Product tour
Notes
The lasting write-up. Keep one to yourself, open one to everyone you work with, or file it on the client, the project or the deliverable it is about. Write it once, find it later, and never lose it.
Notes are the lasting write-up: the brief, the site visit, the decision and why. A note is a full writing surface, not a comment box: headings, lists, links, quotes and code, on a page of its own with room to think.
Notes hang off the work rather than sitting in a folder somewhere. A note can live on the client, the project or the deliverable it is about, so the write-up is where the next person looks for it instead of in a document nobody can find six months later. It can also belong to nobody but you, or to everybody in the organization.
Where notes live
Five places a note can be filed, and one page that gathers every one of them.
On a client
Open a client and pick the Notes tab. The place for the things that outlast a single project: how they like to work, who signs off, what was agreed at the start.
On a project
Open a project and pick the Notes tab. The brief, the scope, the decisions the project turned on, and the site visits.
On a deliverable
Open a deliverable and pick the Notes tab in its panel. The detail behind one piece of work, beside its comments rather than instead of them.
Only me
A note filed under Only me belongs to whoever wrote it. Nobody else can read it, admins included. The place for the half-formed thought, the draft, and the thing you are not ready to say out loud yet.
Company-wide
A note filed as Company-wide is readable by everyone in the organization, whatever clients and projects they happen to work on. The place for how we do things here.
All of them, on one page
Notes in the sidebar opens a page of every note you can see, wherever it is filed. Narrow it to your own, to the company-wide ones, or to one client or project, and search the lot from one box.
Notes or comments?
A deliverable is the one screen where both are on offer, and its Notes tab says which is which, and what an @ mention is and is not, in as many words: "Notes are the lasting write-up: the brief, the site visit, the decision and why. For a quick back and forth about this deliverable, use Discussion. Mentioning somebody with @ tells them the note exists; it does not give them access to it."
The short version: comments are a conversation and they are read in order. A note is the record, and it is read on its own. A client and a project have no comments at all, and neither does a note that is yours alone or open to the whole company, so there is nothing to choose between anywhere else.
Mentioning somebody is not a third way of talking to them. It tells them the note is there, so they can come and read the write-up; it is not a message, it does not open a thread, and nothing about it changes who is allowed to open the note.
What's inside
A real writing surface
Headings, bold and italic, bulleted, numbered and checklists, quotes, code, colours and links. Select text for the formatting bar, or type a slash for the block menu.
It saves itself
There is no Save button. WorkWiser writes the note as you go and tells you where it stands: Saving, Saved, or Not saved with a way to try again.
A title, without the ceremony
Leave the title empty and the first line of what you write becomes it on the first save. Type your own and nothing ever overwrites it.
Pull the work into the sentence
Type @ anywhere in a note and pick a client, a project, a deliverable, a person or a to-do. The name drops into your sentence as a link and stays current: rename the project and every note that mentions it says the new name. Mention a person and they are told the note is there.
Search that reads the whole note
The search box matches the title and the body, and it is Turkish-aware in both directions: olcu finds ölçü, and ölçü finds olcu. Each result shows the sentence the match is in. On a Notes tab it searches that record; on the Notes page, Search all notes does what it says and reaches every note you can see at once.
Two people, one note
Open a note somebody else is writing in and you see them at the top, their words as they type and their cursor in its own colour. One person writes at a time, and the turn is passed by asking rather than grabbing.
It remembers what it used to say
A note keeps its earlier versions: when, who, and what it said. Read one whole or switch on Show what changed, and put one back without losing what is there now. Nothing is ever removed from the history, including a restore.
Archive, never delete
A note is archived rather than deleted, so it is out of the way and still there. Turn on Show archived to see them, and restore any of them in one click.
Shared, unless you say otherwise
A note filed on a client, a project or a deliverable is part of the record of the work, so everyone who can see that record can read it and add to it. A note you start from the Notes page with no filter set is yours alone until you decide to share it.
Who can see a note, and who can change it
A note filed on a client, a project or a deliverable inherits that record’s visibility. If you can open the project, you can read its notes; if a project is not yours to see, neither are its notes.
A Company-wide note is readable by everyone in the organization. A note filed under Only me is readable by nobody else at all: only you can read it. Not even admins.
Anyone who can see a note can also edit it, archive it, and share it more widely. That is deliberate rather than an oversight: a note is the shared write-up of shared work, and an archive is reversible and stays visible behind the Show archived switch. Narrowing is the one move that is not open to everyone. Only the person who wrote this note can make it private.
Use Share on a note to move it. The control is labelled with where the note is filed right now, and it offers Only me, Company-wide, a client, a project or a deliverable, telling you who will be able to read it before you commit. The deliverable is a row you open: choose the project whose deliverables you want to see, then choose the deliverable. Only the deliverable moves the note; the project you choose there just narrows the list.
Mentioning somebody with @ changes none of this. They are told a note exists and nothing more: if it is not a note they could already open, it stays shut, and what they are told carries no title and no preview of what you wrote. To let somebody read a note, move it somewhere they can see.
Nobody can delete a note. Not its author, not an admin, not us. Archiving is the only way to put one away, and it can always be undone.
Good to know
A note opens as a page of its own, with a breadcrumb naming where it is filed and leading back there. For the two filings that belong to no single record the crumb reads Only me or Company-wide, and it takes you to the Notes page.
A note on a deliverable opens under that deliverable’s project, because a deliverable has no page of its own to sit on. The breadcrumb names both.
Notes are one of the modules in your plan. If your organization does not have it, the Notes tab and the Notes entry in the sidebar are simply not there, and nothing is lost by turning it on later.
Two people can have the same note open. You see each other at the top, and the writer’s words and cursor arrive live in everybody else’s copy. One person writes at a time and the turn is passed by asking. Underneath it, a second save still cannot quietly overwrite the first: it stops, says so, and keeps your text on screen.
Related
Ready to see it on your own work?
WorkWiser is in early access. Tell us where to reach you and we will send an invite when it is your turn.