Take notes and upload data

In Dovetail, research data is stored in ‘notes’. Notes can contain text, images, audio, video, tables, a transcript from an audio or video file, and more. Notes are intentionally flexible to support a wide variety of research methodologies and data formats.

What to use a note for

Depending on the type of research you’re doing, a note could represent many things. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking:

• Raw notes taken during a customer interview.

• Videos and transcripts from usability testing sessions.

• Qualitative customer feedback imported via a spreadsheet.

• Survey responses imported via a spreadsheet.

• Tweets imported via our Zapier integration.

Create a new note

Inside a project, click Data, then + Add data to create a new note. You can also create hundreds of notes at once by uploading a spreadsheet (Import structured spreadsheet data), or create notes in real-time by connecting an app via zapier (Connect apps to Dovetail with Zapier).

Add structured data to notes

Fields enable you to add structured data on your notes. With fields, you can define attributes like your customer’s name, age, segment, and company. For more information on fields and suggestions on how to make the most out of fields, see Add structured data with fields.

Organize notes with groups

Groups help you organize your notes with a simple drag and drop interface. If you’ve used Trello, Asana, or Jira, then you’ll find it familiar. Name your groups by clicking on the title and change their color by clicking the Actions (···) menu.

Organize groups with boards

A project can have multiple boards with data on each board. Boards work a bit like sheets in a spreadsheet – they’re not views, but are separate containers to organize your data. While you don’t have to have multiple boards, they can be helpful for further categorizing and segmenting your data, and scaling your project’s hierarchy.