New to emacs, trying to find some solutions/ideas

So I'm REALLY new to EMACs. I've been playing in org-mode. Honestly, I'd be in good shape if I could get better with the key map. Anyway, I'm really coming to EMACs to simplify life. So here is where I'm at. Notes, Finance, and agenda I'm still really new to and learning. I really need to keep working on this but I'm starting to keep most of my notes in EMACs now. I was previously on Joplin but it's sync has been a complete pain. The few things I'm curious about implementing * A rather in-depth but simple wiki that can support more than 1 person as an editor. It'd be nice to see it get converted to html somewhere(offline, I'm fine with docker), I'm very comfortable with static sites and hugo, so that was a consideration. I'm thinking org-mode or org-roam here, or just use EMACs as an editor for a hugo site, I'm not really sure how this is "normally" done. * Process management, or more to the point a CRM of sorts. I'm in a few businesses, 1 is IT but another is actually photography. A few years ago (just before covid really shook things up) I stopped taking on everything due to some major family medical issues and such. Anyway, I'm planning on going back to it. I work solo or with my wife occasionally and one of my requirements for bringing this business back up is to be lean. I had A LOT! of monthly expenses which is what lead to issues in the prior business when disaster struck the family. Studio management software, web site (because I was too lazy to make my own), etc... I've come to the conclusion that with a good bit of planning and a good workflow and processes, I don't need any of the extra costly SAAS stuff, which was way too complex for my business anyway. With that explanation out of the way, what I'm really after is to do a few things inside some type of customer centric model: * Track new leads (very few at a time, really they come in email form mostly, or calls) * Plan meetings (org-mode and probably agenda?) * Email (reminders of meetings, etc) * Task automation would be really cool, I can code a little python (or maybe learn the language of emacs ) if need be... Simple stuff like sending those email reminders for client meetings, creating a task to order rental equipment a certain number of days before the wedding, sending out referral requests, creating tasks at specific intervals for myself... etc.... * Contracts? Not signed(sign would be interesting to see though), but maybe produced... I considered looking at the big player APIs to see if I could build it myself... It's be interesting to see how that'd play out... * A second brain, except simpler than what exists now, with so much going on in life, my brain is on overload 90% of the time.... and scheduling anything is a nightmare with 4 different calendars to watch I honestly feel a bit stupid for asking the above. The CRM side of this I'm really interested in seeing, or at least how others might be using emacs for business. Finance is easy, notes, easy when you remember the keybindings... the rest, not so sure how I'd lay that out. Now that I read through the above, I feel like there is a way to do most of this is org-mode.... maybe I'm a little lost here, or maybe I'm foolish to think this could be plausible. I've stretched software to do stuff it wasn't designed to do before though... Curious your thoughts.

I think you will find many of the talks at EmacsConf to be useful - https://emacsconf.org/2021/all/

That is a big list! My tip is to learn one thing well, then configure the next, don't go in config overdrive otherwise Emacs is a productivity sink instead of enabler.

IMVHO collaboration and Emacs are not a good match because others need to use Emacs or you are limited by some common tool that can't be as integrated as an Emacs one... Beside that personally: - I have my contacts in org-mode, with org-contacts to have email completion in notmuch (see below) and others details in org-mode eventually query-able via org-ql (for instance to see just some matching contacts); - mails in Emacs via notmuch and ob-notmuch (org-mode `notmuch:` and `notmuch-search:` link types plus org-store-link/org-insert-link integration) with a background system part via fetchmail (no point in leaving mails on the server for me) + MailDrop (autorefiling/autofiltering/and automation) witch was one of the pillars of the productivity boost; - most files org-attached, sometimes manually copied in small and manageable subtrees accessed in dired&al. via org-mode links or org-attach-reveal, that is another pillar since it allow me to forget the storage part more than a bit, accessing anything via search&narrow through my org-roam managed org-mode notes witch means a kind of direct access to anything; - most docs as org-roam notes, easy to access as mentioned above, easy to enter, useful for presenting directly instead of wasting time in slides, easy for full-text search via consult-rg/counsel-rg etc possibility to query thanks to a good templating via org-ql for some needs - org-ql for some usage, limited since it's not that immediate for me, but useful for instance to going through my notes in a time line (timestamp in drawer, ability to query it) so see weekly, monthly, yearly summary of anything giving at outline view of my digital life, sometimes useful to discover affine/unlinked otherwise contents etc - M-x calc, not such revolution but a ready calculator thanks to EXWM, something modern desktops miss often - maxima, integrated in org-mode for more complex math and org-tables to some spreadsheets like computing, with org-plot if/when needed For some ideas: - this is very nice https://youtu.be/B6jfrrwR10k - a bit extreme but nice anyway to feel what you can do in text https://youtu.be/5ViUBaarsbw - short and simple about pdf management https://youtu.be/lCc3UoQku-E and https://youtu.be/2t925KRBbFc or https://youtu.be/Zya8SfmCtFA - various videos from Mike Zamansky https://cestlaz.github.io/stories/emacs/ or Stavrou Protesilaos https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Bwba5vnQK14z96Gil86pLMDO2GnOhQ6 and David Wilson https://www.youtube.com/c/SystemCrafters/playlists they are huge publishers so you might like to skim just to cherry pick something.

