At Process Street, we recognize how important it is to be able to integrate our platform with the host of other tools you use in your company.

Improving your workflows and processes increases your output and, in turn, your productivity. Automating these workflows helps maximize those aims.

In this article, we look at the note taking tool Evernote which provides an intuitive way to record notes or ideas which can be shared or acted upon easily, either through simple notes or more complex Evernote templates.

Use case

• A content creation team want to store their ideas in a shared location
• The team wants to turn this initial idea into a concept for an article
• The team wants to have an archive of the plans they have created

Process overview

• We will create a note in Evernote in a shared notepad
• We will configure our zap to launch a Process Street checklist
• We will use this checklist to formulate a plan for the article
• We will create another zap which moves the information entered into the checklist back into Evernote
• We will store a record of this information in the same note which triggered the checklist

Let’s look at how we can do this.

How to run a Process Street checklist from Evernote

We use the third-party automation service Zapier to connect our platform with different webapps. Within Zapier’s community, there are now over 1000 different webapps and services you can connect to.

These connections are referred to as zaps.

Normally, you will only need to set the zap up once. This gives you the time to focus on the important things rather than repetitive tasks.

We’re going to connect Evernote to this template:

Zapier is structured so that you pick a trigger and then an action. In our integration, adding a new note to the Process Street Blog Ideas notepad is going to trigger the zap. The zap will then take the data and give that to Process Street where it will perform the action of launching a checklist.

Zap 1: Launching our Process Street checklist

Create a zap and select New Note

Create your new zap with Evernote as your chosen trigger app. Select the trigger New Note. This triggers when a new note is created inside a notepad. In this case, the notepad is a shared one called Process Street Blog Ideas.

Connect your Evernote account to Zapier

Allow Zapier access to your Evernote account and test the connection to make sure it is working.

Choose the notebook to trigger your zap from

Make sure you select a notebook or you may launch checklists from every note you create. I’ve selected Process Street Blog Ideas.

Test to check your trigger is working and move on to setting up the Action.

Select Create Checklist as your Process Street action

Choose Process Street as your action app and select the option Create Checklist as the action the zap will perform.

Connect your Process Street account to zapier

Zapier will ask you for an API key. You can go into your organization on your Process Street account and select the tab Settings and API. Here you will be able to generate a new API key to enter into Zapier’s pop up window.

Configure the checklist which you want to run

I’ve chosen to run my checklist from the template Blog Ideas Processing Checklist. In the field below, titled Name, click on the dropdown and select the Evernote note title. We will use this as our guide to feed information back into the note later.

I also assigned the checklist to myself and entered a due date of “+24h” to give myself a day to complete the checklist.

Enter information into the checklist from Evernote

After selecting the Process Street template to work from, the form fields for that checklist will show up on the Edit Template screen. I have chosen to add the content of my Evernote note into the Evernote Idea form field.

Once you have finished, test  your zap to make sure it is working and move on to building the second zap.

Zap 2: Sending data back to Evernote

Create a new zap and select New Task Checked as your trigger

Choose Process Street as your trigger app and select the option New Task Checked as the trigger for starting the zap.

Choose which task triggers the zap

Select the Process Street template you’re working from and then choose the task which runs the zap. I’ve selected Begin the blog article creation process as this is the last task on the template.

Test this step to check your trigger is working and continue to set up the action.

Select the action Append to Note

Choose Evernote as your action app and select the option Append to Note. This will allow us to add information to an already existing note in your Evernote account.

Choose what information to add to the note

In the Edit Template section, first select the notebook where the note is located. Next, set the Checklist Name to be the title of the note the zap looks for. In our previous zap, we configured the checklist to have the same title as the original note.

In the Content field, use the dropdown to select all the different Process Street form fields you want to take information from. In the image below, I have only included one of these fields. You could include all of them.

Test your zap to make sure it is working

This should complete the setup of the integration between Evernote and Process Street. Work through your integration from start to finish to check everything is working correctly before employing it in the wild.