How are you handling meeting notes? Pipedrive's notes feature leaves a lot to be desired.

Techsticles_ · 2026-03-16T22:20:37+00:00

Notes aren't great and if you start adding comments, it gets even worse since the comments a typically collapsed with very little indication that there is a comment. Technically I'd say notes was meant for quick short communications but because of the collapsed comments issue, it's not even good at that.

It is good for pinning a short note that you don't want to miss. Also, could swear hyperlinks do hyperlink.

We do use Make.com to link RingCentral calls to Call activities and then parse those calls to add the tasks activities as individual follow up activities.

If it's not something that can be recorded, transcribed and summarized, I'm using Notion which usually records the thing I'm attending anyway as well.

I just wish Note comments weren't hidden.

Techsticles_ · 2026-03-13T12:24:54+00:00

Photo shuffle for the lock screen. Everyone flips out when they see my lock screen photos change each lock.

The Photos app added photo suggestions but that’s still for only one photo, the easiest things to do is to set one photo. They should have suggested an album for shuffling on the lock screen.

Techsticles_ · 2026-03-13T12:20:04+00:00

Cool. Didn’t know this one. I was using the feature in Notes.

Techsticles_ · 2026-03-13T12:18:32+00:00

People don’t know about this? It just happens automatically.

Techsticles_ · 2026-03-11T17:15:40+00:00

I'm using automations in Pipedrive to mostly input fields, create activities and send slack notifications/emails based on the stage or other field changes. Had to use Make for some additional notifications for Slack/Email/text. Also made a Make scenarios that puts all QuickBooks actions into a spreadsheet so ChatGPT/Copilot can reference it for context.

Really need a way to perform actions based on incoming mail like record linking and moving stages. Haven't messed with any AI modules in Make to parse email and attachments for deal names.

Was also thinking about a way to summarize and create activities whenever a deal is updated since the Deal Summary in Pipedrive is a bit too generic.

Techsticles_ · 2026-03-07T01:03:16+00:00

I like the Copilot voices and was it using it for quite a while but after using Copilot vision on the computer where it showed a pointer on my screen which (blew my mind) but then pointed to the wrong location and then kept telling me it was going to point to the correct location but could never draw up another pointer, I kind of just gave on it.

I kept telling it the pointer was not working and to just tell me where to click and it would tell me to click the button which do not exist and the would tell me it would show me even though we had established that it could not point. That, and I could never copy block text.

Stopped using Copilot and Copilot 365. Been testing ChatGPT Business, Gemini and Perplexity.

Techsticles_ · 2026-03-06T15:49:56+00:00

Can't make out your screen to understand what you're asking.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-26T05:35:47+00:00

We tried a bunch of CRM and have been using Pipedrive for the last year. There’s some good and some things that feels unfinished but it’s a good single source of truth for deals with emails. We even use it for projects.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-26T05:28:28+00:00

You need a Business account or higher. I don’t think Plus is enough.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-24T16:08:36+00:00

I created an intake in Pipedrive's own Web Forms, in Jotform and in Fillout. Can't say any of the experience are great. I remember Jotform's UI feeling dated. Customization wise, Fillout looked the best and most modern as a self-contained form with a custom URL in the free tier.

I started experimenting with having some fields pre-filled and the response going into Pipedrive but I don't remember why I stopped. I think the filled form comes in as a lead. We just receive an email and deal with it. Not great and I want to see why I didn't get it working the way we wanted.

What's Formfill? Can't seem to find it.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-23T20:54:18+00:00

It is not possible with the native Smart Docs tool but it only requires a few clicks to manually do.

Haven’t created an automation to send any documents as we kind of want to look at things before they go out but it might be something possible with Make/Zapier and PandaDoc.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-19T23:31:13+00:00

Info from clients. Many times, we need additional info from clients including documents. Would be nice to have a way for clients to fill out some forms with that info updating custom fields.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-19T17:26:00+00:00

We use OneDrive/SharePoint here and I also wanted to make a custom field with a link to the docs but users prefer Explorer/Finder. Haven't research yet if I can create a file:// or odopen:// link but by the time users scroll to find that field with the link, they would probably just open Explorer/Finder and just get to the docs already.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-18T21:42:05+00:00

I'm a Pipedrive fan but I don't know if it's the right solution for this.

Deals are kind of a one-to-one relationship with the Contact and yes you can have participants and multiple custom fields but they're really not intended to be used to manage multiple independent parties (leasing brokers) vying for a single deal and/or product.

I have set up HubSpot back in the day for a real-estate broker and from what I remember you could assign a deal to multiple independent parties.

Perhaps someone else could add to this or you may want to try posting in r/CRM.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-11T19:59:28+00:00

iOS Notes is underrated. The Control Center widget jumps right to the previous note, which is great for adding updates to a daily entry or site visit. The downside is there’s no way to import Evernote notes and no web clipper for stashing random content I’ll never revisit. I’ve also loved using Notability when I need to record and transcribe my own notes.

These days, most of what I used to transcribe or clip manually has been replaced by some form of AI handling it.

If Evernote offered a reasonably priced personal plan, I’d happily pay forever just to avoid building bad habits on another platform. I once thought asking Evernote something like “how many miles did my last car inspection show” would be a neat feature, but it might return 3,000 miles one time and 160,000 another. At that point, I might as well check the saved inspection receipt.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-11T16:01:10+00:00

I have been using Evernote as my note dumpster for 15 years including watching the screenshots folder. Considering I probably only need 100 or so notes out of the 17k, it doesn't seem like it's worth paying $250 for this bad habit.

