I worry that this is wildly engineered, but I couldn’t find an easy way (or way at all?) to quickly grab a URL to a file on my Mac. At least some cursory web searches suggested I’m not the only one, so even if there is a simple way, it is not simply found 😂
It doesn’t work cross-platform, because there doesn’t seem to be a URL scheme for Files on i(Pad)OS (but please let me know if I’m wrong!). I use this via Finder Quick Actions, so that I can right-click → Quick Actions → Copy link to file, and then I have a link to the file on my clipboard. Useful for referencing files in a Things task or Agenda note!
I like this because I can select a bunch of tasks for tagging at once (read: inbox) and not use the tag selector. And, because this uses the Get selected items action, it can be invoked from Siri (or Share Sheet or Spotlight), so I can speak the tag to add.
Converting an OmniFocus Shortcut for use with the new Things 3.17 Shortcut actions (currently in beta released publicly!), here is a Shortcut that asks for the name of a tag, then adds anything with that tag to a list in an email. It also asks if the tag is the greeting (the common use case is for a tag that is a person’s name). Enjoy!
Recently, Cultured Code, the group behind the task management app Things, shared that the upcoming 3.17 version woul include deeper support for Shortcuts. I get a lot of requests for my Shortcuts to support Things, but that hasn’t been possible until this new version (previous versions' Shortcuts actions basically all landed you in the Things interface, without being able to otherwise read, manipulate, or share Things data).
I will be re-tooling a bunch of my Shortcuts to support Things in this new incarnation, but as a start, I thought I would share a first fast one I whipped up:
This Shortcut creates an email draft intended to be sent to recipients in advance of a meeting.
It asks for a tag to be searched for and creates a text list of tasks with that tag in a draft email. It will also either use the search key as a greeting in the email or allow you to enter one of your own.
This is great for meetings with my boss, where I can search her name as a tag in Things, and then have an email drafted to her before our weekly 1:1 conversations.
As of this writing, Things 3.17 is in beta, so that is required for this to work for you, but hope you enjoy!
Structure your day, combining the notetaking and task management experiences.
I love having a structured day, and using my favourite apps, OmniFocus and Agenda, coupled with Shortcuts, I have been able to establish that structure in a way that I'm excited to share.
These Shortcuts serve to enable a digital Bullet Journal system, where ideas, information, and tasks can be easily captured and put together, with an aim to making future task management easy by using OmniFocus' powerful organization and integration with Agenda to surface tasks of importance.
Author's note: This post will serve as the definitive home for this set of Shortcuts, and will be updated as versions change.
Agenda Daily Journal Builder
This Shortcut, for use with the Agenda app, creates a new note titled as EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022) in the project of your choosing (as named with a text action, filled out as an import question for this Shortcut).
The note contains a list of all-day events from your calendar under the heading Today, as well as a list of timed calendar events under the heading of Events.
Next to each event is an arrow which, when clicked, creates a new note (as named with a text action and also filled out as an import question for this Shortcut) linked to that calendar event and pre-populated with that event’s name, location, organizer, and attendees (taken from the calendar). This makes it easy to generate relevant notes for the day. All calendar items in the note are preceded by a designated emoji.
Next, under the heading of Tasks is a checkmark list of tasks from OmniFocus that are either due today or overdue (designated by the emoji 🚨) or flagged (designated by 🔶). Each item is is followed by links to view or complete the OmniFocus task (using OmniAutomation). The latter requires security settings in OmniFocus to allow external scripts, which you can get help with on the Omni Automation site.
Lastly, a horizontal rule is added with a heading of Rapid log, where logging of notes for the day can be added as they occur (which is supported by the Rapid log Shortcut below).
1.0: Initial version. 1.1: Added fixes for URL encoding and link quality. 1.2: Changed OmniFocus task presentation: now title of task is no longer linked, but is followed by links to view in OF or complete the OF task (using OmniAutomation). Renamed Shortcut.
Agenda Rapid Log
This Shortcut, for use with the Agenda Daily Journal Builder Shortcut above, appends provided input to the note titled with today's date EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022), working in cooperation with OmniFocus for task capture.
The Shortcut asks for input, and multiple lines of input can be provided. Lines of text are each added as bullet list items to the Agenda Daily Journal, each with a timestamp to represent when they were entered.
If a line of inputted text begins with two spaces, it will be treated as a subbullet to the line above it, and so will be indented and will not include the timestamp.
If a line of inputted text begins with a dash and a space - , it is given special treatment and treated as a task. in this case:
It will be created as an OmniFocus Task (in the Inbox, unless otherwise specified, more below)
It will be shown as a checklist item in the Agenda note instead of a bullet list item
The Agenda checklist item’s text will be followed by links to view or complete the OmniFocus task
Additionally, for these task items, text can be entered inline to add treatment to the task created:
Adding @flagged in this line will flag the task created in OmniFocus, and indicate the checklist item in Agenda with an orange diamond emoji (the actual @flagged text will not be included in either the Agenda text or OmniFocus task title)
Adding tags inline as #tag1#tag2 (no spaces) will add those tags to the OmniFocus task created (this text will not be reflected in Agenda)
Adding a project name as +(project name) will add the task to the first matched project name in OmniFocus
Adding // (space slash slash space) as a delimiter, followed by content, will place the content following the slashes in the notes of the generated OmniFocus task (and omit them from the Agenda text)
In fact, all supported Taskpaper format parameters can be added to a task's line.
To make this easiest to use for journaling through the day and capture, I recommend setting it to a hotkey on Mac and to be triggered by Back Tap on an iPhone.
