Connect Notion – Notis

Notis is unique because it deeply adapts to your Notion workspace setup. In this article we will review how to manage the access Notis has in your Notion workspace.

Step-by-Step process

Step 1: Duplicate the template (Optional)

First, you'll need to make a copy of the template in your Notion workspace:

Click “start with this template” on the top right of the Notis Second Brain Template

Select your workspace and click “Add to Private” to duplicate the template in your workspace.

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You can skip this step if you prefer to connect Notis to your existing database or second brain template (e.g., Easlo, Thomas Frank’s second brain template).

Pages vs. Databases: Make sure you understand the difference between Notion pages and Notion databases. Learn more about Notion databases.

Database Naming: Make sure your existing databases don't have identical names, as they will be ignored to avoid confusing Notis. Use unique, descriptive names for each database. Think how you’d name it so an intern could understand what they are about.

Step 2 : Request the link to the Notis portal

If you're using WhatsApp or iMessage: Simply send a message to Notis asking for "the link to my portal" or "portal" and if you're using Telegram, use the blue “Menu” button on the bottom left and select the “/portal” command

Notis will respond with a link to your personal portal where you can manage your database connections

Step 3 : Go through the Notion authorization flow

After clicking the portal link, follow these steps:

Click the + button on the top of the portal.

Select "Select pages to share with Notis" option (instead of installing the template provided by the developer)

Select the pages that contain the databases you want Notis to access. If you chose to use the Notis Second Brain template, you’ll need to select the page “Notis Second Brain”. You can either select any of your top level pages or use the search bar to search for a specific page.

Here, I’m connecting the Thomas Frank’s Ultimate Brain for Notion.

Click "Allow access" to confirm your selection. Notis will take 5 minutes to update itself in your database. Feel free to close this page and return to WhatsApp or Telegram. Notis will automatically send you a message when the synchronization has finished.

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We use the term “sync” to describe the process where Notis discovers your database and its properties and ensures they are available for insert or query operations. Notis will also vectorize the content database to make it available to the file search tool, and this can take up to 24 hours.

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Power tip: Sync only takes 5 minutes to ensure that the Notion API has time to reflect the changes made in your workspace and avoid user confusion. If you don’t want to wait, you can click “Go back to portal” and hit the sync button until your changes are reflected in the database list.

Step 4 : Wait for confirmation and review your databases (Optional)

Once the sync has completed, Notis will send you a confirmation on WhatsApp or Telegram with a link to open your portal and verify your setup.

Click on the link in the message to access your portal:

You'll see a list of all databases that Notis has discovered

Each database will have a toggle to activate or deactivate it

By default, all discovered databases are activated (up to 20 databases)

You can deactivate any databases you don't want Notis to use to query or write into

Review the descriptions of each database to ensure Notis understands how to use them

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You can add custom instructions for Notis on how to uses each database by editing the database description and properties description directly in Notion. Use this to deeply personalize Notis to your workflow. Learn more.

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Notis will automatically activate the first 20 databases discovered (by last edited time). If you want Notis to use more than 20 databases, you’ll have activate them manually in the portal.

Using the Notis Second Brain Template

The Notis Second Brain System is a comprehensive productivity template designed to help you manage every aspect of your life in Notion with the help of Notis.

We will walk you through each database available in the Notis Second Brain System, explaining their purpose and providing examples of how to use them effectively.

Areas

Areas represent the different aspects of your life that you organize your time around. Think about how you split your time during your week and weekend.

“Areas are part of my life that I organise my time around...you are likely to have different areas in your life that you share your time during the week and the weekend between.”

For example, you might have Areas like "Personal," "Work," or specific work stream. These categories help you sort your entire databases quickly and efficiently.

Here’s how my own Areas database looks like.

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Use the same areas for timeboxing your week in your agenda. I have a dedicated calendar in Notion called “Timeboxing” where I lock my week per area based on the time I want to ideally allocate to each work stream. This easily ensures you spend enough time in each area you prioritize your life around.

Projects

Projects are collections of tasks. As rule of thumb, projects require more than a day to complete. They serve as a valuable abstraction for attaching notes, documents, tasks, and reminders to track progress over time. Unlike Areas, they have a begining and end and you’ll want to track progress to make sure you stay on track with your objectives.

“Creating projects is a valuable abstraction for attaching notes, documents, tasks, and reminders to track their progress over time.”

