Setting default “location” for “Open in…” in DEVONthink To Go 3

A pretty common workflow for me is to transfer PDF attachments from Apple Mail to DEVONthink To Go 3 via “Open in…”. Unfortunately, those attachments always end up in the “Global Inbox”. I manually have to move them to my database (which is iCloud synced with other devices). This adds four more taps to my workflow.

Please add a preference to the iOS app, which allows to set a default location (e.g. Group in specified database) for DEVONthink To Go to save Open-ins in.

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Personally, I’d rather have smart rules in DTTG. With several databases and lots of groups, setting a single grpup as default for “Open in…” does not make a difference to simply sending the document to the inbox.

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It does. Setting the default to a group in my database makes it sync by default.

I don’t get it.

  • If all my documents are saved to the same group in one database, I have to go to this group later and move them to the correct location.
  • If all my documents are saved to the inbox, I have to go to the inbox later and move them to the correct location.
  • If inbox is the default and I have smart rules, those rules could take care of moving the documents to the correct location. And I could have a coffee.

What is the relationship to “sync” in all this? Inbox is synced as well as all groups, in my experience.

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I’m selectively syncing specific databases. Hence Global Inbox is not the default location I want.

Working with Smart Rules is a good workaround. I still believe, a configurable default import location would make things more intuitive. This goes along with the feature request for turning off the “Save” dialog for the Mac version of DT.

On Evernote, my workflow with the SnapScan was to scan a week’s docs without even looking at my Mac. Evernote just saves all the scans to my configured default location and I can work from there later. I don’t have to manually confirm every single scan.

Ah, DEVONthink is not Evernote. Learn and use DEVONthink’s features as designed and intended and forgetting Evernote will help.

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Welcome to the forum :slight_smile: I’m sure DT will respond, but it’s relatively unlikely your feature request will be implemented quickly - the wish list is pretty long :see_no_evil:

You don’t have to confirm the scan when scanning to DT - check the preferences (Import - select “Global Inbox” rather than “Select Group”; and OCR - don’t select “Enter metadata after text recognition”); again, that is so long as you import to the global inbox (which really is what it is for). Smart rules are less of a workaround and more of an intended workflow in DT :slight_smile:

You can only use smart rules on your Mac; but if you sync DTTG to your Mac from on the road and assuming your Mac is awake or wakes regularly, the smart rules will run and the result will be synced back. It’s all pretty powerful :slight_smile:

I recognise that you see it that way; to me it would be less intuitive; that is possibly because I never liked Evernote and have used DT - and its principal of providing a “Global Inbox” - for some time. I would find it quite counterintuitive if items which wanted my attention landed anywhere else. Having said that, most of the items which arrive in my global inbox are dated, renamed, provided with an expiry date, labeled and sorted into groups automatically. That took some time to set up - but it’s very much worth it.

You can do that with DT on the Mac too, as far as I know. But we were talking about DTTG on iOS before. That’s quite a different thing.

It is very simple to create a Shortcut to do this.

  • Create new Shortcut
  • Give it a title like SaveAttachment (or whatever name you prefer)
  • Enable the shortcut to be visible in the share sheet
  • Add the DTTG ‘Create Item’ action to the shortcut
  • Set the action to create a ‘file’ with some unique name (e.g. bij adding the current date) in the group you want the attachment to be saved to

Then go to iOS Mail and open a mail with an attachment. Press the share button and select the Shortcut with the title ‘SaveAttachment’ (or whatever name you chose). Open DTTG and check the appropriate group to check whether the attachment was indeed stored there.

You can tweak the shortcut with all kind of things like asking for input to set a name or choose a name from a menu, more or less recreating the regular DTTG action in the share sheet.

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I recently remarked that you add significant value to this forum, especially to those users on iOS. I can but repeat myself :slight_smile:

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There you go.

My suggestion to @eboehnisch and @aedwards would be to prioritize the further development of the Shortcut actions, as it can probably take away many questions in the category ‘can we have a button for this’ or ‘can we have a button for that’ if properly developed.

Those user requests are legitimate of course, but the DT staff can’t add everything as it will undoubtedly bloat the product at some point. But what Shortcuts could provide is a way to have users create such functionality on their own and have everybody develop a workflow that is suitable for them.

(Shortcuts happened to be called Workflow for those who are unfamiliar with the history of Shortcuts. For some reason Apple decided to particularly market Shortcuts as a Siri functionality. That’s a nice integration of course, but I think many people failed to understand the true purpose of Shortcuts/Workflow as a result of the emphasis being put on Siri).

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Hi :slight_smile:

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This is definitely on our table here. Suggestions welcome.

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I’ve mentioned some suggestions below, although they’re probably already registered by @BLUEFROG somewhere and the general subject of improvements or suggestions for the DTTG actions in Shortcuts might be better off in a separate topic.

More fundamental suggestions perhaps requires a dive into the various questions that users have asked before in others topics at the time the Shortcuts actions weren’t available (i.e. the previous DTTG versions).

I couldn’t find a reference to a remark I made earlier regarding the consistency of the action design. For example the Create Item and Update Metadata actions perform a similar function, but the action uses a different layout for both. But it’s version 1 of course and these things usually require some time to mature.

Is it possible to update a sheet record in DTTG with Shortcuts?

Confirmation dialog using DTTG Shortcuts actions

Tagging in Shortcuts

Request: can the “Show while running” button be set to disabled by default in DTTG Shortcuts actions?

No UUID passed on to Shortcuts?

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Thank you for digging the forum for these suggestions!