Tag Archives: automation

Conference Presentation Materials NACADA Region 8

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Materials from my 2018 NACADA Region 8 Conference presentation entitled “Small, But Powerful: Using Mobile Devices to Supercharge Your Advising Documentation System.”

Description from the conference program is as follows:

Paper advising documents, such as checklists and graduation plans, while key to advising, pose challenges for advising record-keeping. A lone copy with the student, if lost or misplaced, causes frustration, duplication of effort, and leaves no record for future reference. With the ability to transform paper into electronic documents, mobile devices offer a powerful solution providing enhanced documentation of advising interactions. The session will demonstrate iOS-based workflows for creating, managing, and adding electronic documents into existing advising documentation systems, including shared note taking platforms. The workflows can be readily adapted to various mobile platforms and participants of any level of technology experience will learn helpful tips, tools, and techniques to supercharge advising documentation on their campuses.

Materials and Resources

Video Demonstrations

Building Workflow 1 Step by Step

The Magic of Text Expansion

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One of the biggest time saving tools I have encountered on a computer is text expansion. In its simplest form, text expansion is typing a small bit of text, which then automatically expands to a longer string of text. You could think of it as similar to writing an abbreviation, but with additional power and features. Using text expansion, when I type the shortcut “;ph” in any text field on my Mac, it expands to my complete office phone number. Text expansion can be used for both small strings of text, like phone numbers and email addresses, as well as longer items–even paragraphs of boilerplate. While a phone number here and there might seem insignificant, when I consider the number of times I type the same things daily it really adds up. According to the stats in TextExpander1, my text expansion app of choice, I’ve saved about 650,000 keystrokes. At a rate of 40 words per minute, this equates to about 55 hours, which is about 18 hours a year during the three years or so I’ve been using the app.

With TextExpander, some elaborate text expansion magic is at your fingertips. To whet your automation imagination, here are a just a few ways I use the app:

Stock phrases

In the course of a day, I have numerous terms and phrases I type repeatedly. This might be a function of higher education work, but I find myself repeating the same words especially when writing notes after advising appointments. I have made shortcuts for these, which can be handy when squeezing in notes at the end of one appointment before the next student arrives. So “;ud” expands to upper-division, “;lcb” expands to Lundquist College of Business, and so forth.

URLs/links

There are a number of URLs, many of which go deep into websites, that I insert frequently into emails and other documents. I have a group of shortcuts that I use the prefix “;hl” to indicate it will expand to a link. For example “;hlpre” expands to the link for the pre-business requirements on our college website. You can even format links, so they appear as such in your documents. I write my URL shortcuts in Markdown syntax, so they appear already formatted as hyperlinks in the email or document (I mostly write email in Airmail and documents in Ulysses, which support Markdown). TextExpander also offers optionally-installable snippet groups (“snippet” is TextExpander’s term for shortcuts) that manipulate URLs, including processing a link through a shortening services, such as Tinyurl or Digg.

Date stamping

TextExpander includes functionality for date and time insertion with snippets. This will insert the date and/or time in multiple formats (long, short, ISO, etc.). I enter the current date frequently in advising notes and other places, and I use a “date stamp” shortcut that formats the date the same way every time. TextExpander can also perform day and time “math” to adjust the date or time when it executes a shortcut.

Email signatures

I use two email signatures, one for internal communications and a second for contacting students. I insert the desired one using text expansion at the end of each email. Snippets in TextExpander can be plain text, rich text, and even contain images, so you can easily create an elaborate set of signatures formatted to your liking.