1.0: Initial version 1.1: Added comments for OF task with // 1.11: Fix for undesired repeated use of task comments 1.2: Added subbulleting 1.3: Changed tag identification to require preceding space for hash mark (so that Agenda tags can be added with \#), maintaining only the OmniFocus version (no longer building for Reminders) 1.4: Added OmniAutomation links for viewing/completing OmniFocus tasks
Agenda Email Clipper
This Mac-only Shortcut (because of the need for AppleScript and iOS' lack of Shortcuts support for Mail), for use with the Agenda app and my Agenda Daily Journal Builder Shortcut, appends provided input to the note titled with today's date EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022), along with the currently selected email.
This Shortcut works very much like my Agenda Rapid Log Shortcut, except that it captures the currently selected email. That email will then be appended to anything entered in the Rapid Log, referred to by a reference that is asked for following the entry of Rapid Log content, linked back to the actual email itself.
The Shortcut will then (optionally) archive the selected email (using the sending of keystroke ^ + ⌘ + a), and then allow choice as to which app to return to (Mail, Agenda, or OmniFocus).
The use case here is fast inbox processing, and this Shortcut is best used when invoked by a keyboard shortcut. Note that this Shortcut here offers all the same syntax support as the Agenda Rapid Log, meaning that tasks can be generated in OmniFocus (which also contain the link to the referenced email), tagged and noted accordingly.
1.0: Initial version 1.1: Handled error for running on non-Mac devices, added email subject capture, added choice for app to return to at end 1.2: Added OmniAutomation links for viewing/completing OmniFocus tasks
Agenda Safari Clipper
This Shortcut, for use with the Agenda app and my Agenda Daily Journal Builder Shortcut, appends provided input to the note titled with today's date EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022), along with the currently selected email.
This Shortcut works very much like my Agenda Email Clipper Shortcut, except that it captures the currently selected Safari tab (Mac only) or the Safari page shared to it via the Share Sheet (all platforms). That page will then be appended and linked to alongside anything entered in the Rapid Log.
Note that this Shortcut here offers all the same syntax support as the Rapid Log, meaning that tasks can be generated in OmniFocus (which also contain the link to the referenced email), tagged and noted accordingly.
Because I get a lot of email, it is often the source of knowledge, wisdom, and tasks, and so being able to refer to emails in other contexts (say, from tasks in OmniFocus or rapid-logged journaling in Agenda) is really valuable. So I set to work to make a Shortcut to manage just this.
I am generally opposed to AppleScript, JavaScript, or AnyScriptAtAll, simply because I'm not a developer, and I find these things too hard. Shortcuts is my jam. But until Mail gets Shortcuts support or a Share Sheet or something (come on, you cowards), I ran towards the danger a bit here.
This Mac-only Shortcut (because AppleScript) is for use with the Agenda app and my Agenda Daily Log Shortcut. It appends provided input to an Agenda note titled as EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Saturday September 3, 2022), along with the currently selected email.
This Shortcut works very much like my Rapid Log Shortcut, except that it captures the currently selected email. That email will then be appended to anything entered in the Rapid Log, referred to by a reference that is asked for following the entry of Rapid Log content, linked back to the actual email itself.
The Shortcut will then archive the selected email (using the sending of keystroke ^ + ⌘ + a), bringing you back in to the Mail app, so that you can go on your merry way and Rapid Clip the next one (or hopefully just delete all the email).
The use case here is fast inbox processing, and this Shortcut is best used when invoked by a keyboard shortcut (there are too many kinds of shortcuts). Note that this Shortcut (capital S Shortcut) here offers all the same syntax support as the Rapid Logger, meaning that tasks can be generated in OmniFocus (which also contain the link to the referenced email), tagged and noted accordingly.
I shared my Rapid Log Shortcut for Agenda the other day, and it serves its purpose, but I am an OmniFocus user, and so really, my rapid logged tasks need to land there. As such, I have been fine-tuning my Shortcut for use with it, and with some bonus features.
I won't rehash too much about what I already posted, but this Shortcut:
There is no enforced order here, so one could totally thoughtstream the entry (which I do). For example:
- Call Marie about the budget #Urgent @flagged +(budget presentation) @due(fri) #Calls // The budget presentation is on our shared folder
Metadata does not need to be entered in a particular order.
I find that by rapid logging this way, I capture my commitments in OmniFocus, but I also diary that capture in Agenda, and also give myself the freedom to capture non-actionable things I have discovered or know.
When it comes to capturing things as they come in to my life, I love the notion of rapid logging as is done in the Bullet Journal Method. The catch for me is that while I adore analog work, it often can't scale to the pace or reusability of digital. This is where I have built up a solution for my daily logging that works digitally.
This is all about my Rapid Log Shortcut, for use with the Agenda app (yes, that's a referral link) and my Agenda Daily Log Shortcut. The basic conceit of this Shortcut is that it appends provided input to note in Agenda titled as EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. Wednesday June 29, 2022).
The Shortcut asks for input, and multiple lines of input can be provided. Lines of text are each added as bullet list items to the Agenda Daily Log titled as today’s date, each with a timestamp to represent when they were entered.
If, however, a line of inputted text begins with a dash and a space (- ), it is given special treatment, treated as a task:
It will be created as a Reminder (in a list chosen by an import question for this Shortcut)
It will be shown as a checklist item in the Agenda note instead of a bullet list item
The Agenda checklist item’s text will link to the Reminder
Additionally, for these task items, text can be entered inline when being asked for input by the Shortcut to add treatment to the Reminder created:
Adding @flagged in this line will flag the task created in Reminders, and indicate the checklist item in Agenda with an orange diamond emoji (the actual @flagged text will not be included in Agenda nor in the Reminder title)
Adding tags inline as #tag1 #tag2 (no spaces allowed in a single tag) will add those tags to the Reminder created (this text will not be reflected in Agenda)
Certainly, the overall construct of this Shortcut could be fairly easily manipulated to have tasks created in OmniFocus or other task managers, but I wanted this to work out of the box for anyone using Agenda (and if you aren't, there's that referral link again). And yes, in the end, what this Shortcut produces is markdown, which could be sent to another note manager if you prefer. The key is having a predictable and always correct destination for the content, which is why I use today's formatted date as a title.
