(Music)
- [Mike] Hi, this is Mike Schmitz
and welcome to another edition of Screen Casts Online.
This week we'll be revisiting Drafts version 5 for iOS.
A great note taking app that makes it really easy
to capture whatever is on your mind.
And then send that text to the appropriate place later.
In Episode 739, we gave you an introduction
to the application itself.
But we heard from several people who asked
for a deeper dive into the powerful export actions
that make Drafts such a powerful productivity app.
So in this episode we're gonna walk through
different types of export action steps you can use
when creating your own export actions
and explain what they do.
After watching this tutorial you'll have a better idea
of what you can do with the export actions and Drafts.
And how you can use these building blocks
to build your own productivity work flows
on your iOS devices.
Let's get started.
(tech music)
Before we get started I should point out that everything
I'm about to show you with these export actions
requires the pro version of Drafts.
Drafts Pro is $4.99 a month
and is required if you want the ability to
create and edit actions.
You activate the pro version by going
into the settings in Drafts but you're going
to have to make sure that this is enabled
before you can create and edit actions
like we're about to do.
Alright so with that disclaimer out of the way.
Let's dig into this application.
Depending on your settings.
Drafts may give you a blank slate
when you first open the application.
In this particular case I have a note that I captured
when I was out and about.
I heard about a book that I wanted to read
and this is the perfect type of thing
to put into Drafts because I don't want to do
anything with this right now.
I just want to jot this down
and then I can take appropriate action on this idea later.
In fact I've got a bunch of these in Drafts.
So this is the perfect thing to use as an example
with this first export action typed up
we're gonna take a look at.
Which is manipulating the clipboard.
To set up an action we need to tap on the
export actions icon in the upper right.
I've got my Screen Casts Online group here.
I've cleaned it out so we can start from scratch.
I'm gonna create a new action in this group
by tapping on the plus icon in the lower right.
And I'll have this option every time that I
create one of these to add a new action
or add one from the directory.
The directory is definitely the easiest way
to instal actions into Drafts.
But for the sake of this tutorial,
we want to understand how each one of these
export action steps work so that we can start
building our own actions.
So let's start from scratch and tap on add new action.
We'll give this action a name of Append to Clipboard.
And then where it says steps,
I'm going to tap on this and add steps
to this export action.
Right now we have no steps to find.
We're gonna add one by tapping on the plus icon
in the upper right.
And we'll see all of the available step types
in Drafts Version 5.
We're gonna look at a lot of these and explain
what they do to give you some ideas of how
they can be strung together.
This first one is Clipboard.
So we can manipulate the contents of our system Clipboard
by tapping on this.
We've got the template to it's gonna take
the content from the draught and then we can either
replace, prepend or append to the Clipboard
with the contents of this draught by using this draught token.
I don't really want to duplicate copy and paste
but I do want to make a list of things.
So I'm gonna use append and then tap on save and exit
to go back to our Screen Casts Online group.
Tap on cancel and now we can trigger this action
by tapping on it.
So now I have boundaries by Henry Cloud
appended to my Clipboard.
So it's gonna be added a line below
whatever was on my Clipboard previously.
Which happened to be the name of another book,
The Power of Heaven by Charles Duhigg.
So now I've got two books on my list.
I can go back to my Drafts and add a few more if I want.
So let's close the action group
and tap on the Drafts icon in the upper left
to see the other Drafts that we have available.
to the place that you want it to go.
But one unique feature about this is
it has the ability to run in the background.
That means you don't need to have the pop up display
and choose where you want to send it.
This can be a big time saver when you're
emailing information into an application
like Evernote or OmniFocus.
A lot of productivity apps have these email addresses
that you can send things to and it will automatically appear
in your account.
So even if Drafts doesn't directly integrate
with the productivity application that you want to use.
If it has a mail to service like this.
You can use these send in the background feature
to get information in there easily.
And many of these services have different formatting options
which you can use in the subject lines,
in the to addresses.
That will tell it where it's supposed to go.
One of the services that does this is Evernote.
So that's the one that we're gonna use
in this particular example.
So let's say I've got a list of podcast in Evernote
that I want to listen to.
And I hear about this new one called Automators.
So I capture it in Drafts
and the moment that I capturing this.
It's now recorded.
I don't have to worry about it anymore.
I can come back, clean up my Drafts inbox later
and decide what to do with this.
In this case we're going to create a custom export action
that's going to do something specific with this information.
And again the way we do that is by tapping on
the export actions button.
Go back to our Screen Casts Online group
and tap the plus icon in the lower right.
Then select add new action.
So the name of this action, we're gonna use Evernote.
And I'm gonna put in parenthesis podcasts
because that's the example that's gonna help me
keep it straight from some other stuff we'll do later.
And again we'll tap on steps and we'll select the step
that we want by tapping on the plus icon.
The next one on the list is mail.
So we want to send an email message.
Here we can put the recipients, the to address,
CC or BCC.
I'm going to paste my super secret Evernote email address
which is going to tell Evernote to stick this
text that I'm sending it with my account.
If we go down to subject we've got the title tokens.
So this would be the first line of the draught.
Now in this particular case the entire draught
is only one line.
So we'll remove that and we'll tap on
draught button in the keyboard to use the draught tokens.
So that's the entire contents of the draught
that will be put in the subject line.
And then we'll put a space and then we'll use
some additional Evernote formatting.
