Bryan Villarin writing for All Narfed Up:
When viewing a list on all platforms (Mac, iPad, or iPhone), you can filter by more than one tag.
Hit the link for details on how to filter on macOS and iOS. Things 3 is beautiful and can be simple, but there’s power for those willing to look for it. iOS itself is similar – it is simple for those who want an easy experience, with power features optional and out of sight unless you want them.
I have set up my firm’s case management system to email me three reports every Sunday evening. These reports arrive as attachments to email. For several months, I’ve been coming in on Monday morning and dragging those reports out of Mail and into Unclutter, which I keep in my Mac menu bar so I have easy access to certain files. I recently decided I would automate this process.
Looking around online, I found several AppleScripts purporting to accomplish this, but I wanted to see if I could accomplish this with Keyboard Maestro. I ended up doing it with Keyboard Maestro and Automator.
My Automator workflow, as depicted below, is pretty simple. It finds any email in my inbox that meets two conditions:
If those conditions are met, Automator gets the attachments from those messages and saves those attachments into the same Dropbox folder used by Unclutter to hold files. (I don’t know if I actually need the second step in the workflow).
Then it was simply a matter of setting up a Keyboard Maestro macro that would launch the Automator workflow every Monday before I arrived at the office.
The final step for me was to create a rule in Hazel to monitor Unclutter, and clean out old reports every week.
Caveat: I just set up this system yesterday, and forced it to run out of its normal schedule. It worked fine. I’ll see this Sunday evening whether it runs on the schedule I designated.
Here are links to the Automator workflow and Keyboard Maestro macro:
Jim Neumann writing for Devontech’s Devonian Times blog:
Workspaces save the content and positions of all open windows so that you can restore them later. This is ideal if you are working with the same set of windows over and over again. Save these windows as a workspace and recall them whenever you need them again.
DEVONthink is one of those apps where you really could discover a new feature almost every day, if you wanted to. I’ve been using DEVONthink for a few years now, and was completely unaware of the workspaces feature. Although I mostly use the widescreen four pane view (with my PDF or file displayed in the far right pane), workspaces could be handy for different workflows. One that comes to mind is when you need several items on the screen at once.
Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann writing for Devon Technologies’ Devonian Times blog:
DEVONthink and DEVONthink To Go can be comfortably used with OmniFocus by using item links. Many other applications support URLs, too, and can so link back to documents stored in DEVONthink. For example Things from Cultured Code which works with DEVONthink very similar to OmniFocus:
As a couple of the commenters to the linked story point out, you can use the Things quick entry hotkey on your Mac from within DEVONthink (assuming you’ve set up the Things helper app) to automatically create a task in Things with a link back to the item in DEVONthink. Setting up your task in this manner will create a link that works on both Mac and iOS. On iOS, you can use the share sheet from within DEVONthink To Go, and get a task with a link back to the item in DEVONthink.
This is important, because Things doesn’t support attachments. Since DEVONthink links work cross-platform, DEVONthink is a great candidate to use as your Things file system.
Why go to this trouble, instead of using an app like OmniFocus, which does support attachments? After a few years of using Omnifocus, I’ve been putting Things 3 through its paces. It doesn’t have quite the power and flexibility of OmniFocus, but I’ve been surprised to find it actually might fit my workflow better. I have many, many one-off tasks, as opposed to projects, and Things seems better suited to that. The visual representation of Today and Upcoming, as seen in Things, can be done in OmniFocus with some customization, but the visual representation of this in Things works with my brain a bit better.
As David Sparks, aka MacSparky, has mentioned, there is value to using a tool that gives “delight.” Right now, I’m finding that Things gives me delight in ways that OmniFocus doesn’t. It keeps me working toward getting my tasks done. We’ll see if that lasts after the newness of the app wears off.
(UPDATE 2018-02-01 – I went online again this morning, and appointments were more plentiful. I have no idea if that means Apple has added capacity, or if my previous experience uncovered a temporary glitch in their system.)
If you need a Genius Bar appointment for an Apple device, good luck. It’s only one source, but an Apple online advisor has told me that Genius Bars are booked solid dealing with the iPhone battery replacement program.
I ‘m having a power issue with my iPad Pro, and tried to schedule a Genius Bar Appointment for the Apple Store near me. You’re normally able to go online and book these appointments as much as a week in advance, but there wasn’t a single opening over the next week. I thought I might have better luck if I spoke to an online Apple advisor, so I went that route, and she wasn’t able to get me an appointment at my local store either.1 She told me that Genius Bars are at capacity due to the battery replacement program.
With as much press coverage as the battery replacement program received, this isn’t the least bit surprising. This is something to keep in mind if you are having any issues with your Apple devices.
I’m not sure if she didn’t have the ability to schedule an appointment even if the Genius Bar’s schedule was booked (i.e,, the schedule is the schedule, and there are no appointments held open for online advisors to claim), or my problem didn’t warrant this measure.↩
