Evernote Business & V5 - a Review, sort of.

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I wanted to run a quick review of Evernote Business which launched a few days ago but the software and experience is so bad that I'm finding it difficult.

I wanted to change to Evernote Business because I need the sharing functionality that isn't available in EV Premium (**EDIT this is now available in V5 2012-12-18 **) - even though I'm really just using it for my wife and I.If the sharing in EV premium wasn't so badly thought out, I'd still be using that!

My bugs with the user interface are many, I'm using a fully patched new Macbook Pro. Instead of a real review, here’s the list of bugs I found in the first few hours of use:

  1. Business library - I can't right click and change the settings of the notebook. (description, name etc)
  2. I can't drag and drop notebooks in the list of stacks and notebooks under "notebooks" in the sidebar. (**EDIT this is now available in V5 2012-12-18 **)
  3. I can't publish notebooks to the business library in the list view of all notes, I have to hit the confusing sharing icon even though there is a context menu available.
  4. I can't right click in notebooks and just create a new business notebook.
  5. I can't right click a notebook anywhere and publish it to the business library.
  6. Business Library - I click and in takes 5-10 seconds to appear.
  7. I can't click on a notebook in the business library to explore it.
  8. I can't view the business library as a list, with important data like last updated, or date created.
  9. I can't manually reorder stacks, or notebooks in the notebook view
  10. I can't convert a notebook from a personal, to a Business notebook, I have to make a new one & drag and drop notes.
  11. I can't publish a business notebook to the web. I use this functionality all the time.

I want EV to rock my world, I really need it to - but it's letting me down and that makes me sad. I wouldn’t touch EV Business with a ten foot barge pole until these issues are fixed, or addressed in some way.

Follow up on this post - 2012-12-18

As you can see from the comments, I got some good feedback from Evernote themselves, as well as an acknowledgement that things were not satisfactory with the interface.

I'd like to pint out that a number of these issues have been fixed and I have every reason to expect all of the issues to be dealt with in some way. Personally I have moved back to a personal premium account as the sharing issues I had with EV up to V5, have been partially mitigated by the new release.

I still believe the interface has been poorly tested, it doesn't account for the mental model some users have of the system and has functional holes were I would expect frictionless flow.

However I still have hope, and for now, I'm staying on the good ship EverNote.

Comments - please give me your thoughts.