So by using an exclamation point.
I can put a reminder in Evernote.
Then I can put the at symbol and put in the notebook name.
So @podcast is going to tell Evernote to
put it in the podcast notebook.
And then using the pound sign I can apply
a tag to the note as well.
So we'll use a pound sign tech.
And then the body of the note will remove this
and will add new podcasts to check out.
If we scroll down there's a couple other options.
There is the ability to send it as an HTML email.
I'm not interested in that.
But I do want to send it in the background.
There's a description here which says that if I send it
in the background it's going to come from Drafts 5-mail
at Drafts5.agiletortoise.com.
And recipients have to be able to recognise mail
from that sender.
So some services like Asana for example
where you have to verify the person who is sending email
into the application.
This may not work but for something like Evernote.
They don't really care where it comes from.
This allows me to skip the step with the pop up
or have to enter in the address every time.
Toggle the sign, tap save an exit.
And then fire this export action.
We'll get the green notification to confirm that it worked.
Okay, now let's go into Evernote
and see what this looks like.
So if I go to Evernote, I've got my
podcast notebook right here.
I tap on it and I've got one note which is Automators.
There's the body, the new podcast to check out.
An if I tap on the tags button we can see
the tag of tech has been applied.
So you could even create a whole group of actions like this
for the different types of things that you might send
to your other productivity applications.
But this can be really handy when you want to automate
all of the organisation of these things
that you send to these apps.
Okay so that's the mail action.
Now let's leave Evernote and go back into Drafts
and look at the next export action.
Which is the messages export action.
This can be handy when you want to send a message
to a bunch of people once straight from Drafts.
So let me give you an example.
Not too long ago I presented at
the Mac Stock 2018 Conference.
And there were a couple of people there
from the Screen Casts Online team.
And we had a group message set up so that
we could communicate when everybody came into town.
So let's say everybody is about to head out.
I'm running a little bit late.
I don't want everybody waiting at the hotel for me
and I want to tell them just go ahead.
I will meet you at the conference.
So I'm gonna create this message
and then I'm gonna create another export action.
And we're gonna call this one group text example.
Let's go to the steps and this time
we'll add a message step.
We want to send in iMessage with the Messages app.
And for the sake of privacy I'm not going to add
these people to the message live.
Let's just go straight to the point
where I have people's names filled in.
But what I really want to focus on
is the other stuff that we can do with this message itself.
So we've got a subject line here.
We could put in a subject if we wanted to
and then we've got the body itself.
Which again we could use different tokens.
I want to use the message itself.
So I'm gonna leave the draught token
and we'll save this and fire this.
Instead of seeing the green confirmation
that the action has been successful.
It's gonna take me straight to the messages application.
It's gonna paste the text from Drafts into
the body of the text.
And I could now send this message if I wanted to
by tapping on the up arrow.
I don't actually want to send this because
the conference is past and these guys
might be a little bit confused.
So we will hit cancel.
We'll go back to Drafts and because
I didn't send the message.
You can see I actually get a red notification
saying that the action was unsuccessful.
But that's okay because you get the idea
and you can see what this action does.
So this one's pretty simple and straight forward
but can definitely be handy if you send things
to groups of people over and over again.
Instead of having to locate that thread
in your Messages app.
You could just create an action.
Fire it off to everybody with the tap of a button
in Drafts instead.
Next is the share sheet export action
which allow us to send this to pretty much
any other application on our iOS device.
So for example, maybe I used Drafts to capture an idea
and then I flushed it out in Drafts.
But ultimately I want this thing to be in Ulysses
which is where I do all my long form writing.
Rather than type this all out.
I'm going to just paste a bunch of this text
that I've copied from another application.
So here's my text.
We still need to create a new export action
which is going to demonstrate the functionality
of this share sheet action.
So we'll tap the export actions.
We'll tap the plus icon, add a new action.
We'll call this one share sheet example.
Okay we need to add a step.
Tap the plus icon and the next one on the list
is the share step type where we can open
the system share sheet.
So we'll tap that.
And again we can change the tokens if we want.
I want all of the texts form this draught
to be sent to the application I would select
from the share sheet though.
So I'll just leave this and tap save and exit.
We'll fire this export action.
The share sheet opens and we've got lots of options here.
We can even air drop this if we wanted to.
There's some common actions we can do on the bottom.
And then there's applications that we can edit
in the middle row.
Now I'm gonna scroll through this.
I don't see Ulysses in this list
but that doesn't mean it's not available.
Just tap the more button and you'll see
all of the applications on your iOS device
that could appear in the share sheets.
So if I scroll down to the bottom, I'll see Ulysses.
We'll toggle that on.
Tap the done button.
And now Ulysses in in our share sheet.
So we'll tap on Ulysses.
Okay, we get this pop up which is the text itself.
I can even choose where I want to send this Ulysses.
The inbox is fine for now.
So we'll tap send.
We'll get the green notification.
Which again indicates that the action
has fired successfully.
Alright, let's go back to our Drafts.
And let's see if this made its way into Ulysses.
Let's close Drafts, go into Ulysses.
There is the article for Mike Schimtz's iPhone home screen
which appeared Mac Stories not too long ago.
So here I've got my text.
It's in Ulysses and now this is synced
with Ulysses on my iPad and my Mac as well.
