Nota Bene: The OneNote Blog : Collaboration

How OneNote 2007 helps ‘Halo’ game developer Bungie

Michael C. Oldenburg — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Video game developer Bungie, the creative force behind the highly successful trilogy of 'Halo' video games, wanted to find a better way to organize production materials and facilitate collaboration among its staff during the game development process. Read my full blog post to learn how Bungie programmers and artists alike have adopted OneNote 2007 as their centralized information repository....(read more)

Take OneNote to class!

Michael C. Oldenburg — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Here in the hallways at Microsoft, there’s a particular utterance that can be heard with ever-increasing frequency:

“Wow—I wish we’d have had something like OneNote back when I was in school...!”

I'm one of the many people who feel this way. Aside from laptop computers and the Internet, OneNote is the one innovation that could have changed my life back in the day.

While students and teachers have different roles to play, they share a need to capture, organize, find, present, and share information on a variety of subjects. In present-day schools, paper notebooks may suffice for jotting down information, but their value really ends there. If you wanted to find information again later (and, let's face it, isn't that the point of writing things down in the first place?), then you had better be incredibly organized or incredibly patient as you surrender to flipping and shuffling through endless stacks of paper. Worse, if your idea of sharing notes with classmates is making photocopies or — gasp! — retyping your notes word for word in an e-mail message, then you probably already know that you're not making the best use of your time.

In the customer feedback that we receive month after month from our Office Online Web site visitors, the question asked most often is some variation of “What is OneNote?” or “What can I do with OneNote?” We've published several written overviews and Getting Started materials, as well as a growing number of video demos about OneNote. I'm especially pleased to share with you the latest addition to the latter category — a new video aimed at students of all ages, as well as their teachers and parents. It was put together by Joannie Stangeland, a present colleague and former editor of mine. Joannie has long been a OneNote enthusiast and she's never too busy to show others how to use OneNote to its full potential — both in the workplace as well as at home.

As Joannie's kids have begun college life, she has seen first-hand the value and potential that OneNote offers in and out of the classroom. In this video, Joannie wanted to showcase some of the features in OneNote that hold special appeal for both students and teachers:

Watch now: Take OneNote to Class!

Unlike our more traditional how-to demos, Joannie's video doesn't overwhelm with details. It's meant as a quick “drive-by” of cool features that you may not have known about before. If you want to point fellow students, teachers, and parents to a better way of managing academic life, be sure to share this video link with them. Chances are, they'll love OneNote, too!

Conventional wisdom always told us, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Back when I was in school, my paper notebooks weren't broken — but they severely limited what I could do with my notes and how quickly I could recall the massive amounts of information that I committed to paper each day. With each new class or semester, with each new page added to the growing pile of paper, finding the stuff that I cared about became more and more difficult. With a program like OneNote, your notebooks literally grow with your life, your experiences, and your learning. You can be as organized or as random as you want to be, you can instantly recall anything and everything you need, and you can easily share it with all the world, if you choose to.

If you've never seen OneNote in action and Joannie's video has piqued your interest, be sure to download the free trial version of OneNote 2007 for a full 60-day test drive on your laptop or desktop PC. For help with learning OneNote during your trial period, you can follow the tips in the Guide notebook that's included with the program. For more info, check out Learn OneNote with the Guide notebook.

For more tips about using OneNote in the classroom, check out these links:

Microsoft Office at School: For Students
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/school/FX102783161033.aspx
Microsoft Office at School: For Teachers
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/school/FX102781621033.aspx
Microsoft Office at School: For Parents
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/school/FX102781641033.aspx

OneNote 2007 makes a perfect gift for the students on your holiday list. It's available as a standalone version or as part of the popular Microsoft Office Home & Student Edition:

Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 (Standalone Edition)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000HCZ8EY/
Microsoft Office Home & Student Edition (OneNote 2007, Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007, and Excel 2007)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000HCZ8EO/

With shared notebooks, collaboration is not just a buzzword

Michael C. Oldenburg — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:00:00 GMT

Wikipedia defines “collaboration” as follows:

“Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people work together toward an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor that is creative in nature — by sharing knowledge, learning, and building consensus.”

Back in the 1980s, IBM may well have dubbed their revolutionary new machines “Personal Computers,” but these days, if you use your PC in an office or at school, you probably already spend at least as much of your time collaborating with others as you do on your personal projects.

At first glance, collaboration seems like a no-brainer. Each day, we meet people face to face, talk with them on the phone, and exchange all the free e-mail we want. Instant messaging is another great way to chat or exchange files, especially if you and your teammates share similar hours near a computer. And yet, things quickly get a lot more complicated when you’re trying to keep more than a few people on the same page.

Work hours and locations are more diverse than ever. Information overload is everywhere. Our inboxes are full of “Look at me now!” requests and unscheduled tasks that are becoming increasingly difficult to process, let alone manage. How are we supposed to update each other on news and status without adding to the existing e-mail hell? Nobody wants more meetings just to talk about all of the work that has to get done.

We want our computers and tools to help us, but choosing the right tools for collaboration can be tricky. Most people will admit that they tend to gravitate towards what they know (or what’s been set up for them), and not necessarily what will help them collaborate in the smartest, most efficient ways. So, how do you try a better way when you don’t know that there is one waiting in the wings? First, assess honestly how well your tried-and-true methods and tools have served you in the past and then keep an open mind while you do some research on your own.

In my newest Office Hours column, I'm outlining how OneNote 2007 offers smarter ways to share information with a team or workgroup. Even if you already know how indispensible OneNote can be for management of your personal information, you might not yet have discovered its built-in collaboration features. Aside from the “how to” steps in the article, I’m offering some best practices that you may find useful — such as adding a hyperlinked Table of Contents that points to the pages and sections in your shared notebook, or including a reference section to keep important information at everyone’s fingertips.

As always, I’m interested in your feedback. Please tell me if you find such articles useful or if you’d rather see this type of information covered in a different way (the more specific your feedback, the better!). You can leave feedback by submitting comments directly at the end of the column (or any other Office Online article), or by commenting here on my blog. If you prefer, feel free to drop me a line directly.

In case you haven’t seen them, here are my previous Office Hours columns about Office and OneNote:

OneNote: A smarter way to share information with your team
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102750221033.aspx
Use Office 2007 on your mobile phone
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102402571033.aspx
How OneNote made friends in a corner office
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102282211033.aspx

You can view all articles (including those by my fellow Office columnists) by checking out the Office Hours home page!

Besides Visual Studio, what’s a software engineer’s best friend?

Michael C. Oldenburg — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:00:00 GMT

On his blog titled “Progressive Development,” Microsoft software engineer James Waletzky chronicles the adventures of Motley and Maven, two fictional software developers who engage in an ongoing, entertaining dialogue about the best and worst practices of their profession.

This week, Motley and Maven discuss developer productivity tools. While one is skeptical, the other points out how OneNote 2007 can be a developer’s best friend:

Motley: “OneNote is just like Microsoft Word. It’s not a place where a developer should be spending time!”

Maven: “OneNote is perfectly suited to feature teams and developers! It provides a simple, organized, efficient, and easy-to-manage method of organizing ideas and general content. It is a developer’s best friend!”

You know, I think Maven is on to something! He goes on to say that he thinks OneNote 2007 is “the greatest application that Microsoft has ever shipped.” I may be a little biased, but I couldn’t agree more. ;-)

Check out the entire post here — it’s worth reading and sharing with your colleagues. Nicely done, James!

To learn more about James’ blog, check out the About page on his site.