Stephane Bounmy

🗂 Notion as a Google Drive or Dropbox alternative

Stephane Bounmy -

UPDATE : 03/09/2020 file attachment from IOS works again :)

As my business grows I start having multiple startups, projects and properties it became a mess until I start organising my life.

👉👉👉 Take a look at the demo here

Why moving from Google Drive ? 🤯

Notion is used as my second brain with the PARA method. And it is shared my team and partners.
I was frustrated that I could not do the same thing with other file storage solution such as Google Drive. I always had to write an email where I would put a link in the mail and explain what is was.

⚠️ This is experimental but is a beginning of organising my files on Notion :

  1. Add text and images to files
    So my team understand quickly a document or someone can be onboarded easily
  2. Share documents or a whole workbook  in one click
  3. Quick Search (and efficient)
  4. Easy to capture documents and organize them later
What is Notion ? Notion is like a no-code tool to organize your files, tasks, bookmarks the way you like. The limit are (almost) endless.

Before I was storing in /Downloads or /Google Drive/Some folders + Finder
After : Feel like workbook + in each page we have a more detailed page because we can give context with text or images

I assume you are already familiar with Notion. If not I would suggest you to spend a few days getting your hands on it.

How my notion Drive works

The goal here is to reproduce the way I organise paper documents :

In each divider, paper Documents are sorted by creation date descending
Documents on Notion as Drive

Setup Notion as a Google Drive

I will show you how I organise my files. Feel free to adapt workbooks and dividers to your situation

Setup a database drive

The 3 main properties you need to setup : workbook, divider and date

Setup workbooks and dividers

Left : Workbooks. Right : Dividers

One Workbook per

  • Compagny
  • Person (me, Emira, mom)
  • Property
  • Transportation (Car, Bike etc)
  • Etc (the rest)

Dividers :

  • Bank
  • Taxes
  • Invoices
  • Insurance
  • Etc (the rest)

If you a divider is not used in a workbook you can hide it 👀:

Setup your workbook view (board)

Create a Board view

Filter by Workbook
Group by Dividers

Then each page are displayed as you want :

In each Document you can put images, embed PDF or files

You can also quick search cmd + p or ctrl + p (windows)

Add an inbox folder

Every time you save or scan a document : upload them to Notion to a default Folder so you can organize them later : <INBOX>

This is not a perfect solution. Another alternative is to embed a google drive folder in Notion.

Embed Google Drive Folder in Notion

https://drive.google.com/embeddedfolderview?id={{folder-id}}#list
Whenever you click on a file it will open a new window (cons)

👉 You can try it here

Conclusion

Pros

  • Add context to documents
    Documents
  • Share easily a bunch of documents
  • Good overview of files
  • Quick Search Notion
  • Easy yearly archive
    At the end of year you can duplicate your drive, archive them in 📆 2019 and start a new fresh drive.
  • $5 / month for an unlimited storage

Cons

  • No sync on computer
    So if you need to upload a file somewhere like a webform you will have to download the file and upload it
  • No permissions on filtered views
    At the moment it is not possible to share only a specific workbook (filetered view) to someone. If you share your drive the person will have access to all your other documents.
    A current workaround is to duplicate the drive, delete the other view+ documents and share this copy of Drive.
  • Notion Webclipper does not attach files anymore
    I was using scanbot + notion to scan and upload my files to Notion. It is no longer possible. I believe Notion restricted this so people dont overuse notion.
UPDATE : it does work again :)