Group memos inside a collection with notebooks

A notebook splits a collection into smaller sets without splitting the team: one notebook per client inside a Clients collection, one per sprint inside a product collection, one per site visit on a job. Everyone who can open the collection can open its notebooks, so you get the structure without re-sharing anything. A notebook has its own views, its own default view and its own standing instructions, so a client's notebook can open on its board and tell your assistant how that client's notes are shaped.

Notebooks also hold files, and an HTML artifact in a notebook can read the data files next to it. See Build an artifact that shows your data.

Create a notebook

1. Open the collection.

2. Choose New notebook from the collection's menu.

3. Type a Notebook name and, if you like, a description.

4. Click Create.

Put a memo in a notebook

1. Open the memo.

2. Open its collection's menu and choose Add to notebook (or Move to notebook if it's already in one).

3. Pick the notebook, or choose New notebook... to make one.

To move several at once, select them in the collection's list and choose Add to notebook from the bar that appears.

Change a notebook's details

Open the notebook's menu (Notebook options) and choose Edit details. You can change its Name, Description and Instructions, the standing instructions for anyone, person or agent, working in that notebook. See Give a collection standing instructions.

The same menu has:

• New memo, to write a memo straight into the notebook.

• Open beside, to open the notebook next to what you're working on.

• Open in canvas, to lay its memos and files out on a canvas.

• Link to notebook, to copy its link.

• Archive, to put it away. Its memos stay in the collection. The app has no unarchive button for notebooks yet; an AI assistant connected to Fieldwerk can bring one back (see below).

Give a notebook its own views

A notebook has its own view tabs, separate from the collection's. Add a board or table that only shows that notebook's memos, and choose Set as default to make it the tab the notebook opens on. See See a collection as a list, board, table, calendar or timeline.

Have your AI assistant do it

With a connected assistant (see Connect Claude to Fieldwerk or Connect ChatGPT to Fieldwerk), set up a client's notebook and move their memos in:

In Fieldwerk, create a notebook called "Harbour Trust" in my client collection with the instruction "Meeting notes and proposals for Harbour Trust only. Title meeting notes with the date and who attended." Then move every memo in the collection about Harbour Trust into it.

Bring an archived notebook back:

In Fieldwerk, unarchive the "Q2 planning" notebook in my planning collection.

A good habit: name notebooks the way your team already talks about the work (the client, the sprint, the site), so both people and assistants file into the right one without asking.