Digital Workspace Remodeling
Because we are a pretty big team, we need to coordinate a lot of different projects and store a lot of information. For this we have a digital workspace in Notion. If used correctly, Notion can be a very powerful tool. Past seasons however, we did not use it to its full potential, there was a lack of structure and information was often outdated.
Off-season is the time to evaluate, reorganize and plan for the upcoming season in order to kick-start the new season. Therefore we decided it was time to change up our online team workspace in Notion entirely, as it would greatly improve the team’s productivity.
The Old Workspace
A group of members dedicated to managing our Notion workspace came together to discuss why we did not like using the current workspace. All these points came down to:
- You can never find anything you need on notion because it’s hidden somewhere in an unstructured mess
- You can never find anything you need on notion because it’s not on notion
- Using Notion is not effective if we don’t all use it
- Using Notion is difficult for first time users
In order to make the new Notion actually effective, we looked beyond the old Notion, but thought of other problems we might be able to solve within Notion, such as:
- A document we need is stored somewhere or with someone we can’t reach
- There’s documents which could help us, but people never actually share, which means we have to re-invent the wheel… every single season
- We have a lot of meetings, events and partner visits to keep track of, a team agenda would help everyone to keep up with this
The Plan
The plan started by figuring out a system which would help us remain structured. We decided to give each department a color of the rainbow, so any mention of said department would stand out (and also who doesn’t love rainbows). We made a list containing every single new feature we had thought of, and started ordering them in: must, should, could and would. A deadline for all projects was set and the project group got to work.
A Walkthrough of our New and Majorly Improved Notion
General Home Page
Our Notion tour starts at the general home page, where you can find everything you’re looking for. This home page starts with a general view, containing all department and sub-department pages to use as your everyday workspace. Underneath, there’s the team agenda for all team wide events.
Besides the general part, there’s a personalized agenda, event passport and even a personalized scrum board for you to quickly see what tasks you still have left. On this homepage, you can sign up for events and see your event passport, as well as the event leadership board, showing the TR members who have visited or volunteered at the most events!
This new version of notion contains some awesome features such as…
A Library
Which will function as the TR search engine. Containing guides from every single subdepartment such as our TR branding guide, the beginner guide, a guide to awards and more! Whether you’re starting a project, using a machine or following a procedure, you’ll find it all in the library. A Team member overview which functions as a database for everything member-related. Looking for a member with a specific skill set? Just look for the skills that are tagged and you’ll find the right person!
Dynamic Planboard
With such a big team, a solid planning is one of the most important factors to success. Our new workspace contains a scrum-like planboard that the entire team can use. Based on certain filters, usable subsets of this board can be viewed. This enables team members to only see tasks assigned to them, or (sub-)departments to only see tasks relevant to them.
Future Steps
While the team is still adapting to using the new workspace, we have already seen a great increase in regular users and lots of positive feedback on the improved user experience!