That is a great point indeed.

Wow, thanks for the detailed reply. I should probably clarify the collaboration. The collaborators work well in text, it's mostly myself and my Dad actually. Kind of our how we did something when we built it, how we will do x, plans for future plans... etc... he might actually be better at EMACs than me in all honesty, he remembers it from when he was in IT in the 90s. I've discussed a bit with him and EMACs or markdown are on the table. We're both interested in the text storage mechanisms. ​ As for the rest, I've got a lot of reading and watching to do. ​ Thanks for the all resources.

Your welcome :-) Well, in that case a shared org-mode notes set, perhaps org-roam managed is probably the simplest way, assuming that both use use *nix Unison might offer a lightweight bi-directional sync, a VCS (like git, monothone, ...) on a homeserver can be another option while preserving history and commits IMVHO it's mostly meaningless for notes. I do not suggest MD at all simply because is raw and limited, the power of org-mode is anything integrated and live, MD still have to decide if it's something to be rendered like html or something to be directly reading, witch is not comfortable at all, it's popular simply because it's the least horrid markup modern software support so the most well-known by the masses tool, not because it's technically interesting... On text storage well, that's a complex topic, probably not worth an initial test simply because it's too vast and almost irrelevant for basic usage, the main point is that notes under a tree means something easy to (rip)grep for, something usable with common *nix tools and Emacs issueless acting like metadata-rich directories for any other contents, essentially I suggest a global org-attach data directory (perhaps in a zfs volume) and a note directory. Notes are data+metadata, org-attached storage are binary blob still a bit manageable with classic unix tools (for instance find stuff by date) while remaining simple enough. A small personal example for phone bills: a carrier dedicated note, named after the carrier name, a general "invoices" heading with org-attached (manually created via org-attach-reveal + dired) set of subdir, one per year, and inside an invoice after another. Under that heading a sub heading per invoice, linking the pdf bill in the title like #+title: My carrier * Contract(s) .... * Logs .... * Invoices ...org-drawer with the ID for attachments... ** 2022 a summary table for the year costs, notes on incidents etc *** 01 - January invoice data, munged from pdf/email *** 02 - February ... all entry can be `roam_aliases: "aliased"` in the drawer so you can hit a key bound to `org-roam-node-find` and type something like `$initial_carrier_letters $month_number` to end up directly to a specific invoice with all the data displayed (number, date, due date, amount, ...), a click to open the mail announcing the bill in notmuch so that you can directly forward it if needed, a click to open the pdf if needed, a click to attach the pdf to an email if needed etc. All moderately easy to automate and all ready when you'll might need to have it a day. Similar method is valid for pretty anything, for instance if you like to build with wood well a note about all your works, a heading per furniture, attached files as needed, any info you want in org mode, links to other notes like when you bought this and that at what price from who again linked to their relevant note etc. Information is just text, org-mode allow to make such text live, clickable, reachable in a fingertips :-) Org-agenda is slow on large note bases but still usable if you start Emacs with your desktop session and use as a daemon (if not as the whole DE with EXWM) just firing up the client, thanks to that you can write TODOs, SCHEDULED, DEADLINES, ... cyclic entries etc in any note and see them in agenda and org-ql regardless of their physical location, clicking on them to reach it anyway if needed. For instance in my catchall I have an entry to remember run my generator once in a while to keep it healthy if needed, a simple ** make generator run for 15' %%(diary-cyclic 40 1 1 2022) make generator run for 15' eventual logs here You can integrate financial transactions, books notes, contacts, ... we have a unique and integrated mind, there is no point in rigid separation on desktops, there is only a point in being able to see portioned data when we need, but not rigidly, because our needs are not rigid. You can integrate almost anything, a thing no modern software offer being built as a walled garden even without IPCs these days behind manual cut&paste...