The Unknown OneNote Guy's Blog

Make sure you head over to OneNote Power Toys to submit your vote in the Slogan for OneNote Keyboard Campaign survey that got started by my "Coffee Shop Denizen - Almost Gets It!" post. Get out and vote!

The story goes something like this...

While sitting at the local coffee shop this morning - working on some OneNote 2007 code a fellow coffee denizen at the next table asked about my computer backpack. Seems she was unable to find one that fit her tiny little white laptop which apparently will run Windows and someother cat-based os. I think it was tiger, panther, kitty cat, I'm not sure. I had not seen this tiny white laptop before so we starting into a conversation about laptops and gadgets.

To make a long story short our conversation progressed to our Pocket Pc phones and how much we used them. She explained how she really used her phone for emails and calendaring. Of course I came back with OneNote Mobile and how nice it is to be able to capture your ideas easily without requiring the laptop all the time. When I asked if she had ever used OneNote Mobile or even OneNote she promptly replied that she "did not have a tablet pc and therefore could not use it." Coffee Shop Denizen does not get it

Being the OneNote Guy that I am, I explained that there is no requirement for a tablet or handwriting to use OneNote.To be honest I only personally know about two or three individuals with tablet pcs and one of them does not use OneNote. Everyone else I know that uses OneNote does so with a laptop and a good old fashion keyboard. Surprised and amazed she took a few minutes to look over OneNote2007 on the good old laptop and after showing her pages, notebooks and sections she blurted out that OneNote 2007 appeared looked like a cool "organization" application. Coffee Shop Denizen now starts to get it!

I always wonder how it came to be that there are these misconceptions out in the wild. Maybe with a name that contains "Note" makes the application automatically register in people's mind that OneNote is a note-taking application (ok, so it is a note taking application but that is a fairly simplistic view of OneNote). Maybe it was the Tablet PC's marketing hype of handwriting recognition and OneNote that has gotten the masses convinced it is a Tablet PC application. (I wonder if those same people will think that they can not use Vista with a monitor now that Vista can do some really good text to speech!) Somehow the wrong impression seems to be the first impression. I find it is interesting that it is not just the general public that has these perceptions but educators and computer professionals alike.

It seems to me that the community and Microsoft needs to somehow change the general perception of OneNote and increase the general public awareness of OneNote. Maybe we need a 12-step program. Maybe we should have the world write on a blackboard (do those even exist anymore?) one-hundred times "OneNote works with a keyboard. OneNote is more than just a note-taking applicatoin." Maybe that is too harsh. How about a marketing campaign? That is the ticket - instead of doing a Power Toy competitiontion how about a marketing competition?

Here's my submissions:

1. OneNote- Its not just for Tablets Anymore - And to be Honest it was Never Just for Tablets!
2. OneNote: Where the Keyboard is as mighty as the Sword, ah... Pen
3. OneNote: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Pen!

Let me know if you need my address to ship the prize!

Ok, maybe it is just my perception that is messed up and not the general public but it seems that you either "get" OneNote and can be considered a OneNote convert or you don't "get" OneNote and are not a OneNote convert. I don't think I have seen too many people that falls in the middle road of "getting" OneNote and not using OneNote.

Just my thoughts after a morning coffee shop conversation. I would be interested in your thoughts - do you agree there is still general misconception in the wild with OneNote? Drop a comment or send an email to onenoteguy@hotmail.com

I appears another OneNote PM has leaped into the the blogging domain. Make sure you take a look at Olya's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/olya_veselova.

Welcome to the community!

I had been waiting for sometime to play with Toolbar Addins and with the updates included in the Technical Refresh I am finally able to give it a spin.

Daniel Escapa has provided beta documentation to create a sample Toolbar AddIn. You can download it from his blog posting titled "Creating Toolbar Buttons in OneNote 2007". Using Visual Studio.Net 2005 you can follow the step-by-step example and create a Toolbar Addin.

To help you along I followed Daniel's document as closely as possible and created the sample Toolbar AddIn. There were a few places in the document that needs a little clarification and I will pass those on to Daniel but over all you can follow it pretty easily. For your coding pleasure I have zipped up the completed VS.Net 2005 solution and the install files for Daniel's sample. You should be able to download the files, extract them to your hard drive and compile the code. Or if you just wish you can run the install files included in the archive.

The archive can be downloaded from the storage provided by owners of OneNote 2006 and OneNote PowerToys community sites. Here is the link you will need: http://www.adminid.com/onenoteguy/OneNoteSampleAddIn.zip

While you are downloading the file stop by and leave a read or post on their sites!

