Notes
Notes in your Aha! account are flexible and collaborative. Use them to document processes, share research, train new team members, or any other use that comes to mind.
You can nest notes along with whiteboards into collapsible hierarchies, collaboratively edit them with your teammates, add saved views to them, and visualize them by date. Notes might look simple but they provide a powerful way to capture and share information. You can even create personal notes for private use.
Click any of the following links to skip ahead:
Access workspace or team notes
How you access the notes page for your workspace or team will depend on which Aha! product you are using. To access the notes page:
Aha! Roadmaps: Navigate to Notebook Documents. If you do not see that option, you may need to enable it by customizing your menu navigation. If you are an owner or administrator for your workspace, you can navigate to Settings ⚙️ Workspace Navigation or by clicking the pencil icon you see in your navigation bar when you hover over it. From the Navigation page, check the box by Notebook and click Update to enable notes for your workspace.
Aha! Ideas: Navigate to Research Notes.
Aha! Develop: Navigate to Document Notes.
Create a note
From the notes page for your workspace or team, click Add and select Note. The new note will appear.
Note: Selecting Whiteboard from the create menu will create a whiteboard instead of a text note. Whiteboards are organized in your nested hierarchy alongside your notes.
Use the text editor to create your note and format it with headings, lists, tables, and inline media. You can also embed whiteboards and assign to-dos and watchers and start a discussion in the note's comments. Add a Date to a note to add it to the My notes Calendar view for everyone watching that note.
Create a copy of a note
You can create copy of any note. Right-click a note's title from the List view or click the More options button on an open note. Then select Copy note. A copy of the note will open and will appear in the List view below the the original note.
If your note has a date added, you can copy it to the following week. This is a great option for preparing agendas for recurring weekly meetings. To copy a note to the following week, click its More options menu and select Copy to next week. The new note will appear on the My work page's Calendar view for the following week for anyone watching the note.
Note: Copy note Same date will create a duplicate of a note with the same date as the original note.
Use personal notes
Some notes may be just for your personal use. Maybe you have a great idea for a new strategic opportunity and want to jot down some unfiltered thoughts. You might be drafting a presentation and want to work on the outline before you share it with your team. Or maybe you just need to write down the minutes of a meeting.
You can find a notes section just for you on your My work page. To get to them, hover over your profile picture in the navigation bar and click on My work. On the left side, beneath the My work section, you will see a section called My notes. Aha! users with any permission level can use personal notes.
Unless you share a personal note, it is only visible to you. They use the Aha! text editor, just like workspace and team notes, and you can #mention other records if you need to. Records you #mention will not link back to your personal note and you cannot @mention other users.
There are two different ways to view your personal notes from the My work page — the List view and the Calendar view. Use the toggle to navigate between views.
List view
The List view shows you all your personal notes and whiteboards, organized into a hierarchy that you customize. Click the + icon and select Note, then drag and drop it to its desired place in your My notes document hierarchy to stay organized. Add a Date to a note if you want it to appear in the Calendar view as well.
Calendar view
You can quickly find and create notes by date from the Calendar view. You will see a dot indicator on any date that has a note associated. Click the date to see the notes for that day. Personal notes as well as notes you are watching in a workspace or team will appear on your calendar. Only notes with Dates added will appear in this view.
Personal notes
You can easily prepare new notes for yourself from the Calendar view. Click the + button under the Personal notes section. A new blank note populated with the date selected on your calendar will open. You can rename it and change the Date field — changing the date will move it to the new date on your calendar. When you are ready to share a personal note with your teammates, click the More options button in the top-right corner of the note and select Move note.
All daily notes added from the calendar will be located in the Daily notes folder that appears in your List view. You can leave your notes in this folder or drag and drop the daily note anywhere in your My notes hierarchy.
