Big thanks for the great update of DTTG, which now contains various improvements for Shortcuts.
One of these brings the possibility to the ‘Update content’ action which now allows for updating a sheet in DTTG. That’s ideal for all kind of situations, like registering a water meter for example.
Open DTTG
Create a sheet called ‘Water Meter’ in the global inbox
Add headings like date and number
Open Shortcuts
Create a shortcut called Water Meter
Add ‘Ask for Input’ action and set action parameters (number)
Add the input to a variable called ‘Measurement’
Add DTTG ‘Update content’ action, select ‘Water Meter’, set to sheet content
Click the ‘>’ button to show more of the action
Add content as such: “<Current Date>”, “<Measurement>” (using the variable)
Select the Append to Sheet option
Add the Open Item action
When you run the shortcut, you’ll be asked to enter the measurement and the Shortcuts will then automatically add a new row to the sheet containing the current date and the measurement you entered. Subsequently Shortcuts will take you to the sheet so you can check whether the measurement is registered correctly. Yay!
Yup, for those situations where some meter has to registered. Might also be the odometer in a car while on holiday etc.
I kept the example simple on purpose, but you can imagine the input in Shortcuts can contain all kind of presets or menu items if required. You could even dictate these and have the numbers read back to you before you append them in the DTTG sheet if you want
As mentioned previously, I think Shortcuts has the potential to extremely customize the way a users wants to interact with DTTG and lower the number of feature requests or complexity in menu items.
Nice use case - collecting successive information in one sheet - thanks for sharing this!
Would be great to have a place with such examples, where the process and creation of shortcuts is visualised with screenshots to help dummies, like me, to learn using shortcuts.
This is a very subjective statement. I find Shortcuts in iOS to be very limited and also cumbersome to build. But writing an AppleScript or building a smart rule is much faster and more powerful for me. (And yes, that’s also subjective.)
Jim, I agree with“This is a very subjective statement”.
Personally for me, not a programmer, it was
difficult to create Keyboard Maestro macros + AppleScript
easy to replicate my previous work with Shortcuts + DEVONthink actions
I even created some shortcuts for work with photos, which are too difficult for me to replicate on mac.
The point is, my shortcuts/macros are not complicated — to create some docs with templates, to interlink two or three docs, to import and arrange photos. BUT this simple shortcuts/macros are essential for my work.
So I am starving to get DEVONthink actions on macOS — to be able to replicate my i(Pad)OS shortcuts on mac. Maybe we will even get “Imprint” action
Thank you, Jim and DEVONthink developers, for DEVONthink actions.
Understood and thanks for sharing your experiences!
We are very happy to hear you are getting used out of Shortcuts in general, and our Shortcut actions in specific!
Regarding Shortcuts on the Mac, they are definitely porting over the same experience so you should be quite comfortable with it. It was still **very ** buggy in the last Monterey beta. I haven’t checked on the recent release but will soon.