Here is the link for the Office Client Technical Refresh:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b07a3387-01cf-4bc3-821a-0bb10e7a59fa&DisplayLang=en

If you have not heard OneNote 2006 is a new community blog. This blog will allow you to sign up as an author and contribute. I have already claimed my id and password but have not yet made my first post. This is one more step in the community-building process. I hope some of you who are OneNote advocates take the opportunity to post your thoughts and ideas at OneNote 2006 and help build up the OneNote community which is a benefit for us all.

I am also happy to announce that the owners of OneNote 2006 and OneNote PowerToys have graciously extended some file space hosting to the Unknown OneNote Guy blog. So for anyone looking for the OneNote 2007 Xml Viewer download you should be able to access it now at

http://www.adminid.com/onenoteguy/OneNote2007XmlViewer.zip

I will be leaving the download for the xml viewer on the original hosted server but I expect that if all goes well we will post our files only to shared spaced provided by the owners of OneNote2006 and OneNote PowerToys owners.

If you read my previous post - A Look at GetHierarchy() Part II you will want to have a look at Daniel Escapa's post title "Small chat about OneNote GUIDs ". You get a little better understanding on how GUIDs and ids are used in OneNote. Of importance in this post if I read it correctly - certain ids are not persisted between starts and stops of OneNote - which I did not know.

Armed with a little more knowledge of GUIDs and IDs I will need to find some time to dig into the OneNote Xml Viewer and see how that effects other toys on my workbench. Obviously if I understand the post correctly we will not want to persist any hierarchical ids.

I appreciate anyone who can comment on my posts and clarify or correct any of the technical aspects of it. Got a comment, idea, correction or criticism drop me a comment. It is great that one of the PMs of the team is taking time to add to our community. There is obviously lots of little items that will not be readily apparent to us without some insider knowledge.

Since OneNote extensibility revolves around an Xml-based interface its makes sense to deep dive into the Xml. In the earlier GetHierarchy posts I provided some basic demo code so you can view some of your OneNote's exported Xml in the console.

To make my life a little easier I created the OneNote Xml Viewer. It’s not rocket science, far from it in fact. The only OneNote object model method used by the OneNote Xml Viewer is GetHierarchy. Most of the code revolves around populating tree views, options, and parsing Xml. Simple as it is though it will give you a nice little User Interface to view the exported Xml.

Here's a screenshot:

Click here for a larger image....

I am not providing the base code on this little application. Not because I don’t wish to share, but because I used the bull in the china shop methodology for the User Interface code. As for the OneNote code I placed it all in a data access class and here it is:

//--------Start code -------

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.Office.Interop.OneNote;

namespace unknown_onenote_blogspot
{
class ON_DataAccess
{
public ON_DataAccess()
{
_app = new ApplicationClass();
}

~ON_DataAccess()
{
_app = null;
}

public string GetAllInfo()
{
try
{
string resultsXml = "";
_app.GetHierarchy(null, HierarchyScope.hsPages , out resultsXml);
return resultsXml;
}
catch (Exception Ex)
{
throw Ex;
}
}

public string GetUnfiledNoteSection()
{
try
{
string unfiledNoteSectionID = "";
string loc = "";
_app.GetSpecialLocation(SpecialLocation.slUnfiledNotesSection, out loc);
_app.OpenHierarchy(loc, null, out unfiledNoteSectionID, CreateFileType.cftNone);
string resultsXml = "";
_app.GetHierarchy(unfiledNoteSectionID, HierarchyScope.hsPages, out resultsXml);
return resultsXml;
}
catch (Exception Ex)
{
throw Ex;
}
}

public string getNotebookXml(string notebookID, string hsScope)
{
string resultsXml = "";
try
{
_app.GetHierarchy(notebookID, getHsScope(hsScope), out resultsXml);
return resultsXml;
}
catch (Exception Ex)
{
return "Err";
}
}

public string getSectionXml(string sectionID, string hsScope)
{
string resultsXml = "";
try
{
_app.GetHierarchy(sectionID , getHsScope(hsScope) , out resultsXml);
return resultsXml;
}
catch (Exception Ex)
{
return "Err";
}
}

public string getSectionGroupXml(string sectionID, string hsScope)
{
string resultsXml = "";
try
{
_app.GetHierarchy(sectionID, getHsScope(hsScope), out resultsXml);
return resultsXml;
}
catch (Exception Ex)
{
return "Err";
}
}

public string getPageXml(string sectionID, string hsScope)
{
string resultsXml = "";
try
{
_app.GetHierarchy(sectionID, getHsScope(hsScope) , out resultsXml);
return resultsXml;
}
catch (Exception Ex)
{
return "Err";
}
}

private HierarchyScope getHsScope(string scope)
{
switch (scope.ToUpper())
{
case "HSSELF": return HierarchyScope.hsSelf;
case "HSSECTIONS": return HierarchyScope.hsSections;
case "HSNOTEBOOKS": return HierarchyScope.hsNotebooks;
case "HSPAGES": return HierarchyScope.hsPages ;
case "HSCHILDREN": return HierarchyScope.hsChildren;
default: return HierarchyScope.hsSelf;
}
}
ApplicationClass _app;
}
}

