In my opinion OneNote is a must for anyone who does business. It’s versatile, stable and sustainable. It can keep private information private - like passwords. It can be used for collaborative work - like standard operating procedures. It is fairly easy to use and far superior to pen and paper. When used for meeting notes, it can be flagged with icons that are searchable - like ideas or important items. You can even create Outlook tasks on the fly
I think this service works very well for me, but I have been a Verizon customer for almost 15 years. If you are someone who hops carriers it may not be the best fit. I also like that you can easily use it with all of your employees regardless if they prefer Android or Apple phones. (Whereas using Apple's or Google's services may not work seamlessly for all phones.) I think it still has room for improvement, and sometimes I worry about the longevity of utilization due to the nature of cell phone carriers constantly changing prices, plans, and every option under the sun to make a buck that we could be very screwed in the future if Verizon does something stupid (because historically, they all have)
Because of its flexibility and ability to hold different types of content (text, images, tables), it is a great tool for collecting content from different resources and organizing it in one place.
Technical support analysts are using sections for their support case analysis; they paste pieces of logs, screen-shots, document their steps in troubleshooting etc., all in one section, to get the full picture yet stay organized.
The logic of content structure; Notebook>Section>Page>Paragraph, allows you to manage and collect all needed information by the areas of the user's responsibility. For example; each of my projects has its own section, in which each page is a task.
The table editing tools are too simplistic and lack the features found in other Office products.
Some content loses its rich text formatting when being pasted into OneNote. A workaround is to paste the content first into Outlook or Word and then copy/pasting that into OneNote.
Microsoft is moving away from a local install of OneNote, which means notebooks have to be in the cloud in Office 2019. This will actually reduce the usefulness of OneNote in some environments and opens the door to competitor products.
Update: Microsoft has now announced that it will continue to support OneNote 2016 through 2023. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Your-OneNote/ba-p/954922
The home screen shows a little bit of everything, but being a control freak, I would like to be able to customize it. (Granted, it would most likely have most of the same elements, but, for example, I don't need photos scrolling across the top. I'd rather have buttons like quick links to jump directly to what I want or to see a further bird's eye view of the content.
I like receiving notifications that a back-up is complete, but I would like to be able to set what other notifications are and aren't allowed to push to my phone.
I have set Verizon Cloud to back up on wifi OR using the data network. But if you are using wifi while doing a content restore and you lose that connection, either by leaving the building or the local wifi dropping out momentarily, the entire content restore will stop and need to be restarted. This can be very frustrating.
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
I find OneNote incredibly usable. I'm fairly middle of the road when it comes to tech savvy-ness. The platform was very easy to learn and explore. I like that OneNote is no clunky and offers a clean interface. This is important when it comes to deciding if a tool is usable for multiple people.
Overall, I rate OneNote's performance highly. In general, notebooks, sections and pages load quickly. OneNote integrates with other apps and info ca easily be shared/copied to and from the tool to other tools. Moreover, Notebooks tend to sync quickly meaning shared notebooks are up to date almost immediately provided there are no syncing issues.
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).
I tried using Evernote and it is an equally usable tool, however, I prefer the interface and capabilities of OneNote. OneNote seems much easier to use and understand. I think that may primarily be because OneNote is a Microsoft application and I am very used to using Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, etc. I also use OneNote to keep my grocery list. It does as good of a job as the grocery list applications out there, only I like the flexibility I have with OneNote and how I specifically do my shopping.
All of the others provide more free storage. Verizon should out best or at least equal the best when you are already a Verizon data subscriber. It seems that by not doing this that they want to "nickle-and-dime" their already loyal customer base
OneNote has become our organizational standard method of taking electronic notes (though some still prefer pen and paper.) It has been a zero cost outlay due to its freely available nature.
Its integration with other Microsoft Office products makes it easy to share notes and content between products, allowing for easy collaboration where needed.
OneNote's integration with OneDrive ensures that individual's notes are always safe and secure, taking away the tedious responsibility of backup from the user, and makes it happen seamlessly in the background.
Thus far is has been a positive experience, and has saved a lot of man hours of both employees who replaced their phones to the IT department trying to help them put everything back no longer needs to go through a lengthy process.
The cost of this option is a bit higher than I'd like. I think Verizon is a little too proud of a product that every company is now starting to offer.
There is a free version with limited space, so at least trying it out to see how it will fit with your needs isn't much of a risk.
