I was really excited in August 2017 when I read the announcement about the Inbox feature: āto make capturing information into Dynalist easier. Now weāve made the first step towards it: capture to your inbox!ā
I then waited (silently) for what I figured would be the inevitable follow-on step to be able to quickly add to inbox from the mobile app. This makes sense because my mobile phone is with me in the car, on line at the supermarket, etc.: a bigger percentage of my life than spent sitting at my desktop. And these times away from my desktop are the prime unstructured times when Iām going to stumble onto those fleeting thoughts I must capture immediately lest I forget them for a long time. Ultimately I imagined Iād be able to say things like āHey Siri, remind me to get oil changedā.
Even if there was no Siri integration Iād be quite willing to launch the Dynalist app, hit some new button at the top, then type or speech-to-text my note, and press Done and my note would be added to the Inbox.
Iām surprised these things havenāt happened, but shame on me for not speaking up. Iāll bet Iām not alone in wanting this.
Is there any interest in taking more steps towards the goal of making capturing information into Dynalist easier (from mobile apps)?
For Android my app Quick Dynalist offers all the features that youāve been talking about. Including adding selected text to multiple inboxes, sending text to inbox, Google assistant integration, widgets, shortcuts to an inbox, speech to text, etc.
Unfortunately, I donāt have an iOS equivalent.
But maybe this is still helpful / an inspiration to build something similar for iOS.
Alan & Louis, thanks for your responses. It looks like on iOS I can select pre-existing text and send it to my Inbox but I canāt type new text that will go directly to the Inbox. And maybe the Android Quick Dynalist app gets closer to what I want - but itās not iOS.
I experimented with the workflow a few times and while sharing text might sound simpler, there are a few extra steps that make it painful:
Launch notepad or some equivalent
Open a new sheet or scroll to an unused part of current sheet
Type the reminder
Drag to select the reminder text
Click share
Click Dynalist
Review text and press āPostā
(Dynalist launches) Reminder text is now in a dynalist window - review it and press āAddā
Go back to notepad and delete the (now unnecessary) reminder text
It would probably be simpler to do it in Dynalist. My workflow for that is:
Launch Dynalist
Scroll to my Inbox (could be a few swipes and clicks depending on where I was last. Also, response time on the iPhone is kindof slow - even on my Xs - I usually have to wait a few beats after each click for the cursor to respond).
Click at end of Inbox (then wait a few beats for cursor to react - about 1.5-3 seconds)
Type my new reminder text
Hopefully I donāt need to return back to my previous location in Dynalist
What I often do instead:
Speak: āHey Siri, remind me to get an oil changeā
Siri tells me it added it to my reminders (i.e. the iOS Reminders App)
I have an IFTTT Applet that automatically sends new reminders to my email
Some time in the future when Iām at my desktop, I copy the text from my email to Dynalist and delete the email
What would be best:
Speak: āHey Siri, Dynalist add get an oil changeā
or:
Launch Dynalist
Click an āAdd to Inboxā button on top of Dynalist page
Type or speech-to-text my reminder
Click OK
(this would be much faster than scrolling around dynalist to get to my Inbox and back)
If there was an appropriate integration point Iād be happy to create an iOS Shortcut script to make it all work together.
Is there already some way to do this that Iām not aware of? If not, do Dynalist folks have a similar vision of a frictionless, streamlined path from my brain to my Dynalist? Thanks!
Thanks Alan, I can now confirm that those notions are true.
Iāve created a working IFTTT applet āIf Any new reminder, then Make a web requestā where āany new reminderā is checking for new reminders in the iOS Reminders App. If it sees a new reminder, then it makes a web request via the IFTTT Webhooks service. The latter is documented in the link you posted (which uses the Dynalist API described here: https://apidocs.dynalist.io/#send-to-inbox).
The net result is I say āHey Siri, remind me to get an oil changeā, and somewhere between 15 minutes and an hour later it gets added to my Inbox. That delay is unfortunate but I can overlook it because my goal was to have a frictionless way to record the nagging idea that popped into my head so that I can immediately move on without worrying about it.
For what itās worth, the delay is entirely on the part of IFTTT. The Dynalist API is very fast. Once IFTTT awakens from its slumber and makes the Web request, Dynalist immediately adds it and displays it in the Inbox.
cant you just have those reminder emails get forwarded to a dynalist inbox?
my issue now is i need to be able to
input tasks seamlessly, in no time, like
ios:say hey siri
google tasks: drag from email
get away from being at the computer all the time
āMy adviceā¦ is: spend less time on marketing presentations and more time on your product.
Honestly, that should be the number one thing taught in business schools, put down that spreadsheet and that PowerPoint presentation and go and make your product better.ā
-Elon Musk