Evernote is a powerful tool both for capturing inputs and storing reference material— both essential parts of any GTD system.

Connection and configuration

To connect FacileThings to your Evernote account, open Account > Integration and click the Add Evernote button:

Once you have authorized FacileThings to access to your Evernote data, the settings icon will be shown:

You can enable or disable either part of this integration:

1. Reference Material. To use additional Evernote notebooks as support for your FacileThings projects, check the “I want to use my notebooks to support my Projects” option. This lets you link each project with an Evernote notebook, and all their notes will appear on the Reference Material list of the project.
2. Capture stuff. To send Evernote notes into your FacileThings Inbox, you have to check the “I want to capture notes in my Inbox” option and pick the Evernote notebook you want to use for that purpose. This way, all notes you create in that notebook will appear in your FacileThings Inbox.

Clarifying Rules

You can also organize your Evernote notes to match your FacileThings setup. To support this, there are customizable clarifying rules:

For each list — Next Actions, Calendar, Waiting For, Done, Someday/Maybe, Reference Material and Trash — you can choose one of three actions by clicking on “edit” (1):

1. Do nothing. If you move an item linked to an Evernote note into this list, nothing happens to the original note.
2. Move it to a specified notebook. When you move an item to that list, the original note will be simultaneously moved to the Evernote notebook you have specified. You can optionally add a tag to help organize it further.
   
3. Delete it. Moving an item to this list removes the original note — Evernote will place it in its Trash notebook, where it can be recovered.

If you enable ‘Update Evernote notes with their FacileThings tags’, the tags you add to the FacileThings item will also be added to the original note in Evernote.

Automatic, Near-Instant Sync

Notes sync automatically. When you create or update a note in Evernote (in your designated inbox notebook or a project notebook), Evernote notifies FacileThings so the note updates — typically within seconds. If you made the change with an Evernote local app (mobile, tablet or desktop), the signal will reach FacileThings once the note has been synchronized with the Evernote server.

For a new note, FacileThings creates a corresponding item with the note’s title and tags, copying its content into the ‘Notes’ section.

When an existing note is modified, its content is updated in FacileThings. Its title is updated only if the item is still in the Inbox (we assume that the description you add during processing is more meaningful in a GTD context than the original title).

Note Viewer

The task editor shows Evernote notes just as they appear in Evernote:

The note’s content displays in HTML, with all linked resources — images, PDFs, and audio files — included. As a matter of performance and space we don’t store all those resources within FacileThings, so you must be logged in to Evernote to view them (if you can’t view them, you just need open a new browser tab and log in to Evernote.)

If you need to edit the original note, click one of the links that appears above the note.

Thanks to this viewer, you can use the Evernote mobile app to capture images and voice notes in FacileThings when you are out there. Save them in the Evernote notebook you’ve designated for FacileThings capture, and they’ll appear in your Inbox.

Project Support Material

When you associate an Evernote notebook to a project, all its notes are imported and available on the project’s Reference Material list.

As with other notes, updates in Evernote are reflected in FacileThings.

Rate limits

Evernote imposes rate limits to third-party applications.

This means that the number of Evernote data request from FacileThings is limited per hour. If that limit is reached, Evernote blocks your user for a period of time and no data synchronization will take place until Evernote removes that lock again.

Evernote doesn’t publish the exact limit but recommends developers follow best practices to offer the optimal experience to the end user:

• Make economical use of Evernote API requests.
• Notify the users when they exceed the rate limits so that they know why the data is no longer synchronized and when the service will be restored.

We have tried to optimize the synchronization process to the maximum. Still, if you are an Evernote power user and reach the limit at some point, you will immediately receive an email notifying at what time the synchronization service will be restored.

Also, any sync attempts made while your account is locked will be retried once the lock is removed. Thus, although with delay, all changes should be synchronized at the end.

July 2023 Update: Due to an Evernote update, notes that are open — or shared with someone who has them open — may not sync until closed. If you notice that the sync isn’t taking place, you probably need to close the note in Evernote.