So, I could pick up editing this anywhere I want to
in my writing application of choice.
So that's one example of how I use the share sheet.
There are actually quite a few options with the share sheet.
We're not gonna get into all of those in this tutorial.
But if you use the share sheet frequently
then recognise that this export action
could be a very handy step when you're building
your own productivity workflows.
Whether you want to print something as PDF's.
Run workflows in the workflow app.
Or simply save things to Dropbox.
You can do that all through the share sheet.
Let's continue with our export action examples
and the next one on the list is the reminders export action.
So going back to Drafts, we're gonna create a new draught
which has something that we want to remember.
In this case I want to remember to get spicy pickles
next time we're at the store.
So I jot down a quick note in Drafts.
And then we'll go to our export actions
and create a new action which has this
reminders export action step.
We'll title this action add to reminders.
And add the reminder action which is
going to create a single task in our reminders.
We'll look at list in reminders in a little bit.
Okay and in this step we have a couple of options.
We've got the list template.
So we can leave this blank to add it to the default list
or we could put in the name of a particular list
that we want to add the thing to.
And my example, I'm gonna use the grocery store list.
The title template is going to be the contents of the draught.
And the notes template I'm going to use the date.
Just to show you what this looks like in reminders.
This is gonna put a date time stamp on the item
so I know when I added it to my reminders list.
Okay, this is ready to go.
Let's fire this and see what happens.
Okay once we get our confirmation that the action
executed successfully.
We can leave Drafts and go into reminders.
And on our grocery store list there are spicy pickles
and there's the date time stamp from the date
when I recorded this screen cast example.
Os that's handy for adding single items
to your reminders list.
But what if you want to add a bunch of things at once.
But we saw there was a reminders list actions.
So let's go back to Drafts and see what that looks like.
Before we do that though.
I'm going to check this item off on the list.
Now we'll go back to Drafts.
I'm gonna take our same list here
but I'm gonna modify it slightly for this
new export action type that we're about to take a look at.
So the first thing we're gonna do is we're going to
go to the beginning of this note and create a new line.
This is gonna be the draught title
and we're gonna use this so that the action
can automatically put it on the right list.
So I'm going to use a pound sign
and then the name of the list which is grocery store.
Then we've got the name of the first item
which is spicy pickles.
There's another character that we can use
to separate the notes from the individual items on the list.
Next we'll add a few more things to the list.
Numenos which are way better than Oreos and fancy coffee.
Once we're done with the list we still need
to create the export action to send this to reminders.
So tap on export actions.
Add a new action.
We'll call this one reminders list.
And for the step for this export action.
We're going to use the next one on the list
which is list and reminders.
This allows us to create a whole list of tasks
based on the lines in the draught.
So each line in the draught is going to be it's own item.
And here we see the logic behind some of the things
that I added.
So in the action we can determine what list
we wanted to go to.
If we use the pound sign or the hashtag symbol
before the name of the list.
Drafts is smart enough to figure out
which reminders list that should go on.
And then we've got the special character
for the notes stelometer which is the pipe character
and then the template.
This is what is gonna be used to generate the lines
used to create the tasks in reminders.
So we want to leave that.
We want the whole contents of the draught.
So this is fine.
We'll save this and fire this action
to see what it looks like.
Again, we get the green confirmation
that the action fired successfully.
And now let's go into Reminders
and take a look at our grocery store example.
So here we've got three new items.
We went through our spicy pickles already.
So we got to get more and then we've got Numenos
and fancy coffee.
And Drafts new which list to put this on
because of the first line in the draught.
So if we didn't want to hard code that
into the export action.
We could use something like this which still allows us
to send it to multiple places.
But doesn't require us to create a new export action
for every list in Reminders.
That might get to be a little overwhelming.
Especially if you've got a bunch of different lists.
The next export action that we're gonna look at
is the event export action which allows us to
add things to our calendar from Drafts.
So if we have a draught with some information
that we want to turn into a calendar event.
Maybe we want the name of the calendar event to be
thinking time.
And then we've got a question we want to ponder.
This is gonna show up in the notes.
Why do you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
Okay this is something that we obviously need
to devote some time to figuring out.
So, let's create a new export action which
gives us the time on our calendar to solve
on of life's great mysteries.
Tapping on the export actions button again.
We'll create a new action.
We'll call this one calendar.
We'll go to steps and the next one on the list is
the event step which allows us to create a calendar event
using the system event card.
So here's the settings for this.
The title of the calendar event is going to be
the title of the draught which is the first line of the draught.
In this case it's thinking time.
In the notes template, this token body means
everything except the title of the draught.
So, whatever notes I had after the first line in the draught.
That will show up in the notes field.
So let's save this, fire it.
See what it looks like.
And again, instead of getting the confirmation notification.
It takes me straight to a screen where I can
add this to my calendar.
So we've got thinking time as the name
of the calendar event already.
By default it's on all day.
I want to change that.
I want this to be at a specific time.
So 10 am is fine.
We can change any of the other information here.
Like which calendar it's going to appear on.
I want this on my personal calendar.
We could invite people to this calendar event.
We could also have an alert fire
and we could determine whether we want this to show
as busy or not on our calendar.
The in the URL or the notes field here we've got
all of our notes being pulled in from the body of the draught.
Once I tap add, we get the green notifications
saying that this has successfully been added
to our calendar.
But in order to see this we need to go to our
calendar application.