Watched notes
Add a Date to any team or workspace note that you are watching to have it appear on your personal Calendar view. Any note or folder that you are watching that has a Date added will populate on your Calendar view regardless of its workspace or team location. You do not need to add yourself as a Watcher to every workspace note you want to see in your Calendar view. You can watch all the notes within a folder, such as a folder containing team meeting notes. Just add yourself as a Watcher to the parent note in that folder. Then you will automatically be added as a watcher to all child notes in the folder — and if any of those notes have Dates on them, they will appear in your Calendar view.
Use note templates
Get a head start on your note — use a purpose-built note template from the template library. Use the whiteboard and note templates in your template library to brainstorm ideas, draft product roadmaps, build business models, prepare for customer interviews, create meeting agendas, and more. You can access your template library and instantly add a new template to personal or workspace notes.
Click Add from your workspace or personal notes. Then click Use a template to open the template library. Templates will be listed in alphabetically order, but you can use search if you are looking for something specific. Use the Categories listed on the left side of your template library to find templates to support a specific purpose.
Note: If you have created custom note templates in your workspace settings, you will find them in the Custom category.
Click a template to see more details. From here, you can click Use template to add it instantly or Learn more to view detailed guidance and best practices on using it.
Note: Workspace owners and contributors can access the template library from a workspace. Any user can access the template library from their personal notes.
Create a new note template
Workspace owners can create custom note templates for your users in your workspace or team.
Shared note templates are customizable using the Aha! text editor, so you can add tables, images, video, and even saved Aha! views.
To create a new note template, navigate to Settings ⚙️ Workspace Document templates. Then click Add document templates and click Note.
To create a note template from a note you are currently editing, select the More options menu in the upper right corner of the note and select Save as template. Then enter a name for the template and click Create template.
Note: You can only create templates from workspace documents.
If you use Aha! Roadmaps or Aha! Ideas, you can create notes templates that can be inherited from a workspace line in order to drive consistency across workspaces and establish a standard approach for documentation.
If you use Aha! Roadmaps or Aha! Ideas, you can create notes templates that can be inherited from a workspace line in order to drive consistency across workspaces and establish a standard approach for documentation.
You can find all custom note templates created in your account in the Custom section of the Aha! template library.
Draft and improve text with AI
You can use the artificial intelligence (AI) writing assistant in the Aha! text editor to help you create clear, polished text in the right tone — so that you can communicate effectively without spending extra time and effort. Use AI to draft emails to customers, refine what you have already written, summarize long passages, and more.
Click the wand icon on your toolbar to prompt AI to generate a first draft of your note. Highlight existing text and click the wand to prompt AI to apply changes in tone, summarize passages, make formatting changes, and more.
Insert media inline
You can add images, audio, and video files to your note inline to add context to your note's content. When you add media, it will appear alongside the text in your note. Inserted audio and image files will include a play button — so anyone who has access to your note will be able to play the audio or video file you have added without leaving your note.
To add media, click the Image icon in your text editor's toolbar. Then select the media file you would like to add and click Attach. The file will appear inline and also as an attachment to your note.
Note: Supported audio file types include mp3, .wav, and .ogg. Supported video files include .mp4, .webm, and .ogv, and should be smaller than 300MB.
Add saved views to notes
Notes are excellent tools for collaboration and ideation, so it often makes sense to add Aha! views directly to a note. With list reports, pivot tables, and charts, you can focus a discussion or highlight insights that inform the rest of the note. If you use Aha! Roadmaps, you can also add custom roadmaps, and if you use Aha! Develop, you can embed view extension contributions from tools such as Adobe XD and InVision.
To add views to a note, open it and click the Add Aha! view icon. This icon appears at the top of the text editor in a note's full screen view, and under the + dropdown in a collapsed view. The Add new view modal will appear and guide you through the process.
First, choose from Custom views (reports and custom roadmaps you have created earlier and saved), Extension views (view extension contributions you have installed in your Aha! Develop team), or from a selection of Example views. If you choose an example view, you can modify it later. Use the filters on the left to narrow in on a specific type of view to add, then click Add to note to add your selection.
