Note-taking with Obsidian

Obsidian is a free, open-source note-taking app which helps you link your notes to each other using hypertext with markdown files.

Why I need to switch from OneNote, Google Drive or Evernote to Obsidian?

You don’t. You don’t especially because Obsidian is a pain in the ass to configure and mantain a well-ordered list of notes, both useful and practical and cool-at-the-eyes, is not a simple task and I’m far from achiving it.

Although, I find this app very useful because with a keyboard shortcut I can open a new notes with a specific template like “Troubleshooting Cisco switch stack”, link on the fly an old note called “Cisco command cheatsheet” or search all the notes tagged with “9300”.

Is Obsidian a collaborative app?

Obsidian is not a native collaborative app but maybe there are some plugins and workaround to the lack of collaboration.

Are the notes automatically sync to a cloud?

No, the files are store locally in your machine and even with the paid functionality Sync there is no Obsidian cloud.

First setup

These are my mandatory steps to do before start using the application:

  • Go to Settings
    • Options
      • Editor
        • Turn on live preview Editor -> under General you must disable Legacy Mode. Set Default editing mode to “Live Preview”.
        • If you don’t want a centered text go to Settings -> Editor -> under Display -> Readable line lenght
        • Turn on fold heading and fold indent to collapse text under headings or lists
      • File and links
        • Setup the new notes default folder
        • Setup the attachment folder
      • Core plugins
        • Activate the templates plugin
      • Hotkeys
        • Set the Toggle code shortcut to CTRL + SHIFT + <
        • Set the Template shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + I

Folders

Once we finished the first setup we can start working with Obsidian keeping in mind that is a tool based on hypertext or “now I can link together two or more files”, so for this reason I like to have a few folders and create a logical structure using links as much as possible.

My goto base folder structure is the following:

My Vault
	Archive
	Attachments
	KB
	Templates
  • Archive: where i store the notes of finished activities or tickets.
  • Attachments: screenshots are stored in this folder.
  • KB: this is the folder dedicated to my knowledge base where I put summaries of official vendor’s guides or community posts with the links to each sources. If I find a note particulary useful or well done outside of KB I will move that note in that folder.

Tags

Tags are self explanatory, you can use them to mark a note with a category like “multicast” or “BGP” to summarize in a few words the content of the note. More important connection are done by using links.

Links are the core of Obsidian and the syntax is the following

  • Link to a note ![[Note name]] or [[Note name]]
  • Link to an external page [Link to Wikipedia](https://wikipedia.org)

With ! before the name I’m displaying the content of the link directly in the note I’m currently working on.

Templates

Templates will save you a lot of time putting in place a blueprint of a note with very few steps so you don’t need to rewrite anything.

Try adding these two file to the Templates folder: a simple template and a more personalized one. (I’m not sure but someday I will publish my personal templates).

Now you can open a new emtpy note and with CTRL + SHIFT + I you can choose the template previously added.

Final notes

With this article I touched only the point of the iceberg of this application but it enough ice to start taking notes without losing time rewriting what has already been done with the help of templates and links.

My final suggestions to minimize writing times and speed up the troubleshooting phase of the problem are:

  • keep the KB folder as clean as possibile dividing them by vendor
  • I recommend moving old notes to the archive so that the new notes are easily accessible
  • “recycle” old notes as much as possibile to minimize writing times and speed up the troubleshooting phase of the problem. Instead of opening a note with Ctrl + N search first with Ctl + O if a note has already been made on that topic

Reference

  1. YouTube | Zettelkasten in Obsidian
  2. YouTube | Obsidian for beginners
  3. Markdown Cheat Sheet