Peter looks at the collaboration capabilities in OneNote 2010:

“OneNote 2010 is known primarily for its note-taking capabilities, but with related clients including the OneNote Web App and OneNote Mobile, and OneNote-integrated services including Windows Live SkyDrive and SharePoint, OneNote is also a powerful collaboration solution. Peter O’Kelly highlights OneNote’s collaboration-related capabilities and explains how OneNote fits into the broader SharePoint-centered Microsoft collaboration landscape.

With OneNote 2010, OneNote Web App, and integration with Windows Live SkyDrive and SharePoint, Microsoft has transformed OneNote into a powerful solution for a wide range of collaboration needs. This article includes a brief review of collaboration concepts and market dynamics, an overview of OneNote’s collaboration capabilities, and an explanation of how OneNote fits into Microsoft’s bigger-picture product portfolio for collaboration (e.g., OneNote’s SharePoint synergy).“

Peter talks about:
– The market landscape for collaboration and communication products, and the positioning of OneNote 2010.
– Peter talks through an example of how two or more people could use the collaboration capabilities in OneNote 2010.
– OneNotes 2010 includes “within-page” update notifications, not just page-level updates.
– Near real-time co-editing is available in OneNote. Peter estimates updates made on a shared page take about 30 seconds to appear for the other readers.
– The intended integration between OneNote and SharePoint, and some of the limitations of OneNote and SharePoint Workspace when working with SharePoint.

Note that Peter currently works at Microsoft, and kindly wrote the foreword for SharePoint Roadmap on a very tight deadline (thanks again Peter!).

My Comments
1. It’s good to get an update on the enhanced capabilities in OneNote 2010. It sounds like things have improved from SharePoint 2007 and OneNote 2007; in Seamless Teamwork, I wrote about the integration between the two and whether you should use both or not.

2. Peter’s comments on page 4 of his article about the integration points between SharePoint and OneNote, and SharePoint and SharePoint Workspace are especially important for collaboration teams making plans regarding the use of these three products. There are differences between how each works against SharePoint, and the Pillar 2 and 3 aspects of the 7 Pillars model requires a significant amount of planning and thought.

3. Back in June 2005, Eric Mack and I did a shared screens session using OneNote 2003, at the Collaborative Technologies Conference in New York (since renamed the Enterprise 2.0 Conference). That was pretty cool – and worked well for 2005.