// ------ End Code ---------
If you were really planning on using this data access class I would seriously look at a little refactoring. I tossed it together late one night.

A few things to note about this application - I would not consider this a solid app. There was little if any design, no refactoring, and the User Interface portion was beat into submission with a stick - sorry I am a Web Developer and more behind the scenes then out in front. Big disclaimer here - please don’t use this in your mission critical applications. You get what you pay for in this application. It is meant for entertainment purposes only!

Also if you read Daniel Escapa's blog you will know that when Tech Refresh releases the namespace will more than likely change. But don’t worry - the namespace for this application is stored in the app configuration. So assuming GetHierarchy and the OneNote xml schema has not changed (other than the namespace) you can easily replace the old namespace with the new namespace by editing the config file.

The file is avaialble for download at this location:

http://oreys.com/download/2670f5718826/OneNote2007XmlViewer.zip.html

This is a free file hosting page and it seemed pretty innocuous. It seems like Blogger does not support any file hosting outside of basic images. Let me know if you have trouble bringing this zip file down. It contains two files, the exe and the config. Place them both in the same directory on a machine with OneNote 2007 Beta 2 installed and have a look around your Notebooks.

Check out the menu for options to select all, export the Xml to the file system and change the scope options. I intentially left all scopes in so you can play with Node Type v Hierarchial Scope. See my previous post. Some combos will return an error - you can check the post on Node Type v Hierarchial Scope to see what combos will give you errors.

So here is a thought that I have been pondering - Where lies the value of a custom Windows Workflow Foundation/OneNote 2007 activity? I think this is a great topic for this blog since many of my posts revolve around extensibility and integration. So I will pose this question to you the reader.

What is the envisioned scenario around a custom WinWF/OneNote 2007 activity?

I have a few scenarios but I want to open it up to the readers for some community involvement. If we find a convincing scenario I might be just inclined to start working on it.

For those of you who might not be following .Net Framework 3.0 (a.k.a. WinFX) let me point you to a few links based on Windows Workflow Foundation.

Microsoft .Net Framework 3.0 - Windows Workflow Foundation Technology Page
http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/technologies/workflow/default.aspx

Windows Workflow Foundation(WF)
http://wf.netfx3.com/

ScottGu's Blog
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/08/31/Windows-Workflow-Foundation.aspx

Matt W's Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/mwinkle/

And let us not forget the Microsoft Office System's Workflow Implementation as well.

Walkthrough: Creating Office SharePoint Server 2007 Workflows in Visual Studio 2005
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms564355.aspx

Paul Andrew's Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2006/08/29/WorkflowInOfficePaper.aspx

So post a comment and let me know what you think is a worthwhile custom OneNote activity.

In a continuing attempt convince the general populace that OneNote is not just a "note taking utility" I am scouring the Net to find testimonials of successful OneNote users. Maybe I should start a So and So Doesn't Get It group. I digress... Anyway last night I stumbled onto Larry's posts on OneNote and it appears that Larry is someone who gets it!

Programming OneNote 12

Getting Things Done With OneNote12

Speaking of community....

Organize and share all your information with Microsoft Office OneNote 2007

This is a nice little primer on some OneNote 2007 features to help you capture, organize, find and share your information.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I am big on technical communities. The OneNote community is not the only community that i am involved in and this is not the only blog that I post on. Why am I so interested in the community? It takes a community around a product or technology for that product to be adopted. I could almost go as far as stating without a community a product or technology will probably not become widely adopted. That may be stretching it a little. Maybe it is a synergy between a solid product and a strong community that results in quick and high adoption rates. Almost every major product has a strong community behind it but what is a community.

What is a community?
Well there is no one correct answer for the question "What is a community?". Communities are really nebulous and my concept of a community will be different than yours. It is interesting to see one technical community start a new concept and see other communities follow suit.