Email and document templates

When I find myself replying to the same or similar emails, I create a stock reply, assign it a TextExpander shortcut rather than re-writing the same message each time. TextExpander’s features make this really powerful. You can simulate keystrokes, fill in information that will be added to your text, include optional text, and even do some date and time math! I routinely email our Registrar’s Office with updates to a student’s degree guide. I have a TextExpander snippet that I type in the “to:” field of a blank email message. It adds the appropriate email address, moves to the subject field and enters the stock subject, asks me for the student’s ID number and name, and lets me select the information to be updated. Once it has this information, the app inserts it in the stock text and the message is ready to send. I have about a half dozen of these and every time I see myself writing the same email, I create another snippet for it. This can be done with longer pieces of text like disclaimers or conditions and canned letters. Other email text templates I use include:

  • how to make an advising appointment
  • a blurb summarizing major requirements and where to find them online
  • notification I have authorized a student to register for a class requiring departmental approval

If you send the same (or even similar) emails regularly, text expansion can be a life saver.

Text expansion is some of the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to automation. It offers tremendous power for just a few minutes of set-up time. You can get up and running with most text expansion utilities very quickly and before you know it, you’ll find enormous opportunities for automation. One warning–once you experience the magic of text expansion, you’ll never go back to plain old typing again!

  1. Smile Software offers both a subscription and stand alone version of TextExpander. You can run a trial version of the stand alone version for 30 days to try text expansion for yourself. ↩︎

 

The scanner in your pocket (Using iOS devices to scan documents)

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When I mention that I’m scanning documents for students’ files to my advising colleagues they often assume that our office has an expensive scanner. They express great interest in paperless systems, but see the presumed expense is a definite barrier. That is until I explain that, whether they realize it or not, they already have a capable scanner in their iPhone and iPad (many advisors on our campus have iOS devices). So “How do you do this?” they ask. In response, I’ve put together my brief guide to getting started using your iOS device as a scanner.

Get a scanning app (or two)

There are dozens of scanning apps in the iOS App Store. Many are free with ads, have a free version with a basic feature set (with an accompanying paid version), or offer in-app purchases to go ad-free or access advanced features. The three I suggest to get a feel for scanning are ScanBot, Scanner Mini (a free version of Scanner Pro), or Evernote Scannable (if you’re in the Evernote ecosystem). If you only want to save scans to Microsoft’s OneDrive , you might try Office Lens. Its features are quite limited, and it seems designed mainly to save scans to OneDrive. Start by installing a few, try them out, and see which works for your needs.

Scanning tips

  • Scan on a flat surface, such as a table or desk, whose color is dark enough to provide good contrast with the document. Most scanning apps will automatically detect the document’s edge and the high contrast helps this work most effectively.
  • Scan where there is bright, even lighting. Scanning in daylight near a window and/or with strong room lighting tends to work the best. One challenge to scanning with an iPad can be the shadow it casts over part of the document. Good lighting will help obtain optimal results. Some apps will correct for the distortion from a device being held at an angle, rather than directly overhead. This can often overcome the iPad shadow issue. It also makes it easier to capture a readable scan without the need to have your device absolutely parallel with your document. It helps too with documents that have been folded (like a receipt from your pocket). Scanner Mini and Office Lens are two apps with this feature.
  • Try different filters to optimize the readability of the scan. Good scanning apps will allow you to apply various filters to your scans. Filters make it easier to get the best results based on the document you’re capturing and what you want to do with the scan. Most common filters are full color, grayscale, and black and white. ScanBot adds a “magic color” filter that tries to optimize the scan automatically (I’ve had mixed results with this). If your document is mainly text, black and white usually provides good readability (especially if you plan to apply OCR to the document) and keeps file sizes smaller than grayscale or full color. I suggest trying each filter to see which one produces the best results. Filters are applied before you save the document, so you can see the results and change filters, if desired.