I'd love to hear what you think and if this is useful!
I thought it would be good to do a series about how I automate my days as a means of keeping myself on track and conserving energy. The first part of this is in how I set up my day using the Agenda app.
I have been using the Shortcut I'll describe here for a while now, but have been inspired to improve it and make it shareable so that everyone can benefit from it. I think the features this creates in my Agenda experience are super cool.
This Shortcut creates a new note titled as EEEE MMMM d, yyyy (i.e. "Saturday September 3, 2022") in the project of your choosing. The note contains a list of all-day events from your calendar under the heading “Today”, as well as a list of timed calendar events under the heading of “Events”.
Here's the coolest part, though: next to each event is a linked arrow which, when clicked, creates a new note linked to that calendar event and pre-populated with that event’s name, location, organizer, and attendees (taken from the calendar). This makes it easy to generate relevant notes for the day. The Shortcut builds Agenda URLs for each of those events.
All calendar items in the note are preceded by a designated emoji, defined in a dictionary at the top of the Shortcut.
Next in the note, under the heading of “Tasks” is a checkmark list of Reminders from a designated list that are either due today or overdue (designated by the emoji 🚨), flagged (designated by 🔶), or tagged with a particular tag (and designated with an emoji, both of which have text actions to let you customize). Each item is linked back to the actual Reminder to update as needed.
Lastly, a horizontal rule is added with a heading of “Rapid log”, where logging of notes for the day can be added as they occur.
I chose to do this with Reminders so that everyone can benefit, but this could be modified easily enough to be used with OmniFocus, or any other task management system that allows either Shortcuts or URL access to its content.
I posted about this on the Agenda community, but figured it belongs here as well: I made a Shortcut that provides for find and replace of term on the iOS version of the app, since it can't (yet) be done natively.
Please test this before using in practice, this method is a bit… brute force.
This Shortcut is run by sharing a whole note (Markdown) to it. It will ask for a term to search for, a term to replace that with, then replaces terms accordingly (case sensitive) in the original note, replacing the original note in its totality with the updated text.
Be cautious, because this will replace the matched term absolutely, so if you replaced “tow” with “truck”, the word “toward” becomes “truckard”. You get the idea.
Also, I'll admit this is a list bit brute force, because it is a wholesale replacement of a note with updated text, but I think this could be quite handy for turning keywords in to tags, or just plain renaming stuff.
Hope this is useful - your feedback is always welcome!
It was just a month or so ago that was thinking I needed a good way to take particular OmniFocus lists with me on my watch, because I love ditching my phone when I can.
Lo and behold, Cheatsheet, an app I love, just added Shortcuts support. This means I can very easily create a list from OmniFocus and put it in a cheat, making it ready to take with me (requires Cheatsheat's Pro in-app purchase, but well worth it).
What's great about this is that I can make a complication that gets me right to this portable list of mine. Now, of course, I can't check stuff off, because it's just text, but it's a super convenient way of carrying a list to go.
A few bits about the Shortcut:
Tune the Find Items OmniFocus action as you see fit. Yes, I could have done import questions, but there are so many different dimensions of how to select tasks to include that that didn't seem to make sense (I just use available tasks with a particular tag, but you could involve flags, dates, and any other number of things).
Feel free to adjust how the text is passed to the cheat for each task. I used an ASCII circle to make each line feel OmniFocusesque, and also added blank lines between each, but you might want to personalize here.
Pick the right Shortcut version. I made one for OmniFocus 3 as well as for those folks who might be running on the OmniFocus 4 beta.
One thing you could do is set up a folder in Cheatsheet for this cheat, and then add actions to the beginning of the Shortcut to get and delete all cheats from that folder when you run it. The reason for this is intentionally enforcing a temporary kind of use here, which I am fond of. A setup like this doesn't lend well to Shortcut distribution, however, so I left it out.
Lastly, for anyone who thinks as much as I do about these things and since I did get some questions on Twitter, some thoughts about why I think Cheatsheet is great for this compared to other apps I could do this in:
Drafts: This could surely be done in Drafts, but to me, Drafts is not a place I refer back to, it's where text starts™️.
OmniFocus flagged: Sure, I could just flag stuff to show up in the flagged spot in OF itself, but that risks polluting what flags mean. And then what if I don't do stuff? Do I unflag? Re-flag?
Reminders: Honestly, it's a miracle on some days that I can keep one productivity system going, adding another seems dangerous. Even if for one use case, it's risky. It feels like getting a bag of Skittles, but just for the yellow ones. That whole bag is getting eaten, no matter what I tell myself.
Anyway, enough of the preamble, here are the Shortcuts!
So I got to thinking and assembled a new iOS Shortcut that I call Bubble Gum (because what better way to stick things together than with the stuff you have at hand?).
I really like running this Shortcut from Spotlight on an iPad, so that I can get to it whenever. It lets you search various things you might have and copies links to them to your clipboard for insertion elsewhere. I also use this on my phone set to the Back Tap accessibility move, because I can invoke that from anywhere.
As an aside, iPadOS does this infuriating thing where after running the Shortcut from Spotlight, Spotlight still holds the focus of typing, but ⌘+space will dismiss that (thanks to friends Christopher Lawley and Matthew Cassinelli for saving me from rage deleting my iPad).
Now, it wasn't until I was waaaaaay down the rabbit hole when the realization struck me: you can’t really link to a calendar event or note by url. That made me sad. So instead, I made the desired event or note details be captured in url-encoded JSON, and added that as a parameter in a url to run Bubble Gum later, which would identify the only possible event or note you mean to be referring to, and open it.
This has been enormously useful for me, and I hope it is for you, too! I can see myself adding other branches here and iterating on this, so let me know if there is something else you'd find useful to add!