When you add one of these views to a note, your Aha! account copies the view and your note view displays the copy. This way, changes you make to the configuration of the original view — the view's type, style, or filters — will not affect the information displayed in your note. Changes you make to your Aha! data will be reflected in either view.
Once you have added your view, click and drag a corner to Resize it. Or, click its More options button to Open the report it is based on, Configure the view you have added to your note, or Remove the view altogether. When you Configure the view, you can change the view's Title or — for chart views — choose to show the chart's Legend.
Note: A chart's legend will appear on the side of your chart that you have selected in the chart's Customize view menu.
Embed a whiteboard in a note
You can embed a whiteboard directly into your note to add diagrams, sketches, and other visuals alongside text in your note. While editing a note, just click + on the text editor toolbar and select Whiteboard. A new whiteboard will be added below your cursor. Click the pencil icon to edit the whiteboard. When you are finished editing the whiteboard, click the X to exit and return to your note. To remove an embedded whiteboard from a note, click the trash icon and click to confirm that you would like to delete it.
Comment directly on notes
In addition to collaborative editing, notes in Aha! support inline text comments. Inline comments allow you to highlight the exact part of the note you want to discuss, then create conversation threads to focus on and resolve the issue.
To create a new inline comment, highlight the text you want to comment on and click the Add comment + icon that appears on the right side of the text editor. Your text will be highlighted and underlined in orange, the Comments sidebar will appear, and you can start creating your comment. Click Save comment once you are done.
Resolved comments will be highlighted and underlined in green and you can always reply to a resolved comment to reopen it.
Inline comments have access to the full text editor, so feel free to format your text, @mention Aha! users and records, add color tables, or insert inline media.
Organize your notes
Nested hierarchies
Once you have created a few notes and whiteboards, it makes sense to organize them. Bringing structure to these documents is as easy as clicking and dragging them in the left side panel of the notes page.
To reorder a note, click on it and drag it to your preferred order. If you drag a parent note, all nested child notes and whiteboards under it will come with it.
Note: You can drag parent notes to new locations whether they are expanded or collapsed, but it might be easier visually to do this while they are collapsed.To nest one note under another, click on it and drag it on top of another document.
To remove a note from a parent-child relationship, click on it and drag it to a new location.
When you drag a note or whiteboard to a new location, the blue bars in your Aha! account will show you where it will land in order.
A thin blue bar means your note will exist above or below another document in the order.
A thick blue bar means that your note will be nested under another document in the order.
Note collections and standalone notes
Organizing your notes into nested hierarchies is just the first step. As you build out the workspace/team and personal notes in your account, your notes hierarchy can become quite complex.
Instead of scrolling through a hierarchy expanding every parent note, click on a parent note to see a preview of all its child notes.
Note collections — child notes with sub-notes of their own — display here as tiles. Each collection includes the first three lines of the note's description, the top three child notes, and a total note count.
Standalone notes — child notes without sub-notes of their own — are listed at the bottom.
You can control what notes appear in these views by clicking on a parent note, then clicking More options Hide nested notes.
Customized title icons
Every note you create has a title icon. By default, this is a page icon for standalone notes, and a folder icon for parent notes. You can change these title icons to emojis to help your notes and note collections stand out.
To do this, open a note and click its title icon. Click or search for any replacement emoji you prefer, and the title icon will update.
Reference notes across Aha! products
You can use #mentions in any text field in your Aha! account to create a link to a note. On the record you want to link to the note, type the # key and then start typing the note's title. Select your note from the available options.
View note history
Every note created automatically tracks the history of edits that have taken place. You can revert back to previous versions of a note by clicking the History icon in the text editor and then moving the slider to the time frame you want to revert to.
Share and export your notes
Once you have created your note, you may want to share your work with people who can give feedback and add value. Share your note with anyone to collaborate and drive alignment — even with people who are not users in your Aha! account. Account administrators can enable or disable all note sharing for your Aha! account at any time.
