Workflow Wishlist

[TheRuroni]

- "Facebook Graph Search", At first I simply wanted to type "f" as a workflow shortcut and be able to search for contacts, pages to open in browser... But now with Graph Search it could go even further by typing "Photos of Contact Name"...etc

 

- "Siri Answers style", Instead of talking to Siri I was wondering if it was possible to type questions in Alfred and get answers within Alfred like "what's the weather like?" "what's the capital of Australia?". I understand that this might require the "Siri intelligence" but I know Google started providing direct answers for queries (ex: if you type "capital of Australia" in Google you get "Canberra" on top of results) so maybe it's possible?

 

- "Notifications", my last workflow wish would be a way to get my notifications displayed as a list in Alfred and selecting them would have the same consequence as clicking them in Notification Center. So for example if I had "n" as a workflow shortcut typing "n" would display that I got a mail and a reminder let's say, selecting the mail notification preview in Alfred and pressing "Enter" would launch Mail app and the mail in question.

 

Anyway I love Alfred and I hope it will survive the Yosemite update with their new Spotlight!

 

PS: I don't know anything about creation of workflows or understand how they work, but after years of usage I thought I'd ask

Edited December 26, 2014 by InfamousBastard

[vitor]

(…) workflows or understand how they work, but after years of usage (…)

That’s a bit hyperbolic. Alfred v2 (which introduced workflows) is little over one year. It’s a good thing you asked, though, so we can address your points.

Facebook Graph Search — This one should be possible, as there is an API for it. I don’t have (nor plan on getting) a facebook account, though, so I won’t be of much help, here.

Siri Answers style — Siri isn’t currently available on OS X, or for public use (meaning only Apple has official access to its API). I’m not sure there’s an API for Google’s instant feedback. There is a service that provides this, though — Wolfram|Alpha. There is a workflow for it, and it even works with your examples — “how is the weather”, “what is the capital of Australia”.

Notifications — While you can certainly send notifications, I’m not sure you can access the whole Notification Center programatically. As far as I’m aware, you can’t.

Regarding your last point, it was addressed mere minutes after the new Spotlight was unveiled. It does have some nice features not (currently?) present in Alfred. However, Apple hasn’t (publicly) specified, but nothing indicates we’ll be able to build Spotlight plugins as easily and as powerful as we can with Alfred.

Edited October 2, 2015 by Vítor
Fixed typo

[deanishe]

The kinds of content provided by Facebook's Graph API mostly don't fit well with Alfred's results list. Getting a list of photos of a person, for example, returns a list of URLs to the images, and there's no useful way to display them in Alfred. It'd take 20+ seconds to download all the photos, and you wouldn't be able to see anything in Alfred before then (it doesn't allow you to specify URLs for icons).

Regarding Notification Center: it might be possible to show notifications in Alfred, but not manage them. The official API is strictly write-only, and all you can do is fiddle with the do-not-disturb settings (and that in a hacky fashion).

However, the data are stored in sqlite databases in ~/Library/Application Support/NotificationCenter/. You could dig the information out of these (I did something similar with the Contacts database for one of my workflows), but speaking from experience, it'd require a fair amount of effort.

Most workflow authors write workflows to scratch their own itches, and it doesn't appear that any have so far had any interest in writing Facebook/Notification Center workflows. I dare say, however, you'd be able to get the assistance you need on this forum if you had a crack at writing one yourself.

Edited June 5, 2014 by deanishe