote to be an indispensable way to gather, store, organize, reference, and retrieve notes, images of records, and research plans.

I use Evernote, Everywhere

• iPhone
• iPad
• Mac

I use Evernote for…Genealogical Research

I had been using Evernote on and off for a couple of years and as time progressed, I noticed I was using it for everything from my day job to my personal finances. I wanted to get even more out of it, so I upgraded to Premium and began taking advantage of even more features and monthly upload capacity.

In the genealogy space, Evernote is a popular tool because our work involves building complex databases around the research that we do.

In this day and age, more documents are becoming digitized and the challenge is figuring out how to find and organize them. I use Evernote to capture documents, images, and PDFs I find online, and later add descriptive notes to these pieces of information. Serious genealogists try to keep a record of everything they find, even if it’s full of lies and conjecture. (For example, if you suspect that a document might be fraudulent or inaccurate, you can make a note of it. If you come across it again, you will know that you already saw and evaluated it.) Using Evernote, you can add your own notes, questions, and task boxes to the images of records you find in your research.

Some people outside of genealogy may not realize it, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has the largest genealogical library in the world, a wonderful resource for genealogists. Much of what is in these archives of over 1.2 million reels of microfilm consists of records in the public domain. The church is in the process of digitizing all of these documents, so I’m able to capture a lot of useful information from their website and quickly save it to my Evernote account using the Evernote Web Clipper.

Often times, I find interesting factoids in jpeg, PDF, Excel, and Tiff files, which I save to Evernote and then organize using a hierarchy of tags including ‘genealogy’ or ‘surname.’ I also have a list of tags for individuals so I can quickly search and find all documents I have related to a certain person, family or county. Once I narrow down my notes in Evernote, I can start writing about what I’ve discovered. Having all of the information I’m referencing in one, easy-to-search place saves me a lot of time — not to mention, physical space!

Putting all the pieces together

As I’m collecting my research, I make sure to write source citations so that I or anyone else would know exactly where to find this information and would have some sense of where that document came from, who created it and for what purpose.

If I’m writing the story of a family unit, I add Note Links to information that has an associated notation. That way, I can immediately find where each piece came from, and even quickly refer to related photos and documents that helped me come up with the final write-up, without actually leaving my Evernote account.

“Our goal is to dig through lots of information to figure out what really happened, when, where, and why” — Jordan Jones

The biggest challenge for genealogists is that people jump to conclusions about how history played out. The Internet can distribute these unsubstantiated conclusions very widely. Our goal is to dig through lots of information to figure out what really happened, when, where, and why. Using Evernote to manage the information I find is invaluable to helping me organize my thoughts and never lose sight of my tracks.

Another great benefit of using Evernote for my research and writing is that I have a complete archive of everything I’ve ever worked on. It’s organized by notebooks and tags, searchable, and accessible from virtually any computer or mobile device. You never know where different pieces might come into play later, so it’s important to keep everything I find.

A little background on genealogy, and why we do this

Historically, genealogy has been associated with people who wanted to prove they were related to important individuals such as kings and queens. Personally, I am much more interested in exploring micro history — how common people lived at various times, what I like to call “history at ground level.” Most of the history we learn about from books and in school showcases the lives of generals and kings; it misses popular history, how people actually lived. In my research, I constantly come across things that are interesting, surprising, and hardly covered in history books! For example, I discovered that my great-great grandfather was a ‘galvanized Yankee,’ in other words, he fought on both sides of the Civil War, joining the Union army as a way out of the POW camp. There was a very small group of people who were in this position and as a result, this historical fact didn’t get much coverage.

You can capture text, audio, photos, documents, and more in a single note in your Evernote account so everything you need related to certain idea or subject is in one place. One super easy way to add even more information to a note? Hyperlinking text the way you would in an email.

To add a hyperlink using Evernote 5 for Mac, simply highlight the text you want to link, right click, select ‘Link’ from the dropdown and then add the URL. In Evernote for Windows Desktop, select Hyperlink, then add the URL. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+K.

Hyperlinking is useful in:

• Meeting notes
• Research projects
• Shared Notebooks
• Public Notebooks
• Gift lists
• and more.

Did you know about this feature? How are you using it?

Want more tips? Take the Evernote Holiday Pledge to receive holiday-related tips for using Evernote.

• Name: Mel Walker
• Profession: Software Engineer at Evernote
• Hobby: Writing
• Location: Pleasanton, CA

Bio

Mel Walker is a software engineer on the Evernote Mac team. He calls himself a “novelist” as well, even though he’s still working on the rewrites before publishing. Mel used to own over 1,000 novels before he started donating them to the local library. He’s always wanted to learn French so he could read “The Three Musketeers” in its original language.

I use Evernote, Everywhere:

• Mac
• iPhone
• iPad
• Web

I use Evernote for participating in NaNoWriMo

Writing is a hobby of mine, my main creative outlet. I love the dialogue and description, action and mayhem, plots and themes. I put my poor characters in the most awful situations before I save them.

I got into writing a few years ago by participating in National Novel Writing Month, and now I take part in it every November. NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge, the object of which is to write a novel of 50,000 words in a month. That’s roughly 1667 words to write every day!