My calendar app of choice is Fantastic Cal
right here on my dock.
And in the list view here we can see thinking time added
for today at 10 am.
If I tap on the event we'll get the additional information.
Including the notes and which calendar this is a part of.
So everything looks like it worked correctly.
The next export action type on the list
is actually called the export action.
This allows us to put a file anywhere
that we have access to on our iOS device.
This one is really interesting if you combine
the ability to add files to cloud based
file locations like Dropbox.
With the ability of something like Hazel on the Mac
to watch those locations and take action
on things automatically.
So for example one thing that you could do
is you could create a draught which when you
exported it to a Dropbox location.
Automatically shut down your Mac while
you were away from it.
So to clarify, you wouldn't necessarily
need to be at your Mac in order to shut it down.
Let's say you stepped away from it for a moment.
You realise that you're computer is unlocked
in your office maybe.
And you don't want anybody going in there
and messing with your stuff.
You can shut it down remotely using the
example I'm about to show you.
So let's create a new draught and we'll just
put in the word shut down.
Which is what we're gonna tell Hazel to look for on our Mac.
And we're not gonna get into the specifics of Hazel
in this tutorial.
But it's an application that can monitor certain locations
on your Mac.
And when it recognises something that meets certain criteria
it can take automatic action on it.
Here's what this Hazel rule would look like
if you set it up yourself.
So in this example the Hazel rule
which is watching our Dropbox folder
for a text file with the contents shut down.
And when it finds a file that meets that criteria
it will automatically shut down our Mac
using the embedded Apple script even if we're not there.
So that way we know everything is locked down
and no one can get at our sensitive information.
And the iOS side of this is pretty straight forward.
We just create a new export action.
We'll call this one file example.
And the step we're gonna add this time
is the export action which exports the contents
of our draught into a file.
Okay here's our options.
We can control the name of the file
and the contents that are going to be in the file.
So let's say I've got Hazel watching
this Dropbox folder for a file with the name shutdown.
In that case I'm going to use the draught token,
not the title token.
And the contents of the file aren't necessary.
Although you could set up Hazel to look
at the contents of the file if you wanted to also.
Okay so now this is ready.
We can save this and when we tap on this.
It's gonna ask us where we want to save this.
Now these locations are available through
the files app on my iOS device.
So you can add different locations if you want here.
I want to put this in my personal Dropbox folder.
So assuming I set up Hazel correctly on the back end.
Once I tap add to put this file in my Dropbox folder.
I get the green notification that the action
has fired successfully.
And I can now feel confident knowing that
Hazel has shut down my Mac for me
and I don't have to worry about anybody poking around on it.
Even while I'm not there.
We can actually accomplish the same result
a different way using the next export action type.
Which is the open in export action.
So we'll use the exact same draught
with the contents of shutdown.
Add a new action.
We'll call this one open in and for the steps for this one
we'll select the open in step.
Which again it gives us the option to control
the name of the file.
It's going to be a text file.
And also the contents or the template
that is going to be used to populate the text file.
So again depending on the specifics of the Hazel rule.
If it's looking for a file with a specific title
we could use the draught token in the name.
Or if it's looking at the contents of the file.
We can just leave it the way it is
and the word shutdown appearing in the draught
would be enough to trigger Hazel and shut down our Mac.
So let's save this export action, trigger it.
And what's gonna happen here is it will actually
open up the share sheet again.
And we can choose from the different places
that we would want to send this.
Now I've got one here to save to Dropbox.
So if I save this to Dropbox it's going to give me
the Dropbox interface and I can select
the name of the file and also the saved location.
So if I wanted to change the folder that this appears in
then I could do that using user interface
if I just tap on choose a different folder.
Because I want this on the root folder though.
I'll just leave it, I'll tap save.
Progress bar shows us how close the file is
to being in our Dropbox folder.
Once it's done we get the confirmation check mark
and we go back to Drafts and we get the green
confirmation notification that it has been opened
in the appropriate application.
So again it's the same result.
The difference here being that the open in export action
allows you to export files via an older
iOS document interaction model by offering
that open in in other apps which support importing files.
Since we're working with text files
the next logical thing that we might want to do
with this text is print it which is
another export action item.
So let's go back and select something
a little bit more lengthy.
Let's go back to our iPhone home screen article.
Okay if I wanted to print this off
and show it to somebody.
Maybe an editor for example.
I could tap on the export action
and create a new export action which we will call print.
The step we're gonna add this time is the
last system export action which is print.
Which allows us to print to an air print printer
as either text or HTML.
So let's select this export action
and then here's the option.
We've got the contents of the draught in the template
using the draught token.
And we can format this text as either text or HTML.
I'm gonna leave it as text for now.
And if we save this export action and trigger this.
It's gonna open the print dialogue
where we can select the printer.
But we could also, using this print dialogue,
save this as a PDF file.
All we need to do is pinch to zoom on the document itself.
That will give us a five page document
which we can scroll through and take a look at.
And if we hit the share button in the upper right.
We get the share sheet once again
which allows us to send this to pretty much
anywhere in the system.
And we can even air drop this to our Mac.
So if I tap on my icon here for my MacBook Pro.
It's going to take this text.
Format it as a PDF, not a text file.
So when we print things it's going to create a PDF
based on exactly what we see right here.