    Filter options in ScanBot

  • Save your scans as PDF documents and apply OCR. For document scanning, Adobe’s PDF format is usually preferable to JPEG (unless, perhaps, if you’re scanning photos and want to use them in a photo app or upload them to photo site like Flickr or Google Photos). PDFs are universal across platforms, offer small file sizes, and can contain a text layer (sometimes called PDF + text). The last feature is particularly useful for a paperless system because it allows you to search the text of a document in the future. To add a text layer to a scanned document, you need to apply optical character recognition (OCR) to the scan otherwise your PDF is just a picture of your document. Some scanning apps, including Scanner Pro and ScanBot (with in-app purchase) have this feature, and it works surprisingly well. Evernote will apply OCR to scanned documents, using its cloud-based servers, and also is quite accurate. It also can extract some of this data, for example when scanning business cards, which can then be exported to a contact management system. Office Lens will also scan business cards (this is done in the cloud) and import the data into a contact card stored in OneDrive.

What you can do with your scan

 

There are a number of ways you can manage your scans once you have created them. Depending on the type of document you’re scanning and what information is recorded there (e.g. student ID numbers or grades), some methods may raise some student record concerns. This is particularly the case if your scan might be synced to a cloud service, such as iCloud, Dropbox, or Evernote. Disclaimer: In my commentary I note some of these concerns, but I’m not intending to give FERPA advice. Check with your Registrar or IT department if you have concerns about this.

1. Store it on your device

Storing scans on your device is one option. This approach works if you scan infrequently, have space on your device for storage, and do not have a need (or very limited need) to send the scan elsewhere. Using an app such as Readdle’s Documents or DEVONthink can provide a place to organize and store them for future reference. This solution can work effectively if you have a large amount of available space on your device or if you scan documents infrequently. This may be your only option depending on your institution’s policy regarding student records (if you’re scanning documents with FERPA protected data). Be aware that some scanning apps, such as Office Lens and Evernote Scannable, do not store scans in the app. They are essentially conduits to save the scan to their respective apps, which store your documents in their cloud services.

2. Email scans to yourself

If you plan to store scans on your desktop, laptop, or a file server attached to them, email can be used to transfer your scan from your iOS device. Using the iOS share sheet, most scanning apps can send a scan as an email attachment. Sending the message to yourself allows you to open the email and attachment on your primary computer and work with the file from there. Assuming you’re using your institution’s email account, email is an option worth considering if you’re working with scans with student information on them.

There are a few downsides to using email in this way. First, depending on what you’re scanning, like color documents or multiple pages, the files can be on the larger size. This can be a limitation since most email services restrict the size of attachments that can be sent. Furthermore, since you will end up with two copies of the file, one in your inbox and another in your sent mail, this can quickly eat up space on your email server (unless you’re diligent about deleting both copies once you’ve saved the file elsewhere, which also adds a step your scanning workflow). Your friendly IT department may restrict your abilities to send and receive mail once this capacity is reached. Second, I find managing documents being sent back and forth over email to be cumbersome. Sending email to yourself as a method of file transfer can involve many steps and may lead to scans stacking up in your inbox (most of us do not want more email). Unless you have a very low scan volume or your institution’s IT policy is severely constraining, an email-based workflow is usually not the most efficient strategy to manage your scans.

3. Sync to a cloud service

The option that provides the most flexibility with your scans is having them sync to a cloud service, such as iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, or Google Drive. A distinct advantage of this method is that your scans are available on multiple devices simultaneously. This opens up many possibilities for what you can do with a scan including printing, accessing them in meetings, saving to a file server, sharing with colleagues, or uploading to an advising record keeping system. Most scanning apps can send scans to a cloud service using the share sheet. Some apps, such as ScanBot, can be configured to do this automatically once it has scanned and processed the document. Others, such as Office Lens and Evernote Scannable, are designed mainly to send scans to their respective cloud-based services. Syncing to a cloud service is the by far the most flexible solution for managing scanned documents.

It does, however, raise the most concern for scans with student data since files reside on servers not directly in control of the institution. Some institutions have contracts with cloud service providers, such as Google or Microsoft, where the terms of the contract are such that FERPA-protected data can be stored in the service (usually through an account tied to your university credentials). Your IT department should be able to advise if your school has this sort of arrangement. If this is not available on your campus, using one of the other methods discussed above may provide a solution when working with documents with student data. You could still employ a cloud service for other kinds of scans, for example, reference information or handouts from meetings.