I recently had the enormous pleasure of being able to return to Learn OmniFocus, joining Tim Stringer to share some moves about using iOS Shortcuts with OmniFocus . We also went through ways to use this to customize Home Screens with widgets, with particular thanks to great apps that augment Shortcuts capabilities:
Tim has made a sample version of the video freely available to all, so I've added it here below, and is sharing the Shortcuts I built as part of his page highlighting this video/event.
Now in OmniFocus: Opens the Morning, Afternoon, Evening, or Weekend perspective in OmniFocus based on the day of the week and the time of day.
Now in OmniFocus Widget: An adaptation of the Now in OmniFocus Shortcut that displays tasks in a Widget, with some help from WidgetPack.
OmniFocus Charty Ring: This Shortcut makes use of Charty to display a graphical representation of your daily progress.
Add to OF List: Allows you to add a task, complete with notes, to a predefined list (project) in OmniFocus. Using this Shortcut eliminates the overhead of manually adding actions to projects and promotes consistency. This Shortcut leverages Toolbox Pro to create an attractive and functional menu.
Learn OmniFocus subscribers get a full-length video with more detail and context. If you're an OmniFocus user and haven't yet checked out the Learn OmniFocus resources, I highly recommend it.
I recently needed to conduct a series of user interviews at work to get feedback and engage in testing a new product, and thought this would be an awesome use case for Shortcuts, so that I could book meetings easily.
Searching the internet, though, the consensus seemed to be that you couldn't actually add invitees to an event or send them invites. I played around, though, and found a way to do it by first creating the event and then modifying it.
This was really satisfying to figure out, and even better to use - hopefully others like this, too!
My work is driven, in large part, by caffeine. If this has been valuable to you and you'd like to support my work, buying me a coffee would be lovely. Thank you!
Recently, I was introduced to Block Kit for Slack, and I was super pumped to try to work with this. Since my team at work uses agile and scrum for our work processes, and since we sometimes need to scrum through Slack if calendars collide, I though this would be a compelling use case for a block-based solution, and use Shortcuts to help assemble it.
The tl;dr of Slack Block Kit is that it's basically a big JSON payload that organizes content into a well-structured Slack post with sections, dividers, text, and interactions (like buttons or lists or forms).
The way my team scrums, we talk about what we did yesterday, what we're doing today, and calling out flags, roadblocks, or needs for help. Since I operate by a manager schedule and I use OmniFocus to manage tasks, this basically means I want a post that combines:
yesterday's calendar events
today's calendar events
OmniFocus tasks that are flagged, available, and tagged with "Scrum"
I therefore set myself to build an iOS Shortcut. Getting that content is pretty straightforward, and combining it with text to have everything formatted in the right JSON construct is very doable.
To make everything run smoothly, I also used Data Jar, a fantastic app for storing information to be used in Shortcuts, in this Shortcut for a few things:
I keep the Slack API token in Data Jar, so that I don't accidentally share it (in the shared Shortcut here, it's at key Auth.Slack).
I keep a dictionary of Slack channels in Data Jar to make it easy to interface with it (keys at Slack.<<channel name>>). You can make this dictionary, too, with my Data Jar Slack Dictionary Shortcut (which I have written about in a previous post).
I keep a dictionary about my team (at keys Team.<<name>>) and each has a value for SlackAPILink. In this way, I can do a find and replace on the OmniFocus tasks, replacing each member of my team's name with their <@SLACK_API_ID>. I love this, because by simply adding someone's name in the task I have in OmniFocus, I will be @ mentioning them in the post that goes to Slack.
Here are a few other touches that the Shortcut handles for me:
It is always assumed that "today" is a workday, so if I'm running this on Monday, the calendar from Friday will be shown (instead of the actual previous day, because please no Sunday meetings)
The events from the previous calendar day and today are presented as lists to select what to include. They're all selected by default, but if I have an event that is confidential or personal, I can easily deselect it to exclude it from the post.
If no OmniFocus tasks match the criteria, there is alternate content inserted.
A footer is added to make it clear that the post happened by automation.
I am pretty certain this Shortcut, considering the above, won't work out of the box as shared, but I hope it provides adequate inspiration and framework for you to get value from. I'd love to hear what you think!
My work is driven, in large part, by caffeine. If this has been valuable to you and you'd like to support my work, buying me a coffee would be lovely. Thank you!
One thought really stuck with me: that this screen was designed around OmniFocus as a data source. This makes sense, since I use OmniFocus, and it's my screen, but what about others?
For those who use Reminders or Reminders-based apps like GoodTask, I have made an updated WidgetPack widget and an updated Charty rings widget.
Now, of course I also had to fiddle with it, because I’m me, but here are some thoughts:
Yes, my first cut had more functionality, but I was finding too many aspects distracting, so I have distilled the content more: actions and events only
Having events on my front page (courtesy of a more compressed heading) is really useful
Speaking of the header, it is now linked to the Shortcut to refresh widget content
Toolbox Pro actions make each Reminder shown link back to themselves in the Reminders app
The heading above actions (GET TO IT) links to the Shortcut to refresh the Charty ring widget (though the latest beta allows the widget to run a shortcut!)
That context out of the way, the things you would need to have these widgets work:
Update: The links for the Get To It and Dashboard widgets have been updated with fixes (addressed an error if no matching OF tasks in Get To It and changed iconography alignment for calendar events in Dashboard). Enjoy!
Home Screen fever calmed down a bit as iOS 14 wove its way in to my every day. I had settled in to my routines and was living my best widget life.
After playing with the colours of Charty and placing it in the middle of my Home Screen, I thought, "Huh. That screen looks like part of an app." So I opened up WidgetPack and worked more on creating a header widget to lead my screen with, and a revamped widget with OmniFocus actions.
