Notion 2.0 - The all-in-one workspace - notes, tasks, wikis, & databases

I worked at a company that made a B2C Zapier/IFTTT type of service, but with much more powerful visual scripting builder that was actually not terrible. 3rd parties or in-house contracted developers would build a "connector" for every possible API, abstracting them into these visual blocks / methods with some parameters or whatever they needed to make sure the API calls were valid. (or webhooks). It honestly was great software (the main part, anyway) with a lot of capability, and took things like Workflow and Stringify or MS Flow (not to mention Zapier and IFTTT) to the best possible extent. Non-devs could make automations in a way I would say is most similar to Alfred's workflow builder.

Notion has no public API, and no integrations, and this means that if you are at all interested in automating processes, integrating apps, etc, it's useless. It is essentially just a vault of all my stuff now. I cant send a text snippet on iOS from Drafts to it using a share/activity extension (the stuff in the menu with the box with an upwards pointing arrow), or other iOS automation tools like Stringify and Workflow and IFTTT, HomeKit itself (orSiriKit), Buffer, Pythonista/any code editor that allows automation, Launcher/Launch Center Pro, Airtable, Skyvia, or whatever alternative universe where I use Mulesoft, Azuqua, Integromat, Piesync, expensive bespoke ZWave software, and I can't use it in Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, BetterTouchTool, IFTTT, Zapier, Automator, homecoded solutions, or any of the stuff off this list: https://www.producthunt.com/alte...

(also, tasker for android)

So now I finally perfectly organized my OCDish PTSDish generally racing with thoughts-brain, only to be locked in with out a single way to interact with other apps.

Bare minimum: can we at least get some quick updates to expose and document like, iOS URLs or SOMETHING? i.e. http://developer.fulcrumapp.com/...

Pros:

The new features are well documented, and it has near feature parity with an entire productivity suite!

Cons:

It is hermetically sealed; there is no way to integrate it with anything else (developer, enthusiast, or businessperson), extremely limiting

I signed up for Notion yesterday to collaborate with only 1 other person on our blog's content, and I was immediately blown away by how awesome it is. Notion just works. It does everything I expect it to do without trying to sell me stuff or to get me to use more features. I can just open it (so far only tested the web app) and start typing away my thoughts. The real-time collaboration works without any glitch which is a feat in and of itself.

Honestly very excited about this 2nd version, which comes as a total surprise: the v1 looked very much like a final product and the definite answer to all my issues collaborating efficiently at work.

Pros:

- User friendly and simple to use

- One of the best typing experience I've had, if you feel great typing on Medium, you're in for a treat!

Cons:

- I didn't feel the need to try the desktop app yet (macOS). Is that really a con though?

Tested the beta for a while and I must say I was so impressed from day one. V2 is a masterpiece of usability. Notion crams so much functionality into each page while keeping interface extremely clean, understandable and usable, that it feels almost incredible. I truly believe this is a milestone in the history of UX design. Looking forward: - Calendar implementation is a great start but needs to be more versatile IMHO. Takes too much space on the page and leaves too much unused real estate. I'd like so see a more compact implementation available (I love most design patterns implemented by Fantastical mobile app). - An additional inline date block to make it easy to convert a list to a calendar and viceversa (and honestly I find missing an inline date picker so many times in my daily use). - A timeline view. - A solution for offline use. But ya... I really hate you guys... fantastic designers/makers of things.

I’ve been using Notion for a while now and can’t recommend it enough. For those who might’ve held off, this 2.0 update brings a whole load of features that might sway you away from Trello and the like. But really, it’s unfair to compare Notion to Trello because it does *so* many things. It’s like multiple apps in one, and yet somehow never feels cluttered. It can be completely tailored to your own use, so if you’re not interested in this feature or that feature, just don’t use them and they’ll get out of your way. Congrats on the release of 2.0, guys!

I love the potential to replace Asana with Notion. Any plans to add recurring tasks? Task dependencies? That kind of tasky magic… ✨

We're have been using Notion to organize our wiki since 2016 and having the best team wiki experience. I'm really excited about how they will implement their complete vision in 3.0 and other versions.

Pros:

Innovative, easy to use, all-in-one workspace, powerful database

Cons:

nothing

Okay; I switched over EVERYTHING from most of my other productivity and task management products, since 2.0 added not only brilliant features but a great new way to show them as if they were in production. But after doing that, I really regretted it... because now I am totally locked into Notion, as there is no way to integrate it with ANYTHING else. I don't just mean with specific "app integration / automation" services like, on the simpler end, Zapier and IFTTT, but also no "share"/activity extensions on iOS, no services on mac for use in Automator, AppleScript, general scripting, or shell scripts, and other type of automation Apps like Alfred. Additionally, I don't know of any publicly available API (which would be overkill for even me) and I couldn't find a simple URL scheme on iOS while snooping. It's hermetically sealed. All my workflows are incompatible with it because everything has to be hand entered or individually exported. I thought this was a minor problem at first, so I brought it up but didn't make a big deal out of it. But now that I put all my stuff in there... I finally realized its stuck in there and nothing is coming out or in besides a random slack notification feature and manually entering/importing. This feature alone makes it impossible to use Notion as a replacement for i.e Workflowy and Airtable, similar to my case. Now I have to either live in limbo til this gets implemented, or migrate out of the Notion productivity suite/wiki/everything. Which sucks, but I can't spend hours of my day making finicky GUI automations just to do things like send a text selection to a list as a new list item.

I've been using Notion 2.0 for weeks now, this release is just amazing! 🙏🏻 So glad to see it live, they added what was missing without having too many features, it's perfect!

A huge Thank you to Ivan and the Notion Team for creating a workspace that has the power and the flexibility to substitute many of the apps that we use in our Agency today. With Version 2.0 we ditched Todoist and moved our Task lists to NOTION. We were never happy with any of the „standard“-„State of the Art“-„highly efficient“ CRM tools out there — NOTION has us covered, finally. Finally we can embed documents that are located inside our own cloud into our notes without having to create duplicates. We used Evernote Business as our Business hub until we found NOTION 2.0 The flexibility and the intuitiveness helped to convince even our clients to jump on board the Notion Ship with us. A huge shout out 🙏 to Brian and Lillie for their support during our transition. THANK YOU very much

We're using Notion heavily at Appcues, and have been on the beta for 2.0 for some time. It's frankly one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. The flexibility of kinds of work you can document and in what ways, plus the live collaboration, plus the ease of the low-friction always-editing paradigm, plus the way it's been implemented in such a high-quality, structured way makes for a pretty amazing combo. It's what a Wiki was always meant to be, and more. With 2.0, I was originally skeptical of the table feature, and didn't want it to be so complex. I really just wanted to show a table—not embed a basic database! Or so I thought. After using it and really seeing what it can do, I've realized they've done it right. It can still be as simple as you want, and it doesn't feel complicated—but when you need it, you can add more data, structure it, sort it, and connect it. It just works. I've been really impressed so far and without a doubt it's a useful, albeit polarizing product. Even with its alternative UX paradigms and slight learning curve, it's become an indispensable tool for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Keep it up!