For example, you might create a project called "Launch on Product Hunt" and link it to the "Notis" Area. Within this project, you can create tasks like "Brainstorm hook for Product Hunt" and track their progress.

This is what my project database looks at the moment.

Tasks & Reminders

Tasks are small chunks of work that you can complete in a day. The Tasks & Reminders database helps you stay on top of your daily activities and priorities.

“If you need more than one day to complete a task, it’s more likely to be a project”

For example, you might create a task like "Post the video about the Notis second-brain system" and assign it to the "Personal" Area with a specific due date. You can also use the calendar view to drag and drop tasks to schedule them.

By default, you’ll see your tasks with a due date on the calendar view and your inbox (your tasks without a due date) organised by area. Notion makes it very easy to change this and create views that match your specific workflow.

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Download Notion Calendar to view your tasks alongside your calendars and allow for easy time-boxing and updating.

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You can easily organise your week by drag and dropping your tasks from the right side (inbox) to the left side to schedule when you’ll work on them during the week.

Notes & Documents

Notes & Documents are everything that you write yourself. This database helps you organize your thoughts, ideas, and longer-form content.

“Notes are things that you write. And things that you write yourself...If you write a quick note for you, it's just like a document that you don't spend much time doing it. But if you write a full presentation and a full document and spend a lot of time, it's the same thing."

For example, you might create a document titled "How to manage your anxiety at the dentist!" and link it to your "Personal" Area. This could be a quick note or a more detailed document depending on your needs.

By default, your notes are organized by area, but you can easily modify the view to organize them by project.

Bookmarks

Bookmarks are for storing content created by others that you want to save for future reference. This can include web articles, quotes from books, or any other external content.

"Bookmarks are things that other wrote. So it can be website content that you captured to remember a new tool that you discovered might be a quote from a book, might be anything that someone else wrote."

For example, you might save an article titled "Drills, needles, and pain, oh my! Coping with dental anxiety - Harvard Health" to your Bookmarks database and link it to your "Personal" Area.

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I recommend that you install the Notion Web Clipper to easily capture web pages directly from Chrome on your desktop and to use the Notion extension that comes with their app on mobile.

Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes is a database for storing notes and summaries from your meetings, helping you keep track of discussions, decisions, and action items.

“One of my favourite use cases is to ask Notis, right after I’ve hung up a call that was transcribed by Granola, to send me a draft for a follow-up email based on my last meeting with the other attendee's tasks and to add mine directly to my own tasks database.”

For example, you might have an entry titled "Notis Orientation between Florian Pariset and Chaimaa" that includes attendees, key discussion points, and next steps from the meeting.

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Use voice notes to have Notis transcribe face-to-face meeting and Granola.ai for online meeting. When installing Granola, configure the Notion extension to use this database instead than the template provided by the developer", this way all your meetings transcripts end in the same place and can be used with Notis.

Features & Bugs

Features & Bugs is a database designed for product managers and developers to track feature requests and bug reports.

"I used to dread reporting bugs — Notis has made it, by far, the path of least resistance to write precise bug reports"

For example, you might create an entry to track a new feature idea or report a bug you've discovered in an application you're developing.

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Add your own bug report standard format to the description of the database. You can push things further by having GitHub synchronize your issues in this database so your team stays perfectly in sync.

Contacts & CRM

Contacts & CRM helps you manage your sales process or manage your contacts to give useful context for Notis. This is meant to be a very simple start point that you can modify to fit the place contacts or CRM has in your life. This database is particularly useful when you connect entries to the Meeting Minutes, Notes & Documents and your Tasks database.

“Having my contacts in my second brain allows me to quickly ask Notis what my follow-up task is with my leads and easily ask questions about our previous meetings. It basically offers me a consolidated context by contact across my second brain.”

For example, you might store contact information, interaction history, and notes about follow-ups with clients, colleagues, or friends.

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Ever handed out business cards at meetings and conventions? Snap a picture and send it to Notis for it to extract all the relevant info and save it in your contacts database. How cool is that?!

Known limitations

Multiple Notion workspace

Notis can only connect to single workspace at the moment.

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A less than ideal workaround is to use a different phone number for Telegram and WhatsApp. This will allow for two accounts with different settings. Reach out to our support, and we will happily activate your subscription on your second account.