I figured if I can visualize and list my actions, what else could I do? I needed ways to not just see things, but an interface to do things. That led me to adding buttons to the header widget, and then more buttons to run the Shortcuts to refresh the data of these widgets.
Saddened that I couldn't have a calendar widget that suited my needs and aesthetic, I started imagining a second screen that would show upcoming events, as well as counts of and access to more things.
I'm really happy with the result, both in form and in function.
To break it all down, the rest of this post will go widget by widget, sharing just how each is built and what all each does, and giving you the tools to do this, too. Hopefully, this can help you either customize a similar experience, or just plain implement what I've made. Enjoy!
Overall
This was pretty purpose built for me, so substitutions and edits of what I share here may/will be needed. The apps I use to make the widgets are:
I'll also note that my intent, like I said, was for this screen to feel like an app. As such, I employed a black wallpaper and designed the widgets as white on black. A white Home Screen, even with the intent to feel app-like just felt like too much.
Header Widget
Obviously, this WidgetPack widget shares the day and date, which I had originally pegged WidgetSmith to do, but I wanted to add functions, which is what those four circles are:
Add new item to OmniFocus
Start new draft in Drafts
Refresh the OmniFocus Get To It widget below
Refresh the Charty chart
To make sure it's current, the Shortcut has an automation to run every day at 00:00, which I highly recommend.
I use a Toolbox Pro action here to return home at the end of the flow (this is true for each of these Shortcuts, actually), just so that if I run it, I end up back at it, but this is optional (though you should still support Toolbox Pro for many reasons).
Charty Omni Rings Widget
This is the crown jewel of the design, and creates three rings with Charty to show progress based on tasks in OmniFocus:
[tasks completed today with a due date before 11:59pm] / ([available tasks today with a due date before 11:59pm] + [tasks completed today with a due date before 11:59pm])
This is a great visual of my day and its state. One gotcha, though, is that this is a beta, and so doesn't handle zero values elegantly yet. For example, if you have zero flagged tasks, it substitues 100 for the denominator and reports 0/100 complete. I think I'd like to see a closed ring for 0/0 done, but we'll see how this develops.
The Shortcut does require a particular colour scheme, and I've linked to it below.
For the widget, I chose to set the left background to 000000 for both light and dark, and the right to 0F0F10. I turn off the title and legend, and the chart takes care of the rest.
To keep the chart current, one might want an automation set to run the Shortcut on particular intervals or events. I tried doing it each time OmniFocus is closed, but I trigger many Shortcuts from OmniFocus tasks (as URL schemes), and found that exiting OF to run one Shortcut but automation trying to run another produced less desirable effects.
Like the Charty widget above it, this grabs available actions that are either due, flagged, or forecast-tagged, but then colours the checkbox indicator for each accordingly to match the Charty colour scheme.
Each action in the widget links to its OmniFocus task, and if there are more tasks that can be shown, the "and x more" line links to a particular perspective.
Unlike other iterations, I specifically designed this widget in these colours, or responding to light/dark mode. I have an aesthetic I wanted, and so that's baked in, but it would be possible to edit this otherwise.
Again, an automation to keep this up to date isn't a bad idea, but of course, the Header Widget has a button to refresh it.
Dashboard Widget
I fiddled with this for an awfully long time, but the genesis of this was thinking that if I can count some things with the Charty chart, what else might I count?
As set up (please edit to your needs!), this WidgetPack widget shows:
Number of Inbox items in OmniFocus (and links to the OmniFocus Inbox)
Number of available OmniFocus actions tagged with my Waiting tag (and links to my Waiting Perspective)
Number of available OmniFocus actions tagged with a People tag (and links to my People Perspective)
Number of drafts in my Drafts Inbox (and links to the search of my Inbox in Drafts)
After being able to see those counts. I thought about the buttons I did for the Header widget, and figured this was a good way for me to add more functionality. The buttons:
Run my Today Shortcut (that links to today's journal entry in Agenda)
Run the Dashboard Shortcut (to refresh the widget's contents)
Run the Charty Omni Week Widget (to refresh the chart below)
Phew.
Lastly, I struggled with the best way to see calendar events. I don't like the design of the stock Calendar widget, and it can't be forced in to dark mode to match the rest, so what the heck, I made my own.
Events are shown for the calendar day the Shortcut is run on, but only ones that have not yet occurred/started. As with OmniFocus tasks, each event in the widget links to its event in Calendar (by way of a separate Shortcut, since the Calendar doesn't have a lovely URL scheme of its own). If no events remain, the widget will say so (with a moon, because moons are relaxing).
I've shared this before, but I wanted to have this on my screen as a clear visual of my accomplishments. This Charty-based widget shows the count of OmniFocus tasks completed today and on the six days prior to today, giving me a sense of my wins.
As with the Charty Omni Rings widget, I set the background to 000000 and I hide the Y axis (relativism is more important to me than absolute numbers, YMMV).
Conclusion
And that really is all it! If you've read this far, holy smokes. Thank you. I hope there is material here that you find useful or can adapt to your needs.
I'd love to hear what you think, so feel free to drop a comment here.
Update: just fixed a minor bug in refresh for Flagged and Forecast-Tagged widgets - links updated below!
Thank you everyone for the tremendous support of my first cut at making widgets for OmniFocus with WidgetPack! I know I am finding them super helpful.
After spending some time using them, learning more about WidgetPack, and agonizing over design decisions (padding and spacing matters), I have made new versions of the widgets with better utility and visual appeal.