Some of the writers in NaNoWriMo just sit down, start writing, and keep it up until they reach “The End.” I’m not much for seat-of-the-pants writing so I collect, brainstorm, and organize everything I need by the end of October. I tend to amass a lot of information that I like to keep handy, so I use Evernote for creating and organizing my notes for my novel.

Before Evernote, I tried to organize my notes in everything from text files to 3×5 note cards. The problem was that I didn’t always have access to the text files (on the train to work, for example) and the big stack of 3×5 cards was too time-consuming to search through. I tried using notebooks both for plotting and notes, but searching didn’t get any easier, and it was one more thing to carry around.

Evernote solved those problems neatly.

I use Evernote for remembering ideas.

Ideas can come at any time, from anywhere. When I stumble over a new story idea, no matter where I am when the idea strikes, I can write it up and put it in my Ideas notebook. I can also create an audio note if the idea shows up when I’m driving.

Sometimes I stumble over the beginnings of an idea while surfing the Web, so I select the text or image and use the Evernote Web Clipper to save it. I don’t lose the context, either, because the Web Clipper captures the URL from each Web clip.

I use Evernote for planning.

I keep notes on my characters, places and plot in Evernote. I use the Evernote Web Clipper to clip pictures, inspiring ideas, and whatever else I think might be useful. I also use the iPhone’s camera to add photos to my notes.

I use Skitch to annotate pictures and Penultimate to draw simple maps to keep track of where the characters are during the action scenes.

I use Evernote while I’m writing.

How tall is the starship captain? What color is the helmsman’s hair? What language does the security chief swear in? What’s the top speed of a shuttle? What hotel became the enemy base? Does it have a pool?

Questions like these have to be answered quickly so I don’t lose my train of thought. I keep my novel notes organized by notebook and tag. I can search my Evernote notebooks to quickly find what I need. If I search for the same information a second or third time, I can create a Saved Search to save me time.

There’s a flip side to all this: What if I haven’t decided what color the helmsman’s hair is? After I choose a color, I add that piece of information to her character note. Now I have it when I need it, either now or for the sequel.

During NaNoWriMo, the local volunteers often hold “write-ins” so we writers can meet and introduce ourselves. We also have a bit of fun while writing, like engaging in word count races (e.g. most words added in ten minutes). I have Evernote with me, so I still have access to all my notes, either on my laptop or on my iPhone.

I wish I didn’t have to mention this last one, but having all the character names in Evernote means that I (1) don’t misspell any of them, and (2) don’t spontaneously rename them halfway through the book.

I use Evernote when I’m done writing.

The first draft of a book is never publishable. Often the sixth or seventh draft isn’t publishable. Throw out a chapter! Eliminate a character! Rewrite entire scenes! Such is the lot of a writer. I keep the old drafts around to see what I did before, just in case my new idea was even worse than my old one (which happens too often!). I simply drag the word processing document into a note and add a summary of the changes I made.

I use Evernote to improve my writing skills.

I have a notebook catch-all for articles and notes about writing in general. I can read them anywhere, thanks to having Evernote accessible on all my devices.

While studying is good, the only way to improve as a writer is to write. Ideally, I should write every day. Using Evernote as a journal, I can keep all my practicing in one spot for later review or for sharing with my writing group.

More NaNoWriMo Tips from Paperless Ambassador Jamie Todd Rubin

This November will be Paperless Ambassador Jamie Todd Rubin‘s fourth year participating in NaNoWriMo and he’s sharing his tips for ways to use Evernote on his blog. Check out Jamie’s tips for using Evernote for NaNoWriMo.

Our team of developers and designers have spent the better part of the last year building a completely redesigned Evernote for Mac. We added over a hundred new features and capabilities that make the app better, faster and smarter for our current users, while also making Evernote more accessible to new users.

The new Evernote for Mac is coming soon, but we thought you might like a sneak peek. A beta of the new Evernote for Mac will be available next week. Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to get the latest.

What’s New Page
Check out our What’s New Page for complete details on what’s in store.

• Name: Justin Nowak
• Evernote Ambassador: Event Planning
• Location: Calgary, AB, Canada
• Profession: Event Planner
• Website: http://justinnowak.com/
• Twitter: @justinnowak

Bio

Justin Nowak is an entrepreneur with a passion for event planning. He is the Event Facilitator for Startup Weekend Calgary and VP of Community and Events for the Canadian Cloud Council. Justin plans all of his events using Evernote.

I use Evernote, Everywhere

• Windows
• Mac
• iPad
• Android

I use Evernote for…Event Planning

I started using Evernote a lot when I began planning events. Between organizing large conferences for the Canadian Cloud Council and grassroots get togethers for Startup Weekend here in Canada, I began to get inundated with information that I needed to be able to capture and organize quickly and easily, especially on the go. After reading how other people — especially Evernote Ambassadors — were using Evernote, I realized just how versatile the tool was. Now I use Evernote to plan events from start to finish.

