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 AI how that client's memos 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; your AI can bring one back once it's connected to Fieldwerk (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 do it

With your AI connected (see Connect Claude to Fieldwerk or Connect ChatGPT to Fieldwerk), set up a notebook and move the right memos in:

In Fieldwerk, help me set up a notebook. Show me my collections and ask which one it goes in and what to call it. Create it with a short instruction saying what belongs there, then show me which memos in that collection fit and move them in once I agree.

Bring an archived notebook back:

In Fieldwerk, show me my collections and ask which one to look in. Then list its archived notebooks and unarchive the one I choose.

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