Sharing options in Scanner Mini (with in-app purchase to full version)

Now that you’ve learned the basics of scanning with an iOS device, download a few apps and give it a try. Before long you will be a scanning pro and your colleagues will be asking you “How did you do that?” too.

 

Creating OmniFocus Templates with Workflow on iOS

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I have used OmniFocus for task and project management for some time now on both the Mac and iPad. It’s a terrific application and one I’m always learning to get the most of its capabilities. At the end of last year, I heard a Mac Power Users episode on workflows where hosts David Sparks and Katie Floyd mentioned creating templates for OmniFocus projects. David used templates to automate task creation for regular projects that always have the same tasks (his example was prepping a podcast episode). I also heard Fraser Speirs discuss how he uses the iOS app Workflow to create OmniFocus tasks and projects in a Learn OmniFocus webinar. Fraser gives an example of tasks to be completed when he needs to cover for an absent teacher in his school. (To learn more about Workflow, I highly recommend Fraser Speirs and Frederico Viticci’s Canvas episodes on the Workflow app). This got me thinking about possible reoccurring projects where I could use a similar kind of template. In my current role, I coordinate two orientation programs for new business majors each quarter. Preparing for each program requires the same tasks, so it made an ideal project for a template.

Writing the template

To get started, I listed the tasks required and organized them in a way that made sense for the project. In OmniFocus’s terminology, I set this up as a parallel project (i.e. tasks don’t necessarily need to be done in a particular order). OmniFocus requires templates in the plain text TaskPaper format. In its most basic format, a template looks like this:

- project name
	- first task
	- second task
	- etc.

TaskPaper (as it has been implemented by OmniFocus) allows the user to assign tags to projects and tasks to specify options such as context, due date, flagged, etc., Tags start with a “@” followed by the tag name (no space between) and the parameters in parenthesis, for example @due(01/10/2017). This tag would give the project a due date of January 10, 2017. The full list of tags OmniFocus supports can be found at https://discourse.omnigroup.com/t/implementation-details-for-omnifocus-2-14-automation/24179.

The final template with tags for my project is as follows:

- prep for (orientation type) on (date) @due(date -1d) @autodone(true)
	- print advising worksheet labels
	- assign front desk to apply labels
	- assign checklists to advisors
	- pair checklists with advising worksheets
	- update general education presentation
	- update pre-business presentation
	- save copies of presentations to OneDrive and shared drive
	- provide front desk with numbers of packets to prepare
	- request open class lists 
	- prepare agenda and staffing
	- send "items to bring with you" email to staff
	- review agenda with staff
	- print check in line signs
	- check atrium signs have correct room listed

Making the workflow

The workflow starts with asking the user for input, the orientation type and the date, which are used to specify the project due date and project name in OmniFocus. Each request starts with the “ask for input” action followed by the “set variable” action. The date input gets an intermediate step that formats it as a short date. This input is stored in two variables (“orientation type” and “date”) whose values are used in the template.

The next action “text” is where the TaskPaper-formatted template text is stored and variables from the previous steps are inserted. This text is then passed to the “URL encode” action which, in turn, forwards the template text as an input to a custom URL. The URL is the mechanism that sends the template to OmniFocus:

omnifocus:///paste?target=/folder/work/task/orientation&content=Input

The URL tells OmniFocus to paste the content (the text defining the tasks to create) in a specific location in OmniFocus (my “orientation” project in the “work” folder). Details on crafting URL schemes for OmniFocus on iOS can be found on Inside OmniFocus at https://inside.omnifocus.com/url-schemes .

The finished workflow can be run directly from the Workflow app or for quick access, I have added it to the Workflow widget on the iPad home screen.