RocketTheme Blog
IFTTT Recipes for Professionals Using iOS
- Wednesday, 11 June 2014 15:04
IFTTT (If This Then That) is an excellent utility that allows you to create and manage workflows across a multitude of different services and devices. Through creating recipes that create a cause and effect response between different APIs, you can connect services that would otherwise be completely separated from one-another.
For iOS users, this means being able to connect information from your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad with over 100 different services and devices.
We have touched on IFTTT in a previous article highlighting the things you can do with it on WordPress. In this article, we'll take a look at some business-centric recipes that can make life easier for an iOS user.
Send New Contacts a Friendly Email
Meeting people at conferences and throughout the workday is an important part of doing business. A lot of the time, a business owner will attend conferences or meet-ups and come face-to-face with several individuals only to forget to follow up the next day.
This IFTTT recipe will handle that for you by connecting iOS Contacts to Gmail, it will send an email to anyone you add to your iOS Contacts list an email that confirms the contact information you've entered.
This should probably be used with caution as everyone that is added to your contact's list will receive this email.
Mark the Addition of New Contacts on Google Calendar
Have you ever had an appointment with someone that you met in the past, but you can't quite place when it was you made that initial connection? This recipe will mark new contacts on your calendar so you can quickly search and retrieve the date, as well as see what was going on during that day so you have some context to go on when you arrive at the meeting.
This can be a useful tool when making those outbound calls, as well. A little context goes a long way, and it never hurts to know where you were when you added "John Doe the SEO Consultant" to your contact list.
Track Your Time at Work in a Google Spreadsheet
Time tracking can be a difficult part of the day to remember. While you're heading in and out of the office, you can actually have IFTTT track your time spent at work for you by logging it in a Google spreadsheet.
You can alternatively have this enter-exit time logged in Google Calendar, giving you the ability to visualize this time as part of your larger schedule.
Log Completed Tasks in Google Calendar
There are plenty of methods for tracking your productivity, but it always helps to have a backup. By logging tasks marked completed in your iOS Reminders app into Google Calendar, you can keep track of your accomplishments on multiple platforms, simultaneously.
You can also, of course, log these completed tasks in a Google Spreadsheet.
Add Emails Labeled 'To-do' to Your Reminders
Going through your Gmail and finding things that need to be accomplished is one thing, but actually adding these tasks to your task list is something we almost all forget to do from time to time. This IFTTT recipe solves that problem by automatically adding any email labeled 'To-do' to your reminders list for you to take care of later.
Receive an iOS Notification when a VIP Emails
Managing email is a challenge for any small business owner. You have to not only be on top of your inbox, but you have to make sure that the priority email gets brought to your attention. With IFTTT, you can make those important emails a little easier to find by connecting Gmail to iOS Notifications.
With this recipe, you will receive a separate notification in the event that someone from a specific email contacts you. It's a great way to give the VIPs (bosses, top clients, important associates) a little more access to you without any additional effort.
Add Notes to Evernote Via Siri
This particular recipe is a bit of a workaround that connects your Reminders app to Evernote. By doing so, you can tell Siri to "Add Evernote reminder," followed by your note and directly add content to Evernote without having to launch the app.
This is just a small example of how IFTTT's workflows can, if you're creative, expand the functionality inherent with iOS.
IFTTT recipes can be used for just about anything you can imagine relating to the 100+ services it connects to. For professionals using iOS, these recipes can save you time, effort, and even extend the life of your device.