And it's gonna send that PDF file to my Mac
and now I've got to PDF file this text
that I can use in other applications.
We could send this somewhere else if we wanted to also.
Simply by tapping on the appropriate icon.
But we're finished for now so let's tap done
and go back to our printer options.
And since I sent the PDF where I wanted to
and I don't actually want to print this all, hit cancel.
The next export action category is social
and the options that are available here
will be determined by the applications that you have
installed on your iOS device.
Personally I don't use anything but Twitter.
So I'm gonna use Twitter as the example.
A Twitter has a character limit which this article
is definitely not going to fit in.
So let's create a new draught and the official Twitter account
for the Drafts application is @Draftsapps.
I just wanted to let Greg Pierce, the developer,
know that I think Drafts is awesome.
Okay then we need to create our actions.
So again we'll create a new action
and we'll call this one social media.
The export action step type we're gonna use
is Twitter which is gonna post the update
to our Twitter account.
And the options for this allow us to select a token
which is going to determine content of the message.
And then if we have several different accounts
set up on our device.
We can use a specific account in the credential identifier.
I want to tweet this from my personal account.
And the first time we use this Drafts is
gonna ask us to authorise our account.
This will take us to a Safari page
where we can log into our Twitter account using the API.
I'm gonna skip entering these credentials
for security purposes but once we have it all set up.
We can authorise it.
Once we've entered our credentials.
A pop up will ask us to go back to Drafts.
Tap the open button to go back to Drafts.
And there's our green confirmation notification
that everything is working the way that it's supposed to be.
So to see what this actually did.
I'm gonna open up my Twitter client of choice
which is the Twitterific application here in my dock.
And then we'll navigate to the profile to see my tweets.
And sometimes if you don't see it right away
you may need to refresh.
But once the feed refreshes we can see the tweet
that we sent from Drafts right here.
And if you have multiple social media accounts
that you want to post to at the same time.
You could combine these types of social media actions
to share the same message in multiple locations
without having to post it on each individual service.
For the next export action example
we're gonna get into some of the direct integrations
with some of the other services that we have available
on our iOS device.
In this example I'm gonna use Evernote.
So we're gonna go back to our book example
and I want to show you how we can maintain
a list of books to read inside of Evernote.
Which at least in nerd circles I run in
it's something fairly common for people to do.
So we'll leave the Twitter text that we used
in the last example.
And go back to one of the books that we want to read.
Let's look at Good to Great by Jim Collins again.
And with the Evernote example specifically.
One of the things that we can use are the tags from Drafts.
Now this note doesn't have any tags.
To add one we just tap on the tag icon
and type in the name of the tag we want to add.
So let's add a tag of books.
Okay now we've got the name of a book we want to read.
We've got a tag of books on this note in Drafts.
Let's go into our export actions and create a new action.
This one we'll call Evernote and we'll put
in parenthesis direct because this is going
to use a direct integration.
Not the mail to example that we used earlier.
Tapping on steps we'll scroll down until we get to
the Evernote section under services.
Which is going to allow us to upload
and modify notes in Evernote using
specific information from this draught.
So the name of the note is the time stamp
but I don't want to create a new note for this book.
I want to add this to a currently existing note
inside of Evernote already.
So I'm gonna delete this.
I'm gonna put the name of the note that I want add to
which is books to read.
We could choose a specific notebook if we wanted.
But I'm gonna leave this blank because that note
happens to be in my default notebook.
And then the tags for this note are going to be
inherited from the tags on the note in Drafts.
And the template is going to be the contents from the draught.
Which is the name of the book I want to read.
If we scroll down we've got other options.
We can export as text markdown
or the special Evernote markup language
which is similar to XML.
I'm gonna leave it as text.
And then we can choose a different right types.
So we can create a note called books to read.
We could replace a note called books to read
if it already exists.
We could prepend which means the text would be
added to the beginning of the note.
Or we could append which is going to add it
at the bottom of the note.
That's the one I want.
Let's toggle this on.
Go back and fire this action.
Again just like Twitter, we need to authorise this
before the action can execute.
I'll enter my Evernote credentials and tap sign in.
Then authorise which is gonna give Evernote access
to Drafts 5 integration for a period of one year.
And then the action is going to pick up
right where it left off.
I'll get the green confirmation notification.
Which means that the text has been appended
to the note in Evernote.
And I want to make sure that it actually worked.
So let's leave Drafts and open up Evernote
and it'll take just a moment to sync in the background.
But then you'll see the text that I appended from Drafts
automatically appear when the sync is complete.
So this integration gives us a little bit more control
and a few more options when it comes to sending
things into Evernote.
Then the simple mail to Evernote example
that we looked at earlier.
If you use Evernote as your reference file
it's definitely worth a little bit of time
to set up some export actions which will allow you
to send things to specific places in Evernote
like this from Drafts.
As of version 5.3, Drafts offers a similar
type of integration with the task manager to do list.
But I want a better example to show you
how this integration works.
So, tap on the plus icon to create a new draught.
And the other day JF told me about this awesome
green smoothie recipe.
So I want to add a task which is going to remind me
to try this out.
Now in order to try the recipe I'm going to need the recipe.
So let's go to the Messages app and grab the URL
that JF had sent me earlier.
Copy this, go back into Drafts.
And on the line below this I will paste the URL
for the green smoothie right here.
Okay now we've got everything that we need
to turn this into a task in to do list.