Logistics, research and the planning process

For me, Evernote now starts the planning process for every event. From creating lists of things I need to get done to what sponsors I want to work with, I use Evernote to capture my ideas when I first start to conceptualize an event. I’ll create lists for food, potential event locations, and more.

I aggregate all of my ideas in a unique notebook for each event. This is helpful as I’m often planning multiple events at any given time. There’s a lot of information coming in— contracts from big sponsors, ideas from other people, vendor forms — and this way, I’m able to assign information to specific notebooks to keep things tidy. Having all of this information accessible to me in one place is invaluable. Over the life cycle of an event, I scan numerous documents (using an app called DocScanner for my Android phone) and send them to Evernote. I also forward important emails from my inbox to my Evernote account (including attachments). I never have to dig through emails or a stack of papers to find what I’m looking for; Evernote’s search is so powerful, I only need to enter in a keyword or two to get to what I need. I also rely on the Web Clipper to capture articles with information that’s pertinent to the events I’m planning.

When you’re managing an event, you’re swimming in documentation. Being able to snap photos of or forward receipts to my Evernote account, and capture trip itineraries, means I don’t have to worry about finding that stuff later.

When an event has wrapped, I continue to use my event notebooks, making sure that I’ve closed the loop. I send all post-event related information (like survey responses about what people liked or didn’t and pictures) to the specific event notebook.

Sharing event responsibilities

By saving everything to Evernote, I’m not only able to hash out my ideas and keep myself organized throughout the process, but to also assign roles and responsibilities to key stakeholders right from my Evernote account.

With larger events, I typically work with a core team of people and a number of volunteers. Evernote makes it easy to delegate work and keep track of each aspect of the event and who’s working on it. I share individual notes and notebooks with various people responsible for different parts of the event, and because I can share with one person or more, I can decide who needs access to what. For example, I typically share notes and notebooks that include information about event aspects with the volunteers that are responsible for them, while limiting Shared Notebooks that include information that may not be pertinent to the volunteers to colleagues. I use Notebook Stacks to organize separate notebooks with different types of documents under the main event notebook, and instead of starting a long and tedious email chain with 20-30 people, I simply grant access to the group that needs these documents. This saves me so much time, especially when I’m busy. It also allows volunteers to collaborate on their own time. For people who don’t have an Evernote account, we simply have them email information directly into the appropriate notebook.

The payoff

Using Evernote to plan events has a lot of benefits. For one, I’ve significantly cut down on email, but more importantly, I’m getting a ton more sleep now. I used to run around like a chicken with its head cut off, but now everything is more organized and I feel a sense of calm (as much as you can when you plan events!). On a daily basis, I can just go into my Evernote account, be reminded of what needs to get done, and get right to it.

A few of my favorite Evernote apps

I’ve started diving more into other Evernote apps including Evernote Hello. When I go from conference to conference, I meet so many people. I have a good brain but it’s not close enough to keep track of everyone I meet and how I met them. In a brief 5 minute chat I have with a person, I try to capture as much information about them as possible using Evernote Hello. Back at my office, I can recall if that person asked me questions about partnership opportunities, for example, and follow up. I also use Skitch to quickly annotate notes on the go.

5 Evernote tips for event planners

Since I’ve made Evernote my event-planning hub, I’ve picked up a few ideas for ways to use the tool more efficiently. Here are a few of my tips for using Evernote for event planning:

• Tip 1: Use the email address you get with Evernote. Send everything that’s pertinent to this email so it automatically gets saved to your Evernote account. [How to email things to your Evernote account]
• Tip 2: Use notebooks to their full potential. Make specific notebooks for each event you’re working on, then organize them into Notebook Stacks. You can share individual notebooks with groups of people responsible for various aspects of the event and keep certain ones private. I try to save everything that’s relevant into each notebook as I get it. Keeping notebooks very specific makes it easier to find things later.
• Tip 3: Tagging is huge. I try to tag as I email stuff into notebooks. This is another great layer of organization for notes.
• Tip 4: Utilize the Trunk. I love DocScan for my Android phone; it lets me scan everything from receipts to contracts so I can access them on the road. [Check out the Evernote Trunk]
• Tip 5: Use the Web Clipper. Capture pictures, articles and cool ideas for what you could do for future events.

The Evernote Ambassador Program

Evernote Ambassadors are amazing individuals that are here to teach, share and help you get more out of Evernote. Learn more about Ambassadors and consider submitting your story.

Join the conversation happening in our Lifestyle Forum to connect with Ambassadors and other Evernote users.

Join the conversation

Download Ambassador Guides

Drag and drop them into a New Note or attach them to a note so you can access them from any computer or mobile device where you have Evernote installed!

Joshua Zerkel’s Productivity Tips (PDF)
Brandie Kajino’s Organization Tips (PDF)
Carley Knobloch’s Spring Cleaning Tips (PDF)
Jamie Todd Rubin’s Paperless Tips (PDF)
Jenni Lathrop’s Crafting Tips (PDF)
Lindsey Holmes’ Small Business Tips (PDF)
Krisstina Wise’s Real Estate Tips (PDF)
Rob van Nood’s case study on Evernote for Portfolios (PDF)