Don't overlook the little, simple things!

[Stephen_C]

I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted but there are some really easy, useful things you can do with Automation Tasks in a workflow. I'll give you an example.

 

I have frequently to battle with a reasonably deeply nested menu in Day One in which I can turn off, or on again, smart quotation marks. (Tip: don't have a workflow called Save 'ur… something!). Finally, this morning, realisation slowly dawned. Keyword: dss, linked to:

 

Now why didn't I think of that before?

 

If you suffer from deeply nested, often used, menu items…well, there's a possible solution!

 

Stephen

[vitor]

Here’s a related neat trick. One problem is that sometimes a menu item changes its name depending on something else in the app. For example: in Messages you can see Edit → Tapback Last Message… by default, but if you select a message it changes to Edit → Tapback Message… You can use that difference to your advantage in the workflow to e.g. only make something happen when the right option is available, but sometimes you want activate the menu item regardless of this detail. In this case what you can do is add both as separate Automation Tasks. Because an Automation Task error stops the flow of execution, this means only the active option will get through. You can see this exact example in action in the Tapback Message workflow.

[andy4222]

We need more educational posts like this lol! Thanks for sharing!