So, let's set that up the same way we set up
all of our other export actions.
By tapping on the export actions in the upper right.
And then tapping to add a new action
and we'll call this one to do list.
The step for this export action is going to be
in the services section under to do list.
Which allows us to add a task to the to do list in the box.
Now here are the options that are available
of the to do list export action.
Under the template section this is going to be
the title of the task.
And you can see the title tag which is going to pull out
the first line from the draught.
And make that the title of the task.
But we can add some additional syntax here
which is going to tell to do list specifically
what to do with this task once it hits the web server.
Just like we did with Evernote.
So in this case we want to put this in a specific project.
So I'm gonna put the hashtag or the pound sign
which is going to tell to do list that this is a project
and then put it in the personal project.
And then we can put natural language
for when this is going to be due.
So we can use something like tomorrow at 4 pm.
And then there's some additional options down below here.
So we could set a reminder here if we wanted to
and we could choose what we want to show up
in the comment of the task.
So the title is being used for the task name.
The body is going to be everything below
the first line of the draught.
And that's going to include the URL
to the smoothie recipe.
So that looks great.
Let's just save this.
Go back to Drafts, fire it off.
See what it looks like.
Again, we got the green notification
which shows us that the export action
has completed successfully.
And now if I go over to to do list.
You'll see that my inbox is actually empty.
But that's because the syntax that I used
allowed to do list to put it in
the appropriate place automatically.
So if I go to the side bar here
and tap on the personal project.
There is my smoothie recipe.
It's due tomorrow at 4 pm.
So if I tap on the task here and tap on the comments button.
It shows me the note associated with this
which is the URL to the green smoothie recipe.
So now when I go into my task manager
because I want to make this delicious looking smoothie
that JF sent me.
I've got the recipe right here.
I can reference that when I'm done.
I can check off the task and move on to the next thing.
Keep in mind that every web service that integrates
with Drafts is going to function a little bit different.
But by now you should have a pretty good idea
of how this works.
So now we're gonna move on to some more advanced examples.
We're gonna take a look at how you can even
run Java Scripts using export actions.
Now the scripts export action opens up a lot of things
for you if you understand how to right your own scripts.
And this is not a Java Script tutorial.
I don't know that much Java Script myself.
But fortunately there are a lot of
really smart people who have already written scripts
and shared them so that we can use those
without having to understand the entire syntax.
So that's what we're gonna do in this example.
We're gonna use a script that is going to allow Drafts
to integrate with the service that it doesn't natively,
which is micro.blog.
So for this example we need a different message.
I'm gonna create a new draught and type out a quick message
that I'm gonna use to post to the micro.blog service.
The first line we'll put Max.2018.
That's gonna be the title of the post.
And then we'll put the content itself.
This is the message that is going to be displayed.
So with micro.blog it's basically like
very short blog posts.
Max.2018 is going to be the title of the blog post
and the rest of the text here is going to be
the contents of the post.
Okay once we have our message written
then we have to set up the export action
by using the script export action type.
We'll call this one script example.
And in parenthesis micro.blog so we know
which script this is.
And the step we're gonna use way down here
under the advanced section.
Is the script export action type which is
going to allow us to run Java Script
on the contents of the draught.
Tapping this takes us to the script options
where we can import or export our script.
If we tap the edit button we can type in code itself.
As I confessed earlier, I don't actually know
Java Script code so I'm gonna go over to the web here.
This is in the Drafts action directories.
So we could just tap to instal this
but what I want to show you is that
there is the code right here.
And we can copy this.
So we can copy this from just about anywhere
and we can paste this in the script editor window
to run this script inside of Drafts.
So copy that text, paste it here.
When we're done tap save.
And now we've got an export action which will run
Java Script on the text from our draught.
According to the directions for this script.
If we leave all of this text the way it is.
It'll pull everything into the contents of the post
and it won't actually have a title.
So we need to follow the instructions on this script
which were on that Safari page.
And add a pound sign before the title.
That's gonna tell the script that this line
is the title of the post.
Okay so we'll make that change.
And then tap on the script example export action.
First time we run this.
We're going to have to enter our credentials.
So this is the app token that we can get
from the accounts page.
I'm just going to paste this in.
And when we tap save it's going to trigger
the rest of the action.
We'll get the green confirmation notification
that the action has triggered successfully.
And we can go over to our micro.blog site
and see if this posted to our account.
So let's leave Drafts and open up the micro.blog app.
And when we do we'll see the post right there
with the title.
The link to the actual post and if we tap on that
we can see this is what the post looks like
inside of the app.
It's titled Max.2018, that was the first line in our draught
and then the contents right there.
So again, this is under the advanced section.
For people who want to dig into Drafts
and customise it to really make the most
of the productivity work flows on their iOS devices.
If you put in a little effort
and learn some of these scripts.
You could do just about anything with the text.
So even if Drafts doesn't support the integrations
with the services that you want out of the box.
Really you've got a blank slate and anything is possible
if you understand how to write a little bit of code.
And if this is over your head, don't worry about it.
You can always instal these from the action directory
or you can use some of the simpler action types
or the direct integrations that we've covered so far.
To build your own export actions.
Even multi step actions to accomplish exactly
what you want with the text that you generate
on you iOS device.
Next let's take a look at how you can create
a multi step export action.
By creating a simpler version of the journaling workflow
that I showed you in episode 723.
