Workflow to Message a specific contact?

[mariva]

How do I set up a workflow to choose a specific contact in Contacts and send that person a message via the Messages app? (Akin to how Alfred allows a user to email a specific contact.) I started a new workflow that launches the Messages app, and I tried to add a Contact Action, but that doesn't exactly work: Contact Action comes before, rather than after, Messages -- and I want Messages to start first and enable a specific contact to be used as the input.

 

I welcome advice and suggestions. Thanks!

[jdfwarrior]

How do I set up a workflow to choose a specific contact in Contacts and send that person a message via the Messages app? (Akin to how Alfred allows a user to email a specific contact.) I started a new workflow that launches the Messages app, and I tried to add a Contact Action, but that doesn't exactly work: Contact Action comes before, rather than after, Messages -- and I want Messages to start first and enable a specific contact to be used as the input.

 

I welcome advice and suggestions. Thanks!

 

To send a message to their phone number (as an iMessage), you would go to Preferences->Features->Contacts and add a Custom Action. Select "Phone" as the field and set it to Pass to URL Scheme. Set the scheme to imessage://{query}

 

This works in most cases but sometimes the Phone Number is entered in a different format. The "Pass to URL Scheme" doesn't work so well if the phone number has parenthesis, hyphens, or spaces in it. To avoid that, you would create a workflow with a Contact Action. Then, instead of using Pass to URL Scheme, you would select your custom contact action (the workflow). Here is one already made: download

[mariva]

To send a message to their phone number (as an iMessage), you would go to Preferences->Features->Contacts and add a Custom Action. Select "Phone" as the field and set it to Pass to URL Scheme. Set the scheme to imessage://{query}

 

This works in most cases but sometimes the Phone Number is entered in a different format. The "Pass to URL Scheme" doesn't work so well if the phone number has parenthesis, hyphens, or spaces in it. To avoid that, you would create a workflow with a Contact Action. Then, instead of using Pass to URL Scheme, you would select your custom contact action (the workflow). Here is one already made: download

 

Thanks for the information, David. Two questions:

 

1. iMessage is now called Messages on Mac OS X. (Kind of like how Apple changed "iCal" to "Calendar".) So should I change "imessage://{query}" to "messages://{query}" or leave it as is?

 

2. What about with an email address? The Messages app can send messages from one computer to another via email addresses. Would I do the same thing in the Contacts section of Preferences / Features -- add "Email" instead of "Phone"?

 

 

Best wishes,

Mariva

[mariva]

Update: Jasper van der Meulen may have solved my problem:

http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1168-imessage-focus-with-part-of-namehandle/

 

Works pretty well, but I'm wondering if there's an easier way to accomplish this (without the major-ish scripts).

[pazu]

I wonder if this workflow can work with multiple contacts. 

 

For example, there are two best friends that I always message something to, we created a group, and I would love to have a shortcut to message BOTH at the same time. 

 

Thanks for writing up this script. 

[briangonzalez]

I just created an Alfred workflow for messaging your contacts. Works quite well

 

You can either install with NPM or download directly from the "Releases" tab – https://github.com/briangonzalez/alfred-messages

 

Cheers.

 

 

 

[deanishe]

1 hour ago, briangonzalez said:

You can either install with NPM

 

You should probably mention that users first need to install Node (and therefore possibly Homebrew).

 

Also that npm install --global may well break existing software.