Share a note
Share a note with anyone — just send them the shareable link. Once your recipients click the link, they will see your note in their own Aha! account, where they can view your work and, if they have the appropriate permissions, collaborate with you in real time. If they do not have an Aha! account, they will be prompted to sign up for an Aha! Notebooks trial — so they can view notes and whiteboards and create and share documents in a digital notebook of their own.
Anyone can share a personal note that they have created. Owners or Contributors can also share workspace notes — but Viewers and Reviewers cannot share workspace notes.
To share a note:
Open your note and click the Share button in the upper right corner.
Click Get shareable link.
Select whether anyone with the link can View only or Edit the note.
Click Copy link.
Share the link with anyone.
The shareable link will expire five days after it is first generated. If you want to share your note with someone else after the link is expired, you will need to generate a new link. You can disable the link whenever you choose. If you disable the link, anyone who has the link but has not yet accepted access to the note will not be able to access it.
Viewing and editing permissions
You can change someone's permissions to Edit or View only access by clicking next to their initials in the People who have access section of the Share menu. You can remove access to your note for any viewer by hovering over their initials and clicking the trash icon that appears.
Note: Aha! user permissions will always supersede the Edit permissions you set for a note. For example, users with viewer and reviewer permissions will be able to access a workspace note even if you do not share it when them. But they will not be able to edit workspace notes, even if you give them permission to edit from the Share menu.
Accept a note
Your colleague will provide you with a link when they want to share a note with you. Click the link to open the invitation to view the document. You can then select an option to View the document or Ignore the document.
Note: If you do not have an Aha! account, you can sign up for an Aha! Notebooks trial to view it. You will be prompted to log in or sign up if you choose to View the document.
When you choose to view a document, where the document opens depends on whether the note shared with you is a personal note or a workspace note. Shared personal notes will appear in the Shared with me section of the List view in your personal notes on the My work page, and the person who shared the document with you has control of your viewing and editing access for the document. Shared workspace and team notes will open within the workspace in which they are located, but your account permissions and workspace access will determine your viewing and editing access.
To see who has access to a shared document and will potentially see any edits you make, click the Shared icon at the top of the document next to its title.
Configure sharing settings
Account administrators can navigate to Settings ⚙️ Account Security and single sign-on and uncheck the box next to Enable document sharing at any time to turn off link sharing for notes. Doing so will turn off all link sharing in the account for notes and whiteboards. Any links that were generated prior to disabling this setting will stop working, and both personal and workspace notes and whiteboards will no longer be shareable with users outside of your Aha! account.
When document sharing is enabled, anyone in your Aha! account can share a personal note that they have created. Owners and Contributors can share workspace notes. Viewers and Reviewers cannot share workspace notes.
Export a note
The Export button offers you several options to export and display your note. You will find the Export button in the upper right corner of your screen. From the Export menu, you can:
Add to Whiteboard as image to add an image of your note to a new whiteboard in your personal notes.
If you have Aha! Roadmaps, you can select Add to Presentation to fold your note into an Aha! presentation. In your presentation, you can select the note's update frequency.
Add to Webpage to share a workspace note as a webpage.
Note: If you have enabled Aha! Ideas Advanced in your Aha! account, you can use this option to embed a note in a custom page in your ideas portal.Export PNG image or PDF document for a static version of your note.
Move notes to another workspace or team
Sometimes notes are created under one workspace or team, but then you want to move them to another workspace. The same goes for personal notes — you may find that a note you have drafted in your personal notes would be better suited for a team or workspace.
Use the More options button on notes to move them. If you move the note at the top of a hierarchy tree, all child notes move as well.
Note: You can also move a workspace or team note to a personal note. Instead of choosing Move to workspace/team from the Move note menu, select Move to personal notes.
Link notes to other records across Aha! products
Workspace and team notes can be added as related records to other data objects. To add a related record to a note, click on the More options button in the upper-right of the note and select Link to another record. Once linked, a new Record links section will display at the bottom of the note. This will reference the related records, allowing you to quickly visualize the relationships.