And we talked about Day One for Mac and iOS.
Day One is a phenomenal application
but it is an additional subscription.
So maybe you already have something like Evernote
and you want to create the same type of thing.
Using Drafts you can create all of the props
and all of the tokens.
And then populate all that information
in whatever reference file or text file
that you want to use for your journal.
So for this one we're gonna use a couple of prompts
and then we're going to format that text a specific way
and stick it in an Evernote notebook.
Even though this one has multiple steps
it's really not anymore difficult to set up.
We just have to put a little bit of thought
into how we want the steps to be ordered.
So let's create a new action and we'll call this one
journal to Evernote.
The first step type that we're gonna use
is again, under the advanced section.
We're gonna use a prompt.
And the first thing we have to identify
when we set up this prompt is the key and the title.
This is what's going to be used when we
pull in the values that we're going to select
from this prompt into the text later.
So the key right now is prompt and the title is prompt.
I want to change this.
And I'm gonna make it feeling.
The message I'm going to ask is
how are you feeling right now?
And the response type, we've got two different options here.
We can use input or we can use buttons.
For this one I want to use a button.
So we'll include the cancel button
and the buttons will get rid of okay.
We're gonna put happy, sad, angry and content.
You can obviously use as many options as you want.
You just have to separate them with the
pipe character in between.
These are the four I'm gonna use for this example.
We'll tap steps to go back to the export action
and we'll add a new step.
Again we're gonna add a prompt
and this time we're gonna use gratitude
as the key and the title.
And we're gonna references that when we
pull in the text responses in just a bit.
The message for this one.
I want to ask what are you grateful for?
This time we want a text field response.
Not a bunch of buttons to choose form.
We want to be open ended with this question.
So we'll toggle on include text field
and toggle off include cancel button.
Okay so now we've got two different types of prompts.
We've got an input and we've got a button.
We've got both of them labelled as a feeling in gratitude.
Let's go add another step here which is
going to take all of this text and put it where we want it.
This time we're going to send it to Evernote
so we'll select Evernote from the services.
And for the note title by default
it's gonna use the time token.
I'm gonna change this.
I'm gonna put journal and then use a date token.
So when it shows up in my Evernote notebook
it's gonna have journal- and then today's date.
I can choose the notebook that I want to stick it in.
I'll leave it in the default one.
We can leave the tags token the way it is.
Now the template, this is where we can recall
the responses that we input with the prompts.
Again we're gonna use the tokens with the
double brackets on each side.
And I'm gonna put in text which is going to stay the same.
So I'm feeling and then inside the brackets
we'll invoke the title of the key which is feeling.
And then the under score character
and the type of response that we indicated.
So in this case feeling_button.
That'll all be inside the double brackets
which will tell Drafts that it's gonna pull in the value
and insert it here where this token is.
Okay that's the first part of our journaling action.
Go down a couple lines.
Add section here for I'm grateful for.
And again we'll do this same thing with the gratitude token.
So we'll put gratitude as the first part of the prompt.
Telling it which prompt to look at.
Then an underscore and text which is going to tell it
to take the response from the text field
and insert it right here.
And unfortunately there isn't a list of these
tokens that you can reference that you might see
in something like workflow which is a little bit
user friendly in terms of the interface.
You can build the same sort of thing here in Drafts.
And then this is gonna take everything
that we've done so far and stick it in an Evernote.
So let's run this but before we do
let's take a look at some of the other things
that we can do when we create these edit actions.
We've been going through all of the different actions steps
but there's a couple different fields here as well.
We could put a description for this action
to help us tell what exactly this action does.
The more export actions that you include in Drafts
the more handy these descriptions can be.
So we'll add a quick description here.
This is an Evernote journal template.
Then we've got the keyboard appearance
which allows us to add this to the Drafts keyboard.
And we could invoke this without having to tap
on the export actions if we wanted to do that.
I don't use this very often.
I'm gonna leave that blank.
The next thing here is an external keyboard shortcut.
So we've been focused on Drafts for iOS
and specifically we're showing you the iPhone
because this is where I use Drafts all the time.
But Drafts is a universal application.
And you can run this on the iPad as well.
If you had an iPad with an external keyboard attached
like the smart keyboard cover.
You could trigger these export actions
by using a keyboard shortcut.
So if we wanted something like option E.
We could set that up.
Okay, we could also change what happens after we run this.
So by default nothing is gonna happen.
We could select nothing.
We could select to archive this.
We could trash this draught automatically or we could ask.
It's gonna give us a prompt.
I'll use this one so you can see what it looks like.
And then we can also automatically apply
tags if we wanted to.
So let's apply a tag of journal to this note
after we've run this export action on it.
Then if we go down to the advanced section
we can toggle the confirmed before running.
This might be food if you're gonna do something
which is gonna trigger a whole bunch of steps.
If you trigger it accidentally, that might cost you
some time or even do some things that you didn't want
to have happen.
So we'll toggle this on just to show you what this look like
and then we can show notifications never.
We could show notifications only when there's an error
or we could continue to get the confirmation notifications
by leaving all selected.
I'll leave all selected and then we've got the log level.
So the log level show us all the export actions
that have run inside of Drafts.
And we could log this activity from
this export action never.
We could log only the errors from this export action
or we could log everything.
We'll log just the errors, I'll toggle that on.
