Notion – Notis | Help Center

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 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 access your portal.

Step 2: Go through the Notion authorization flow

After clicking the portal link, open “Integrations”, search for “Notion” and click “Connect”

Choose “Use a template provided by the developer” to install our Notis Second Brain template.

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

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Select “Select pages to share with Notis” 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.

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?!

Turn any Notion database into an AI agent

Notis is built uppon a unique approach to automation that leverages the powerful combination of Notion databases and AI. At its core, any software consists of three key components: a database, business logic, and a user interface. Notis enables you to create sophisticated automation systems by seamlessly integrating these components through Notion and delegating that piece of software to Notis.

1. Design your Database

Create a Notion database that contains all the properties necessary for your workflow. This database will store all the information your automation needs to function effectively.

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Ask yourself what Notis will need to store or access to complete the task I want to delegate.

2. Add your Business Logic

Add your custom business logic directly within Notion by configuring:

The description of the database itself

The descriptions of individual properties within the database

This approach effectively transforms any Notion database into its own AI agent, capable of performing specific tasks and following custom rules.

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Ask yourself how you would explain this recurring task to an intern.

3. Choose your UI

Interact with your automation through various channels (WhatsApp, Telegram and emails) and automations (recurring prompt). These interfaces allow you to trigger automations, set up recurring tasks, and manage your workflows from anywhere.

My blog database contains all the properties to store and manage the Notis blog, and it asks Notis to perform a deep search before any new entry and to generate the hero image autonomously.

Configure your workspace in Notion

Database descriptions

The database description serves as the primary set of instructions for Notis. Here’s how to edit databases’ descriptions in Notion:

Step 1 - Open the database a full page

Step 2 - Click on “Show description”

Step 3 - Write your instructions

Here are the categories of instructions you can include:

User Preferences

Ask Notis to remember specific information about you or your preferences:

Remember my name is Florian Pariset.
Remember that I prefer all content to be written in a conversational tone.
Remember that I'm based in Europe and use 24-hour time format.

Content Formatting Instructions

Specify how new entries should be formatted:

Format all new entries in this database using formal business language.
Always use bullet points for listing features or benefits.
Structure meeting notes with clear headings for agenda, decisions, and action items.

Tool Integration

Direct Notis to use specific tools before creating or updating entries:

Before creating a new blog post, perform a deep search on the topic to gather relevant information.
Use the Gen Image generation model to create a featured image for each new entry.
Before adding a new competitor, search the web for their latest product announcements and funding details.

Workflow Rules

Define how Notis should handle specific situations or workflows:

When creating a new task, always check for similar existing tasks to avoid duplication.
For expense entries over $500, tag the Finance team and set priority to high.
If a task is marked as blocked, automatically create a follow-up reminder for 2 days later.

Data Validation Rules

Specify validation requirements for entries:

Ensure all client contact information includes at least an email address and phone number.
Verify that project deadlines are not set on weekends or holidays.
Check that all blog posts are at least 800 words before marking as ready for review.

Integration with Other Databases

Provide instructions for cross-database operations:

When creating a new client project, check the Clients database for existing contact information.
After adding a new task, update the relevant project status in the Projects database.
When logging a new meeting note, link it to the corresponding client and project records.

Property Descriptions

Each property in your database can have its own set of instructions. Here’s how to edit them in Notion:

Step 1 - Open the Database Settings

Step 2 - Click on “Edit properties”

Step 3 - Click on the “i” pictogram and add your instructions

Here are examples of what you can include in property descriptions:

Default Values

Specify default values for properties:

By default, tag new posts as "Inbox" until they are reviewed.
Set the priority to "Medium" unless otherwise specified.
Default status should be "Not Started" for new tasks.

Formatting Rules

Define specific formatting requirements:

Captions must be a maximum of 140 characters.
Format all titles in Title Case.
Ensure descriptions are between 100-500 characters.

Content Generation Guidelines

Provide instructions for generating content:

Generate meeting summaries with key points, action items, and decisions made.
Create product descriptions that highlight benefits, features, and use cases.
Write captions in a conversational, engaging tone with relevant hashtags.

Conditional Logic

Implement conditional rules for property values:

If deadline is less than 3 days away, set priority to "High".
When status changes to "Completed", automatically set the completion date to today.
If budget exceeds $10,000, require approval field to be completed.

Calculation Instructions

Guide Notis on performing calculations:

Calculate total cost by multiplying quantity by unit price.
Determine project duration by counting weekdays between start and end dates.
Compute ROI by dividing profit by investment and formatting as percentage.

Data Extraction Rules

Provide guidelines for extracting information:

Extract company name, contact person, and amount from invoice images.
Identify key metrics and trends from meeting transcripts.
Parse email addresses and phone numbers from business cards.