Here’s what’s new:
any OF task displayed actually links to that task inside OF so that you could see its notes, edit it, mark it complete, drop it or whatever
the design specifically only shows a maximum of four actions (this was brutal, but necessary to allow for space for longer task names and still look good)
a count of relevant undisplayed tasks is shown at the bottom of the widget, linked to the relevant perspective (Forecast Today for the due and forecast-tagged widgets, and Flagged for the flagged widget)
a colour-coordinated button has been added to each widget to drive right to adding a new task in OF (like quick entry, not automatically assuming a due date or flagged state)
a colour-coordinated refresh button to run the shortcut that makes it to update widget contents
dark mode support, so that the widget respects system state of dark mode
as referred to above, optimized spacing, layout, and sizing of elements
comments in the top section to enable anyone to (fairly easily?) customize the widget with choices for the accent colour, title, SF symbol, and link to open OF with
These have all really been oriented for large size widgets which I think makes sense, based on the amount of content. Running a shortcut here will create the widget in WidgetPack, so adding a WidgetPack widget to your screen and then editing it to point at the widget you’ve made will do the trick.
I’ll admit that the shortcuts take a bit of time to run, but I don’t know if it’s worth putting in a lot of work to try to optimize; I know the Omni Team is working hard on real native widgets that would be, I’m sure, much more efficient than these.
Hope you enjoy, please keep sharing feedback and thoughts!
Maybe I'm impatient, but I just love OmniFocus as my task management system, but am also finding my way of interacting with my phone deeply changed by iOS 14 and widgets.
I tweeted last week about this: Shortcuts (though that was iOS 13) and widgets let me get at expose functions and content of apps in ways that make me think less about the app itself, and more about the discrete and specific ways I benefit from them. Everything becomes a service.
I'm spending less time "in apps" and way more time just at my home screens. Do I care about what the weather app says in totality, or do I just need to know the temperature outside right now? Do I need to see my calendar, or do I just need to know what's up next and when? Do I need to see my task management system, or do I just need the list of things due today?
This shift is very powerful.
I was referred to WidgetPack, which reminds me a bit of Charty in its conceit: a set of iOS Shortcuts actions to capture, arrange, and format content in to a widget. Given that I love me my shortcuts, this was the solution I needed for bringing the value of widgets to the power of OmniFocus.
Here's my Home Screen:
The stack of large widgets require WidgetPack, and are built with these Shortcuts:
For bonus marks, each of these widgets links to OmniFocus perspectives when tapped: the Today Forecast view for Due and Tagged, and the Flagged perspective for Flagged. Naturally.
I am loving using the iOS 14 widgets to keep a clear eye on my day, and with Charty and its (beta) widgets and data views, I have been able to craft iOS Shortcuts that display really useful data on my homescreen.
I have two charts that I love, each drawing on my OmniFocus data to quickly display useful things:
OmniDay: this uses the data view to give me a list of counts of actions I need to be on top of. The Shortcut that generates this chart can be downloaded here.
🚀 Action, a total of:
⏰ Due actions available
🎏 Flagged actions available
⭐️ Forecast-tagged actions available
☑️ Completed items today
OmniWeek: this graphs a chart of actions completed today (☆), and in the six previous days leading up to today. The Shortcut that generates this chart can be downloaded here.
With these charts generated, it’s a matter of adding the Charty widgets to a home screen. For bonus marks, I made a third Shortcut called “Refresh Charts”, which just runs the two shortcuts above. I added it as a widget in a stack “behind” the OmniDay data, ensuring I can always quickly update the views.
I hope someone finds this useful and enjoys! Would love to hear what folks think.
Back on episode 25 of Nested Folders, Rosemary Orchard and I discussed agreements and the many kinds of these that are important for effective collaboration.
For me, a lot of these agreements end up getting supported by Slack, which is great.
This gave me an idea: what if I had a dictionary containing all the channel identifiers of my Slack workspaces? Then I could easily interact with them by web API.
Even better, could I make this Data Jar dictionary with a Shortcut?
One of the features I wish OmniFocus had was the ability to add checklists. As an example, I need to go through a morning routine of four items every morning, but having four discrete actions in OmniFocus feels a little clutterful, and having a badge that reads 4 seems inappropriate.
There are other use cases, of course, where a number of steps represented by a single task makes sense to me:
Thanks to iOS Shortcuts, the amazing Toolbox Pro actions for it, and some internet research, I have come up with a solution that creates a single task in OmniFocus, a list in Reminders with the same name, and the steps laid out in that list, which is linked to from the note of the OmniFocus task.
It’s a little bit hacky, but I think this help me keep my OmniFocus actions focused (ha), while giving the discrete steps to my actions a safe home for reuse.
One of the things I wanted to make easier was how to build a new action in OmniFocus based on an existing action. If I’m in Forecast, for example, and am completing an action, maybe I want to make a new action in that project quickly and easily.
I made a Next Action Shortcut for exactly this. It works by sharing an action in OmniFocus to it, then asks for a name for the new action, and then adds an action named that to the shared action’s project. For bonus marks, it adds a note to the new action showing what action it was created from, a link to that action, and that action’s note.
I really really benefit from the review of my projects and actions weekly, but I find it so hard to do. With constant ideas about things I could chase, or looking at that next project or back to one I was at already, I find myself wanting to bounce around the review more than follow it, and this doesn’t have the best effects.
On import, it will ask for the tag to use for actions added. On each run, it will ask for the folder(s) whose projects I want to review, then tell me, one by one, the name of a project followed by a prompt to speak back the next action. If what I say blank is nothing, it goes on to the next project, else it adds what I speak as an action to that project tagged with the tag I identified from import question (I made a tag called “From Review”, so that I can quickly group, review, update, and refine what I add during this process).
What I love about this is that I can throw my AirPods in, go for a walk, and conduct an effective review.
Optionally, I might add a display of actions in the project being reviewed, but my goal was to avoid having to look at the screen. I did add purposeful pauses, though (press stop to halt dictation, press okay to move on) so that I wouldn’t feel rushed to speak my action, and so that I could drive the pace of review and not systematize that.
Hope this is helpful to others - let me know what you think!
This 1-1 Prep Email Shortcut presents a dictionary of people choices, allows me to pick, and then finds anything tagged with their name in OmniFocus to build an email to them around.