For myself communities are everything that revolves around the product. It is the newsgroups and list servers. It is the free power toys, readily available SDKs and KB articles. It is the free downloadable add-ins and demo code. It is web casts, pod casts and blogs. It is the chats, emails and white papers from the product team and evangelism team. It is partner, end-user and developer training and certification. Lets not forget the conference sessions, books, magazine articles and assorted swag.

Initially I had concluded being part of the community involved non-commercial interests but I am leaning away from that concept. Initially I was a purist - Not that I don't believe there needs to be a strong commercial side to the product - just that if it was to be community it should be non-monetary motivated. As a community member I have no problem suggesting that someone look at a third-party application to solve their problem. What bothers me about "commercial-community" is the answers to question are - "Look at my product" which may or may not be the correct answer. In general you should not have to purchase something to have free exchange of concepts and ideas. Lately I have seen commercial companies support community-related events in such a way as to not definitively link the event to the commercial company.

Another reason I now generally consider commercialism in the community world - if done correctly - is because of training, books and articles. These are great community resources but you generally need to purchase the product. The community would be missing a key element if there was no support for training companies and authors. And being an author at times I myself cannot just give away all that time and energy for nothing. Sorry, that is just the way it is. We all got to eat. :) And I would be remiss if I answered newsgroup postings with a pat " get my book, your answer is in Chapter 4". That type of answer does the community no good in my opinion.

So what makes a community?
Well there is obviously no one single answer. Certainly having a solid and useful product is required. Without a product that has a definite place in the software industry the community will be continue to struggle. To be honest a second generation product is almost required for a solid community. I should state that with any first round product like ON2003 there are some dedicated leaders and followers creating a community. It seems that it is that second iteration (and here comes ON 2007) where the community starts to grow and gets over the hump. That's not to say that first round products are bad or not worth the communities time, just that there is a certain amount of community leaders and community followers that is required to start the snowball effect.

There are certain items that all communities must have - again in my opinion.

The community must have strong product and evangelism team support and contact. I think everyone understands the product team. And the OneNote community seems to have pretty good support from the product team via blogs and email. Many may not know what I am referring to when I say evangelism team. The evangelism team is who ever is out there speaking about and around OneNote. This includes the Product Managers, MS community people, MVPs and other individuals not associated with Microsoft. Anyone who speaks at a conference, maintains a blog ect. is part of the evangelism team.

The community must have a strong, free knowledge base for support. This includes the blogs, newsgroups, web casts, list servers ect. Take a look at MS Exchange or MS Sql Server both produts with strong communities. If you Google either product you will so many results you could not possible look at it. Googling "SQL Server" results in about 119,000,000 results; "Exchange Server" has 30,900,000 and OneNote 7,540,000. Maybe it is unfair to compare OneNote to SQL Server. So lets look at "Microsoft Word" with 81,200,000 and "Microsoft OneNote" at 371,000.

Training and certifications are high on my list for fostering a strong community. Training either free or paid is important - both end user and developer are required in my opinion. Participating or integrating with existing MS training and certification structures is a must. As a developer or end user striving to achieve a specific MS certification I should have the option to choose a OneNote test instead of say an Excel or PowerPoint test. This gives OneNote some credibility. It shows that Microsoft considers OneNote as important as other products in the Office Suite. Without it OneNote will look like a distant cousin.

The last item I will cover under the guise of what makes a community is Books, Articles and Conferences. Any solid product has a following of authors who write books and articles supporting the product. And as the community grows we will be needing more and varied conference topics at the major conferences. I don’t think we get to a point where we will see a OneNote-specific conference - but anywhere Word or Excel shows up, OneNote speakers should be there.

Why do we care if we have community?
Community is legitimacy - in my mind. Community is promoting what we like to do and if you don’t like working with OneNote, then I would question why you are even reading this. With a strong community our ideas and concepts will carry more weight, be heard in more places.

Having a strong community is important for us that use ON both personally and professionally. It will give us tips, ideas and examples. It will help us use ON better in ways we do not think of. Community will give us ideas on new ways to use OneNote that we do not think of, helps us look outside of the box.

A strong community will allow us to have a "ring" of people to ask questions and receive answers.

A strong community will elevate the product in personal and corporate use. Will give us more opportunity to install, develop and design solutions to problems - and that means Jobs!

These are just One Guy's thoughts on community, Jotted down in OneNote no less and pushed to a blog. The sub title for this blog contains the words random and semi-useful and this post probably slips neatly into both categories. I feel that community is vitally important to the "success" of OneNote - particularly within corporate business. Let me know if you think I missed something or if I hit the nail right on the head so to speak. You have an idea that should be considered? Let me know. Think I am way off base - let me know.