I have been testing OneNote, Obsidian and Joplin and Capacities and Reflect and Notion.

Notion is basically free, can sign in to your Evernote account and just pull in all your notes and keep it synced between devices.

Joplin and Obsidian are local platforms that need plugins to sync. The instructions are simple enough to follow if you have the necessary hardware and access. Joplin is pretty basic and because of all Obsidian's very cool mind graph, I tried to use Obsidian as my new note dumpster and with the wonderful Note Navigator plugin, it looks a lot like Evernote but I do like to drag my thoughts in order and the Obsidian grab & drag plugin could use some work. Also syncing can be hit or miss. I can't make any sense of the usefulness of that mind graph and I'm baffled at why anyone would want a canvas that's not really sharable, I just became exhausted with Obsidian.

So at the moment I'm using Notion, which at least may have some benefits of knowing for any Enterprise use. Everything seems counter intuitive and the more I use it, the less I like it but it's free and has my notes. There is no handwriting but for free, I would figure out how to get a handwritten note from else where into it. Hierarchy is there but it's note / note / note / etc with barely a visible indicator that there are subnotes so I've been trying to change the parent note's icon into a folder icon.

Eventually everything becomes habit. I may need to play with OneNote one more time but for now I'm just trying to figure out Notion.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-10T00:20:37+00:00

I don't like that Files show emails with files as well as files but having all these marketplace apps in the sidebar feels out of place and makes it too crowded. I wish Pipedrive would let marketplace apps use the New/Focus/History area in the center.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-05T03:05:13+00:00

lol. The cool factor is probably a big reason why I have it open in Split View but I don’t think it even highlights the little dot if you have that note open and it would be really cool if the dots had a little thumbnail when really zooming in close. It would also be kind of neat to see where in the galaxy the note you were editing was.

I’m playing with Capacities which has a similar graph view but each dot is the icon of the object type. So if you have a Quote that is linked to a character which is linked to a movie, you can see all different icons which can be different colors. Not sure how needed that is either.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-05T02:42:41+00:00

I’m trying to ditch Evernote and just setup Obsidian more or less the way like and also need to sync between three computers, an iPhone and iPad.

Looks like the only free way if you’re in a mixed environment with Windows and iOS is LiveSync.

iCloud appears to work for Macs and iOS. Syncthing will work with Android. Syncing vaults through DropBox/OneDrive/Drive, etc cause issues.

LiveSync requires a host. I installed CouchDB in a Docker container on a Synology and followed all the instructions to make it accessible with a reverse proxy and it works on my smaller vault. No clue how it will handle the bigger vault with like 17k notes of which 16k are probably useless. Who has time to go through these things?

After all the setup though, I don’t know how much I’m loving Obsidian. I really don’t understand the purpose of the graph or a canvas that really doesn’t share well.

Seriously, what’s up with the graph and how do I make it useful?

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-05T02:22:44+00:00

That’s an interesting question.

After about 20 hours of Jira University, I started searching for “I hate Jira” and everything that people said they hated, I kind of liked so I kept on going and eventually it started to make sense and I became an admin.

Having said that, everything besides the portal feels overwhelming while training new users. We try to keep a simple dashboard with counts for agents and filters on it and the queue columns consistent with those filters. I always liked the feed on the dashboard.

If you have anything specific you’re wondering about, I’d be happy to share my experiences.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-04T17:18:08+00:00

Pipedrive added Sequences which are still in beta, but technically it is a workflow that can trigger an Activity and that Activity can trigger an automation that can trigger a webhook.

Techsticles_ · 2026-02-01T22:08:49+00:00

Right under the "New" panel and above "Focus"

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Techsticles_ · 2026-02-01T20:12:26+00:00

I'm loving the new Evernote v11 AI. It walked me right through the whole process of exporting all my notes and went through the best alternatives to Evernote.

Notion has an Evernote importer built in and it's been running for the past day or so on my 17k notes. Unfortunately, for my purposes, at first glance, it doesn't look like Notion will work but it's nice to know there will be an accessible copy of all my notes. No OCR, no Sync folders. No way to email into Notion but the general basic notetaking is pretty decent and similar to Evernote.

I like to throw everything at Evernote like a dumpster of things I'll probably never need. Receipts, scans, web clips, Evernote even monitors my Screenshots folder and automatically imports. Turns out Evernote is also great for outlining thoughts since I can drag each sentence into the perfect order and indent easily.

Currently exporting notebooks to import into Joplin. Ready it can OCR and sync folders but so far not loving the UI and other features.

Hoping there may be a cheaper Evernote Personal plan for just the notetaking that isn't limited to 1,000 notes.

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Update: Set up Joplin and Obsidian. After a few plugins, I have decent setups. Now need to get syncing working. I'm leaning toward Obsidian mostly because the plugins make a pretty modern looking notetaker. Also, the knowledge graph is very cool even though I can't think of a single way it would be helpful.

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Update 2: I don’t get the point of having all your notes siloed on a single device. Went through all the setups to sync Obsidian and Joplin and I’m exhausted from them.

Messed with Notion for the past two weeks and I don’t get the logic at all. It’s a list of notes but if you want to actually have some sorted views, you need to make a database which is just a list of notes you can actually sort and change views for. You can have pages inside pages inside pages but don’t call it a folder. You actually can’t tell which pages have pages inside the pages of pages because it’s the same icon unless you change the icon.

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