Notes have always been a wasted opportunity in my humble opinion they are just too easy to miss.

The new orders BETA screen currently seems to be a step backwards sadly It is now 3 clicks to edit a note. You now have to open the order and then drill into the notes tab whereas before one click and the note modal is ready for edits.

Wouldn't it be a great idea to have the option of having the entire note visible in a dedicated column? With the combination of macros, it would provide great flexibility in terms of making sure important detailed order information is actually seen. In addition, it would provide a dedicated space for vendors that offer additional services like personalisation, gift wrap messages and various custom features without the need to drill into the order all from the summary view.

It could look something like this:

I think this should be a fairly straight forward feature to implement and would fill a well-needed gap in terms of order view flexibility. 

Yes, something like this would be a big improvement. Currently it is significantly more complex than it need be to post notes against orders. Another annoyance is that when orders are exported to a a 3rd party FC, all notes are included in the order export, when it should exclude internal notes. Order notes exported to FC's should be limited to those special instructions provided by customers for couriers, and similar (i.e. external notes).

Having Linnworks use notes with integrations with ticketing Helpdeks (e.g. Xsellco) is great, but the notes should be much more visible, as per the above suggestion, to take full advantage of this crossover with CRM type platforms.

Thanks Dominic, agreed notes often provide critical nuggets of order information.

They contain all those details that make a good experience for the customer. They provide a place for vendors to offer a unique and nuanced service. Hiding this away and not giving it a prominent position on the view is a lost opportunity. 

Up until now, we have used service items to view this vital information; as on the old view, it is visible in the summary. Otherwise, when we are busy, we will miss it. So, for this reason, we have never made use of notes at all. 

A feature like this is so simple and open ended and would provide the vendor with unlimited flexibility as to what information is visible on the screen. For those that have not managed a busy eCommerce business, it may be hard to understand perhaps that we don't want to print out sheets of paper or drill down into every order. We want the information we need on screen. The only time that we should be drilling into orders is when something that could have been automated has failed.

Totally agree, also, if a customer users a discount code on my shopify site it doesn't show the note that tells me when they should be getting their order which comes through on all orders that don't have a discount code.

Such an under utilised facility of LW!

If anyone needs to mass upload of notes and or tags to go along with these (I use tags to say a personalized item has been designed)

LW is quoting £500 to get this made as a custom feature to import a CSV with notes and tags.   Fire me back if of interest and we can split the costs, the more of interest the cheaper.