I rarely use paper these days. While I do have a pad of paper and a pen available to me most of the time, and writing can be quite therapeutic, I'd usually rather type because it saves time. In fact, most of what I write on paper is what you might call “chicken scratch;” difficult to read and somewhat unorganized notes.

As a SharePoint consultant working with a variety of clients, I need to be able to take and share my notes as quickly and effectively as possible. I’ve found that the combination of OneNote and SkyDrive consistently saves me time and effort during meetings and conference calls. While I’m working at a client site, I may or may not have Internet access and I’ve found that with SkyDrive, it doesn’t matter. If I am offline, any changes that I make to my notebook will sync up to SkyDrive the next time I’m online, so I don’t have to remember to manually upload anything. Other note-taking tools, like Google Docs, require that you are online while taking notes, which is not always possible. SkyDrive enables me to take my notes anytime, from anywhere. Online or offline, SkyDrive is readily accessible.

Before the meeting, if I don’t already have one, I’ll create a new notebook for the client in SkyDrive.

Once created, my notebook is immediately available online and will be available offline within minutes as SkyDrive syncs to my local computer. This is a huge advantage over other tools as it prevents me from forgetting to copy files from one location to another. Not only that, but I know that I can access and edit my notebook from any computer through SkyDrive’s OneNote web app, even if that computer doesn’t have OneNote installed on it.

During the meeting, I can take notes in SkyDrive’s OneNote web app directly in my browser. If I want, I can even allow the other attendees to edit notebook at the same time, providing us with a truly collaborative meeting. This helps keep us all “on the same page,” if you can forgive the pun. However, sometimes I’m not allowed to jump on the corporate network. In this case, I just take notes locally and the next time I connect to a network, any changes I’ve made will sync with SkyDrive. Whichever path I choose, there’s enough flexibility in SkyDrive to let me work the way that I’m used to; I don’t have to spend extra time learning something new and unfamiliar.

Within minutes of the meeting’s end, I typically use SkyDrive’s “Share” feature to send a link to the notebook out to all of the attendees.

Not only does this ensure that everyone has a link to the notes for future reference, but it also reinforces the client’s confidence in my reliability as a consultant. If you’ve been in the consulting space for any amount of time, then you probably realize how important this is.

SkyDrive enables me to take notes at anytime from anywhere, allows me to collaborate on notes with others in real-time, and lets me share my notes with whomever I choose. I can do all of this without having to worry about copying, downloading, or uploading files. For all of these reasons, SkyDrive has become an instrumental tool that helps me do my job more effectively.