Taken further (but less easily shared with all of you here), this could be connected to a reusable Data Jar dictionary, like I’ve talked about in a previous post. A great way to ensure consistency in data, as well as to update existing Shortcuts quickly with new team members, and a huge time saver in exploring potential new Shortcuts.
I don't write code, and I don't know how to script, but I really love the value of automation. This is why iOS Shortcuts is absolutely my jam. And I love that there is such an awesome growing ecosystem around it!
With Toolbox Pro, Launchcuts, Pushcut, and Shortcutify, one can really expand what iOS Shortcuts can do and how they are executed. I'm super cognizant, though, about what functions of this are "for me", though, as an under-qualified nerd.
What if I could use this dictionary outside of this Shortcut? And if I can do that, what if I built up the amount of information in that dictionary?
Using Data Jar like this has made the barrier to entry to new Shortcuts so much easier for me, and opened up my creativity.
An example:
At work I support a team, and so there is value in having Shortcuts reference my team members. How cool, then, to have a dictionary that stores values referring to discrete aspects of how their data might be useful in, say, emails or our task management systems.
Having each team member's attributes help me automate all kinds of emails and messages:
First name
Last name
Full name
Email address
Pronoun
Specific app API key
It's also really neat that Data Jar lets me get values based on simple and readable paths. Like, I can get the value for team.selected_item.email so simply when choosing from a list or passing a bit of text. This becomes easy shorthand for using the right info in a variety of places.
I'm particularly happy about the idea of including pronoun, because it can make auto-generated emails sound more personal:
Dear client,
Thank you for requesting project project title!
I have assigned this work to team.chosen item.firstname on my team to work with you on. team.chosen_item.pronoun will be in touch with you to determine and share next steps.
Of course, that email also cc's team.chosen_item.email, too.
For bonus marks, using Data Jar means I need only update one spot of team member data changes or if a new member joins the team. Changes in this one spot are instantly reflected in all the Shortcuts. Hooray!
So this is one of my most main ways of using Data Jar, but I'm really interested in hearing how others are putting it to work. Let me know!
While the principles of this are often a saving grace of augmented focus, I love the advantages of a digital system:
I can search and refer back
The right metadata surfaces the right things at the right time
It is easily re-organized based on changing needs
Of course, aspects like metadata, information architectures, and infinite choice make digital systems complex and nuanced. I need something sustainable through simplicity, particularly to make sure I’m ready for change, like how Rosemary Orchard and I talked about on our Nested Folders podcast (and, more recently, on Automators episode 49).
Thinking of this, I embarked on a journey to digitally bullet journal. After a few iterations, I came up with a list of interoperating tools, which I think will prove a very effective stack.
The platform consists of five pieces on iOS:
Agenda: This acts as the journal and reference system.
Daily Journal Shortcut: I've written about this shortcut before, but to recap, this Shortcut sets up a daily journal (that's why it's named that way) with today's weather, calendar appointments, and OmniFocus due, flagged, and forecast-tagged actions.
Rapid Logger Shortcut: This is the game-changer. When run, it asks for input, where I can Bullet Journal style add multiple items, each thing on a fresh line. Each line then gets appended to today's daily journal in Agenda, timestamped. If a line starts with a dash, it gets treated like an action, and so appears as a checklist item in the Agenda daily journal note, but also gets added to my OmniFocus inbox as an action. As a bonus, the text going in to OmniFocus is treated as TaskPaper, so I can add flags, tags, and dates accordingly, which is awesome, but that metadata is not included in the Agenda note, keeping that list clean and tidy.
Daily Wrap Shortcut: This is the icing on the cake. When run, this Shortcut helps me reflect on the day by asking guiding questions, the answers to which are then appended to the daily journal note in Agenda, along with a list of the tasks I completed today from OmniFocus.
These parts working together are helping to create structure in my life, but even better, it’s sustainable structure, because I can apply the simple notion of rapid-logging from Bullet Journaling combined with the complexities of a nuanced digital system.
Great side effect: I am more disciplined about what I log. A historical problem for me in my collection of actions is overuse of shorthand as a “bookmark” of thinking for later. That’s how I’ve ended up with items in my OmniFocus inbox like “Fifty-four”. I’m sure I knew what I was referring to when I wrote it down, but no idea later. With rapid logging, and thinking of things not just as actions or notes but as journaled facts for future reflection, my capturing is much more robust.
It should ask for the project in Agenda to store clips, and then can be used from the Safari share function to create a note with the name of the webpage and, if any, selected content on the page.
There was a question on the OmniGroup Discourse Forums the other day about seeing completed items in OmniFocus, but just the last two days' worth. While this can’t be done with Perspectives, it can be accomplished with the new Shortcuts integrations.
This Completed Items Shortcut creates a list of all OmniFocus items completed over the last two calendar days, sorted by completion time. While it just offers a Quick Look at that list, it could easily be modified to output text to the destination of your choice.
Thought I’d share, as I’m experimenting with journaling and logging my accomplishments. Enjoy!
parses shared Markdown from Agenda to find both actions and completed actions
provides the option to move those actions to an OmniFocus project for action management
appends a link to the OmniFocus project in the shared Agenda note
provides the option to email the contents of the note, with actions collected together, to meeting participants
the email will pre-populate with recipients based on a lookup of the Agenda note to calendar events and getting a match's attendees (so it's good to use the Agenda "Link to Event" feature)
This corrects defects in the previous version of the Shortcut introduced by iOS 13 and other application changes. It also stops action content from landing on the clipboard.
Enjoy! I’d love to hear what you think and if this is helpful!
On episode 12 of the Nested Folders podcast, Actions vs. Reference, I mentioned a shortcut to create projects in both Agenda and OmniFocus. This is awesome, because it allows me to have complementary and align organizational structures for both action/task management and reference material.
