Notion

What it is

Notion is a place for text that can also be a database. A page is a document, a table is a collection of pages with fields, and the two connect. For rules, decisions and anything that has to stay readable, that mixture is exactly the useful part.

Where it holds

As a shared place for things that otherwise live in heads and chat threads. If an automation acts on a rule, that rule has to sit somewhere a human can read, change and approve without asking a developer. A Notion table with an “approved by” column is a good tool for that.

Second point: the API is decent. A process can read a rule before it acts, instead of holding a second copy in its own code.

Where it bites

Without upkeep it becomes a graveyard. The ease of creating a new page is exactly why, a year later, nobody can find what still applies. Without a person who tidies, a Notion workspace is unusable in short order.

The API only sees what you show it. An integration reaches only pages explicitly shared with it. That is the right default, and it regularly means a process cannot find a page that obviously exists.

Large tables get sluggish, and search fails to find things you know are there.

What it looks like when it runs

The rules sit in a table anyone on the team can read and change, and the workflow reads them instead of carrying them. When a price, a deadline or a wording changes, the person responsible changes it in one place. Nobody has to ask whoever builds the workflows, and nobody has to guess which version is current. That is the difference between knowledge in somebody’s head and knowledge that works.

What to think about before choosing it

Notion is a good place for knowledge and a bad place for data that arrives in volume. Collect orders or events there and in a year you have a slow table. For rules, processes, decisions and documentation it is hard to beat.