Tips for Notion Newcomers
Notion is one of the tools that Mastiff uses to organize our documents and information. It serves as our centralized hub for information, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing. We’ve built our wiki, library, and various work dashboards in Notion. It’s incredibly flexible—think of it like a blank canvas where you can create whatever you need. But I know all that freedom can feel a bit overwhelming at first. So, let me walk you through some basics to help you get started!
1. Customize Your Page
You can create pages for almost anything and personalize them with various types of content, such as text, images, databases, and more. You can choose from a range of pre-made emojis and icons as visual cues for your pages, or upload your own photos from your computer. You also have the option to select images from Unsplash, which offers a wide range of high-quality stock photos. Although the font color and text background options are somewhat limited, they still provide effective color-coding features for organizing sections and highlighting important information.
2. Organize Your Pages
I LOVE databases! If you have a lot of pages, a full-page database can become your best friend. Think of it as a super-organized filing cabinet for all your content. Databases are one of the more complex blocks in Notion, but that's because they offer so much functionality. You can set up automation, apply filters, and sort data efficiently. If you're just getting started, begin by adding properties tailored to your needs. They’re fantastic for organizing and quickly searching through a pool of pages.
3. Same Data, Multiple Views
Once you've got your database set up, you can view your data in all sorts of ways:
Table View: A spreadsheet-like layout to view and manage a large amount of data at once. It's ideal for sorting, filtering, and viewing multiple properties of your data side by side.
Board View: A Kanban-style board, perfect for tracking tasks through different stages or categories. Organize tasks by status, priority, or any categorical property.
List View: A simple linear view of data. It provides a minimalist approach to view records one by one with key properties visible.
Timeline View: A chronological timeline for your data, great for project planning, tracking deadlines, and scheduling. It provides a visual representation of your tasks or events over time, making it easier to see overlaps and gaps.
Calendar View: For scheduling and managing time-based data like appointments, meetings, or deadlines, Notion's calendar view is ideal. It allows you to see your tasks and events in a monthly, weekly, or daily format, making it easy to keep track of what's coming up. A great feature of Notion’s calendar is that it can send you notifications, ensuring you never forget important events. Plus, you can connect it with Google Calendar or Outlook to sync all your schedules in one place.
Gallery View: Provides a visual representation of your data, showcasing items as cards with an emphasis on images. It’s ideal for portfolios, mood boards, or any data where visual elements are important, such as team directories or project showcases.
Chart View: Useful for tracking progress on projects, analyzing performance metrics, or visualizing complex datasets in a more digestible way.
4. Collaborate with Your Team
Once you've created a simple dashboard in Notion, you can easily share it with your team to facilitate collaboration. Notion serves as a central hub for storing team documents, notes, tasks, and databases, all in one accessible location, which helps keep everyone aligned and on the same page. Notion’s permission management features allow you to control access levels, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected while still encouraging effective collaboration. You can assign different permission levels based on each role, providing just the right amount of access each member needs.
When adding a team member to Notion, you can select their level of access—Full Access, Can Edit, Can Comment, or View Only—depending on their role and responsibilities. For finalized documents or templates, you can use Notion's "Lock Page" feature to prevent accidental changes. If you're managing a larger team or organization, creating groups and assigning permissions at the group level is more efficient than setting permissions for each user individually, helping streamline access management and maintain consistent permissions across the team.
5. Add Widgets
To further enhance your Notion workspace, consider adding widgets. These can include productivity tools and real-time data displays. Platforms like Apption.co offer a variety of options to augment your Notion setup.
Notion is incredibly flexible, which is both its strength and the source of initial overwhelm. Take it one step at a time, and don't be afraid to experiment. As you grow more comfortable with the basics, you'll discover countless ways to tailor Notion to your specific needs.
Happy organizing!
