Allow jumping to Contacts fields in Alfred Contact view from keyboard

[nikivi]

I really wish you could jump to a contact field in Alfred contact view from the keyboard. I am talking about this view:

 

Where the field name here is `github` or `reddit`.

 

So I can open this view. And then press `g` and `github` field will be active so I can press return on it to open the URL.

 

The reason why I really need this is that I want to create a workflow that would pragmatically open a field URL attached to a contact.

 

Here is an example workflow where I want to use this in.

 

In here I want this `ctrl` modifier to open GitHub link attached to the contact:  

 

If this feature would be implemented, this would work. Aside from doing the workflow, the feature on its own would be incredibly useful as I use contacts file filter a lot of times during the day and I hate always having to down arrow to go to the field I need in a contact. 

 

Thank you a lot if you do consider adding this to Alfred. I would really really appreciate it.

 

[politicus]

Whatever increases Alfred user's productivity deserves a +1.

[nikivi]

Can I ask if something like this can be implemented in Alfred? It will make the contact filter a lot more powerful than it currently is. Thank you.

[Andrew]

@nikivi when thinking about a feature request like this, it's better to step back and look at what you're trying to actually achieve rather than looking at how you are currently manually doing something. What you are actually trying to achieve would be better if there was some way of allowing workflow based programatic access to contact information rather than fudging simulating a keypress to "hopefully" select the bit of information you're looking for (e.g. 'g' could match github, or goodreads etc).

 

There is a good chance that I'll be adding a Contacts Filter workflow input at some point in the future which will have the ability to pass out the selected contact's info into the workflow for subsequent processing.

 

I'll have to think about wether there will ever be keyboard based shortcuts within the Contacts viewer, as there is currently no focused search field which would make it operate differently to other areas of Alfred.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[nikivi]

2 hours ago, Andrew said:

rather than fudging simulating a keypress to "hopefully" select the bit of information you're looking for (e.g. 'g' could match github, or goodreads etc)

 

To get around that problem I was actually thinking how you can type multiple chars. So in case of GitHub it would simulate typing git instead of just g.

 

2 hours ago, Andrew said:

There is a good chance that I'll be adding a Contacts Filter workflow input at some point in the future which will have the ability to pass out the selected contact's info into the workflow for subsequent processing.

 

You are right, pragmatic access to information would be even better.

 

There is only one issue that I see with this at least given what I want to achieve. I want to quickly and reliably open a field from any contact. With the approach of passing selected contact's info, I would assume you will be limited by return and 5 modifiers with what you can pass from the contact to Alfred. Unless you want to create another Contacts Filter.

 

With the approach of jumping between fields you can jump to any field inside a contact by typing few characters from the field name thus you will be guaranteed to get any field name even if there is 10+ fields in there.

 

Perhaps I misunderstand how your solution is going to work. Although to be fair I mostly need about 5 fields from the contact I need access to so the ability to retrieve a field from a contact will be amazing too.

Edited January 18, 2018 by nikivi

[nikivi]

On 1/18/2018 at 12:07 PM, Andrew said:

There is a good chance that I'll be adding a Contacts Filter workflow input at some point in the future which will have the ability to pass out the selected contact's info into the workflow for subsequent processing.

 

I am curious if you had any time yet to look at this. I would really appreciate this feature as I use Contacts Filter a lot during my day and getting values from fields like `GitHub`, `Twitter`.. with modifiers would save me a lot of time. 

 

Thank you. 

Edited May 24, 2018 by nikivi

[Andrew]

@nikivi this is likely to be a more major change, so won't be incorporated into a maintenance release. It is still on my internal radar though!

[nikivi]

Hi @Andrew, I wanted to ask if you had any time to look at this issue?

[nikivi]

@Andrew Is there any chance to add this in Alfred 4? Or it can be added only in next major version of 5?

[Andrew]

@nikivi funny you should ask - I had actually made the required changes to the framework during Alfred 4's development but didn't actually get around to implementing this in the contacts viewer. I'll add this in for the next release

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[nikivi]

On 6/24/2019 at 12:19 PM, Andrew said:

I'll add this in for the next release

 

Does the release also include ability to activate fields in Contacts via modifier key presses?

 

So in here:

 

 

I could add cmd/opt/.. modifiers that on result instead of opening Contact in Alfred, would instantly open URL from `twitter` or `github` in default browser.

Would be handy too.

Edited June 25, 2019 by nikivi

[nikivi]

Just tested it out @Andrew, works incredibly well. Thanks.

[GuiB]

@Andrew, great addition, thanks! Just played a bit with it and this will be useful, but I was wondering if it would be possible to make it so it filters the list or the Up/Down arrows jump between fields that match the query?

 

For example, if I have a Work Phone Number + a Work Address, I could type "work" and use the arrows to jump between those fields.

[Andrew]

I've added a note to look into this for a future build