Here is the proof of concept Shortcut, Project Maker, which creates a project in OmniFocus and task to review and add to the project (which links to Agenda), as well as a project in Agenda with a note that links back to OmniFocus.
Certainly, this could be expanded by tying in input from your workflow as the project, defining more tasks/note content, and specifying folders/categories for projects to be placed in.
How might you improve this Shortcut?
In an upcoming post, I will share my current folder/category structure as a way of documenting how I decide what projects go where. I’m looking forward to it!
I had a blast writing about Shortcuts with OmniFocus 3.4 last week, but based on reader Jason Clarke’s feedback, I think it would be good to round out my Daily Journal Shortcut with a bit more detail, as well as a second partner Shortcut that leverages it.
What I love about using Agenda for this is that the way its x-callback-urls are constructed (making and opening notes based on titles), I can know the URL to open a given note before I even make it.
With that in mind, I also have a Today Shortcut, whose sole job is to open today’s entry in my daily journal in Agenda for referencing throughout the day. This is a great way to make sure I am maximizing the value of the journal entries.
Thanks to Jason for the feedback, and hope this extended version of the Shortcut is valuable for all!
It’s day five of my series of posts about the wonderful addition of Shortcuts automation in OmniFocus 3.4 for iOS, and I’ve saved the big one for last. Today’s Shortcut is something that is, for me, a really useful tool for creating an ongoing diary of my life.
OmniFocus actions which are tagged with the forecast tag and available
a list of calendar events
a list of all-day calendar events
I have this outputting markdown and rich text to make this easily extensible for storing the output (I send everything to Agenda, but it could go to any variety of apps that can get content from Shortcuts.
I want to thank Alex Hay, author of the Toolbox Pro app with Shortcuts actions and the Snapshot Journal. His dictionary actions to replace weather conditions with the right emoji were what I used here, and the work he’s done is brilliant.
And that’s the series! I’m a huge fan of the work the OmniGroup has done to enable automation of OmniFocus and create more utility for its content, and have had a blast writing about and sharing some of the ways I’m using this. I’d love any and all feedback about these posts or how you’re using Shortcuts with OmniFocus!
It’s the penultimate post in this series of Shortcuts for OmniFocus! For day four, I’m serving up a bit of a turkey of a Shortcut.
I’m highly distractable, so even when I hide the panes of OmniFocus on my iPad, I still know they’re there. This is why I built the Inbox Processor shortcut.
This, one by one, serves me up my inbox items from OmniFocus so that I can process and organize them in to their proper spots.
The catch here is that Shortcuts can’t modify OmniFocus content, so this is making new actions out of inbox items. As such, I need to delete inbox items after I’ve gone through this, and I need to go through the whole thing or else risk losing where I was at.
Likely, the real utility of this one is limited, but I wanted to share it anyway because it feels like one of the more creative ones I’ve done, and it might spark ideas for others around how it could be modified.
Hope this is helpful, and that people can also find ways to expand it!
Carrying on with Shortcuts sharing in support of OmniFocus 3.4, this one is a quick reference progress tracker.
The Today’s Actions Shortcut adds up due/overdue tasks for the day and reports back how many of them have been completed. It also demonstrates using multiple Find Items actions, and how their results can be counted and calculated.
This is a good one if you try to avoid notifications/badges, or for Siri help with if the screen with badge isn’t visible. Weirdly, though, I think the grammar variants were the hardest part of this.
It’s day two of sharing Shortcuts that take advantage of the new OmniFocus 3.4 capabilities, and this is another one that helps me share the content with others that has historically been just in OmniFocus with others.
The Project Markdown Table Shortcut showcases how the Find Items action results can be retrieved on a per attribute basis. It takes these attributes for each action in a selected project and organizes them in to a markdown table for email sending to anyone.
Of course, that text could be shipped or shared in any kind of way, but this is what I use it for mostly.
Missed day one’s Shortcut? Check it out here. Interested in seeing some other kinds of Shortcuts or have other Shortcuts you’d like to share? Would love your comments and feedback!
There’s a new release of OmniFocus in the world, and does it ever bring some powerhouse features over for dinner. With support for native dark mode, iPad multiple windows, and new context menus for quick actions, there’s a lot to enjoy.
The part that brings the most versatility, though, is the new expanded support of Shortcuts with Shortcut Actions. These enable everyone to be able to automate and expand what is possible with OmniFocus without having to know complex code.
To celebrate this, I wanted to share five Shortcuts I have made for use with OmniFocus 3.4, one each day over this week’s weekdays. Some will be useful right away, others might need to be customized a bit to really be useful to you, but I hope all can spark ideas about how all this new capability can be used.
Let’s get right in to day one, then!
The first Shortcut I wanted to share was also the first one I made, because I saw the immediate utility of being able to take OmniFocus data outside of OmniFocus itself.
With a shoutout to The Boss Review, an older post on my blog, here is a Shortcut I also call Boss Review that drafts an email to someone with a list of actions tagged with a particular tag. I can use this to prep my boss for our reviews by sharing a bullet list of all available actions tagged with her name.
This Shortcut is a pretty straightforward application of the Find Items action, which feels to me like the real hero of this release.
On lucky episode 7 of the Nested Folders Podcast, Rose Orchard and I discussed how we “do productivity” with others who might or might not, and a lot of this really has to do with communication.
One thing Rose brought up was the importance of meeting notes and sharing them, so I thought I’d post about how I do this with Shortcuts and Ulysses.
I have two Shortcuts that I use. The first (aptly called Start Meeting) sets me up with a Ulysses sheet that guides me to take notes, capture actions, and record agreements.
The second (reasonably called End Meeting, and run by sharing markdown text from the Ulysses sheet) takes those notes and sends them to the attendees, ensuring everyone has access to my perspective of what just happened, and might also share theirs.
I'd love feedback or improvement ideas for these Shortcuts and this workflow!
