Contact action to trigger Automator Service

[0veber]

I’m fairly green when it comes to creating my own workflows, but more often than not I manage to figure things out. But in this case I am stuck.

 

I’m using an app called DeskConnect on all my devices (laptop, iMac, iPad and iPhone) to send files, clipboard etc. from one device to another. If I want to open a pdf I have on my phone with my laptop, DeskConnect makes it seamless and easy. And even better: if I am on my laptop and google to find the nearest plumber, I can mark the phone number and send it to my iPhone (via an Automator Service). It pops up as a notification, and dials the number on my phone as soon as I swipe the notification.

 

Now, what I’m after is this: When I search for a contact in my address book with Alfred, I normally get an option to for instance copy the marked number. I want to also have an option to send this number to my phone. In short, I want Alfred to incorporate the Automator Service I have created into their Address Book feature.

 

I have no idea if my explanation makes any sense, but I’m hoping someone gets what I’m trying to achieve.

[rice.shawn]

You can't alter the way that Alfred deals with contacts, but you could make another workflow that would emulate it and give you the functionality you want.

 

Basically, you'd need to setup a script filter that would query your address book and filter the results. Then you'd further break down the argument in the script filter to separate out the contact's name, and, if it was one, then you'd show the actions for it. You can define these however you want: copy number, copy address, and use the automator service. It would probably be easiest to connect to the automator service via an applescript after that.

[0veber]

Thanks, that makes sense! I’ll try to get my head around scripts and see if I can come up with a solution.

[deanishe]

If it's any help, my MailTo workflow does something similar with email addresses, so it might help you figure out how to get at the Contacts database.

That said, I use a decidedly non-standard way to access the Contacts database (accessing the database files directly instead of using the horribly slow AppleScript API), so it's arguably also an overly-complex exercise in how not to use the Contacts DB…