IFTTT is a curious platform.
For the uninitiated, IFTTT is an acronym for If This, Then That. It’s also a platform that allows you to automate certain tasks.
At first, it seems really cool. You mean I can automate some everyday tasks? Just set it and forget it? Amazing!
Sites and platforms that range from e-commerce to the connected home and from fitness to social networking can be connected and mashed together to enable you to turn your lights on at home from anywhere or to save all your Instagram photos into your Dropbox account.
The beauty of the IFTTT site is that so many people and companies have created terrific recipes already. I peruse the different channels and recommended recipes from time to time to see what might be useful.
Today, I’m sharing five recipes that will help make work run smoother.
Find a meeting time that works for everyone (and remind them)
If there’s anything worse than trying to find a meeting time that works for everyone, it’s making sure that everyone remembers to attend. Connect the Slack channel you want the reminder to go to, sync your calendar, and you can set how much time in advance you want the meeting reminder to go out.
Bonus benefit: If the reminder doesn’t go out, you can blame IFTTT. Just kidding. Note: Only Google (or Google Apps) calendars, Office 365 calendars and Kyber calendars can be connected to IFTTT at this time.
Save screenshots you take to Evernote
I take screenshots all the time on my phone, often for work purposes. Sometimes it’s to show how an app is behaving. Sometimes it’s to illustrate a blog post. This recipe will automatically share screenshots you take on your device to an Evernote notebook. You can then easily access it anywhere – via mobile, desktop, web app. This makes it far easier to share the image with others.
Turn emails into Trello cards
We’ve all emailed things back and forth and realized at some point that the task at hand needs to be put into the workflow somewhere. With this recipe, all you have to do is create a custom filter label and the tagged email will be turned into a Trello card. No copy-pasting. No copying, then forget what you’re doing, not pasting it, copying something else and then remembering and pasting something entirely different into Trello.
Come on, we’ve all done that.
Add files to Chatter via Dropbox
This is for all those folks using Salesforce. Create a “Salesforce” folder in your Dropbox account. When you have files you need to share with folks within Salesforce, put them in that folder. This recipe will take those files and drop them directly into Chatter for you as a simple, yet useful great time-saver.
Receive SMS if your company appears in a NYT article
This is an aspirational item, truth be told. But if your company gets written up in the New York Times, wouldn’t you want to get a text? That’s what this recipe does. Good luck!