And then at the bottom there's the action directory.
So if we create a really awesome export action
that we want to share with other people.
We can publish it straight to the action directory.
Okay so lots of options we can apply
to this export action once we get it the way we want it.
We'll tap done, go back here.
Let's fire this off.
Now this one doesn't rely on any particular input in Drafts
so we could actually have a blank draught
when we invoke this export action.
I'm gonna do that.
I'm gonna create a new draught.
Go to my export actions.
Tap on journal to Evernote.
It's gonna ask me are you sure you want to do this?
We'll tap run and then we'll answer the prompt.
So how am I feeling right now?
I'm feeling pretty happy.
Okay, what am I grateful for and I'm gonna put in
my response here.
I'm grateful for everybody who's watching
this tutorial right now.
Then it's going to prompt me and ask me
what I want to do with this.
Remember this is one of the things that we toggled on.
So we can either archive this message or we can trash it.
Or if we just want to leave it we can tap the skip button.
Once we're done we get the confirmation message
according to the notification setting
that we had set for the action.
So we get the green confirmation notification.
Let's jump over to Evernote.
Take a look at what this looks like.
Here's all my notes and if I tap on this one.
We've got the text there.
It's selected happy and stuck it into
the feeling_button token that we used.
And then we've got the response from
the gratitude_text token that we've used.
So I put this together pretty quickly
and this is just one example of how you can take
multiple actions and stick them together.
Another example might be something where
you wanted to post the same message to multiple
social media accounts.
There's really no limit to the number of steps
that you can put inside of your Drafts action.
And if you spend a little bit of time thinking about
all of the actions that you typically take
with something before you're done with your process.
You can automate all of those things if you have
the right mind set and the pro version of Drafts 5.
So we've covered a lot in this tutorial so far
and really the goal is to get you familiar
with these different export actions steps
so you can build your own actions.
But like I said you don't have to
build them all from scratch.
Especially with some of the more complicated
script examples.
If you're not comfortable scripting things yourself
you can instal these ready to use
straight from the Drafts action directory.
And this is an option available inside the application.
You don't even have to navigate to a specific website
in order to get to this.
All you have to do is tap on the export actions button.
Add a new one and we've been tapping at new action
but if we tap visit directory.
We'll be taken to a Safari page which has
a whole bunch of actions that we can instal
with the tap of a button.
Let me give you an example of some of the stuff
that's in here.
We'll tap on most popular and these are
the most popular Drafts actions at the moment
that I'm looking at this.
One really cool one is this fantastically good event parser.
This is kind of named after Fantastic Cal
which is calendar application which has famously had
really great natural language interpretations.
So you could put something like call with David
to discuss the secret layer at 11 am on Friday.
And it can parse all of that information
and create the calendar event for you.
But what this Drafts action does is it gives you
the ability to input text into Drafts.
Run those things and even create multiple calendar events
using that natural language parsing.
Even if you don't have Fantastic Cal installed.
So this is a pretty cool action.
Let's instal this and I want to show you
what this looks like.
But first we have to create some content
that we're gonna turn into calendar events.
Each line will be it's own calendar event.
So the first one I'll put meeting with JF
on Thursday at 9 am to talk about fancy coffee.
The next line I'll put call with David on Friday
at 11 am to discuss the plans for the secret lair.
So if this runs correctly this will create
two different calendar events for me
and I'll be able to access these in any calendar application
because it's going to integrate with the calendar
at the iOS level.
Alright so we go to the Screen Cast Online group
where we installed that export action.
We scroll to the bottom, there it is.
I'll tap on this and run it
and we'll get the green confirmation notification
saying that it has done the appropriate action.
It's cleaned up my text so it's probably archived
or trashed that draught for me.
So it doesn't clutter up my inbox automatically.
And if we go over to the calendar now.
Which again can be any calendar application.
And I'm gonna use Fantastic Cal because
it's right here on my dock.
But what we'll see here are a couple new calendar events.
The first one, meeting with JF to talk about fancy coffee.
We can see this is applied to my personal calendar.
It's Thursday at 9 am exactly where it should be
and on Friday I've got my call with David
to discuss plans for the secret lair
and that is Friday at 11 am.
We can even add additional context if we wanted to
which would automatically apply custom alerts,
reminders or even select different calendars.
It's just using my default calendar here
and it's putting it on my personal calendar.
But that's exactly what I want to have happen.
And if you're new to Drafts version 5.
This is probably the place to start.
You don't have to put in all of the time
and effort to create these export actions.
There's a good chance that somebody has
already created one which does exactly
what you're looking for.
So be sure to check out the actions directory
and see if what you want to create already exists
before you invest a bunch of time getting Drafts
to do exactly what you want.
But as we've covered here today.
There's lots of different export action types
that you can mix and match.
Combine in many different ways to make Drafts
do just about anything that you can imagine.
If you spend a little bit of time thinking
about your text workflows on your iOS devices.
And then create workflows which have export actions
to make that more efficient.
Drafts can end up saving you a significant amount of time
in the long run.
(Music)
That'll do it for this tutorial on export actions
in Drafts 5 for iOS.
Hopefully now you understand what these actions can do
and the examples have given you ideas on how
they can be strung together to automate text manipulation
on your own iOS devices.
But that's it for now.
We'll be back next week with another addition
of Screen Casts Online.
See you soon.
(Music)