I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
It is well suited for capturing weekly departmental task lists. For example, each week we create a new page in a shared departmental notebook. In this new page, each department member enters his/her top 3 accomplishments for the week and the top 3 things which the member will attempt to accomplish in the coming week. We then use this page during our Monday morning stand-up meeting and it helps provide an agenda, structure, and discussion points for the meeting.
Data sharing via small database format is valuable as they are quickly deployed, easily managed and distributed on backend email servers.
Integrated messaging allows quick communications between geographical sites reducing long distance costs.
Policy documents for registering new users, setting initial security levels, assigning default database access is managed easily with the admin client.
OneNote synchronizes across platforms very quickly. I often find that notes entered, or updated, on my desktop are synchronized to my laptop and smartphone well before I ever open them up to access the information.
OneNote has apps for just every major platform available. This includes Windows, iOS, and Android. The web app has plenty of features so you won't feel let down if you have to access your notebooks through a browser.
The multimedia features of OneNote are wonderful. I can draw pictures, add sound bites, add videos, add files, and much more. This helps me capture the full context of a note, including any references that I might need, all within the note itself. I don't have to go outside of OneNote to find a video clip, logo, or soundbite.
The simple user experience can be touted as a positive, but it is also a negative in some ways. Compared to other calendars, email and chat tools, IBM Notes looks like it is from the 90s.
We have constant issues with chat crashing. This is the main reason so many people in our organization chose to switch away from Notes.
There aren't a lot of integrations with IBM Notes and other applications we regularly use. Notes seems to have been left behind by many.
OneNote could improve on its web clipping features. Evernote still beats it in terms of robustness, but OneNote is sufficient for most purposes.
OneNote could also improve on its tagging system. Its the other major way of categorizing notes, which Evernote uses to great effect, but OneNote de-emphasizes this in favor of a hierarchical ordering.
This is a silly point, but it drives me mad. OneNote's free-form editing on pages, meaning you can click anywhere and start editing makes for sloppier notes that aren't as well aligned. This could be an enjoyable feature for some, but for me, I like my pages orderly.
Since companies started to moved their email systems to the Exchange platform and the cloud, we are unable to find any new projects with IBM Notes, the marketing share and software price is another issue, so we have to move to another platform.
As this is not a compulsory tool in our organization, I would say all depends on the decision makers, however since this is a part of MS Office, I am sure we will have it for as long as we will possibly need it. However, I would not be so sure, if it was a separate product
Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
It is easy to use day to day and has become a common use application like Outlook or Teams. There is little to no learning curve, and you can use it in the way that is most suitable for you. Features like moving sections of text around and creating new tabs is self-explanatory.
I find OneNote to perform very well. I experience quick load times and automatic updates which are two things that are very important to our organization. I personally do not integrate OneNote with other software or systems but I do like that it can generate a sharing link for other people to view.
I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
Since it is part of Microsoft Office and used across the globe there are a lot of support options available. It's quickest to just do a google search which will have plenty of articles to help you since there are so many OneNote users but as an Office customer you also have access to Microsoft support and I have had good experiences with their support (probably because I'm with a large company who is a large customer to them).
Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of third-party add-ins, easy-to-use and friendly, very strong and robust, and most importantly it's a LOT more secure in my opinion than the competition.
I’ll be honest, once I met OneNote, I knew my search was over. I found a software package that could do everything I needed and more. Pen and paper are helpful but not searchable, not private, not easily shared. Your notebook can be misplaced or stolen. You cannot use it to access websites with a click. I was a user of Lotus notes back in the day and though it had better function than pen and paper, I lost my entire notebook twice because of system issues and it didn’t have 1/10th of the function OneNote had
ROI for us has been extreme. In the late 1990's we automated dozens and dozens of paper-based processes and created workflows for activities that had never been formalized before. Additionally all those forms with their comments, etc. have been captured in a central place to serve as audit trails.
Whenever we need faster access to data (mail or otherwise), it's quick and easy to deploy a new Domino server somewhere, setup replication of appropriate databases, and get the local Notes clients pointed to those resources. So that to me is positive ROI because it represents time savings based on user need.
Tech. Support would claim a negative ROI in terms of supporting the Notes client, Notes updates, peculiar Notes issues, and users who complain about Notes. That is certainly true to a point. The Notes client is a much more complex piece of software than, say, Outlook. But we have to remember that Notes deployments are not just for Mail but many, many applications as well. In the end I'd say we might have 1 or 2 user complaints per month, typically around Calendar issues more than anything else.
By giving employees this tool, each one can try to make the most out of it, and use it as they want. I know that many employees are utilizing features of OneNote every day, and it does help them to work more organized, and more efficiently.
I don't think there is any negative impact. Those who don't know how to use the tool are likely not to use it, so there is no risk for negative impact other than the cost of the license.
