Building a title with prompts

Actions - Help & Questions
1

I’m afraid this is a really basic question, but after spending considerable time trawling through the forums I’ve run into some conceptual blockage and can’t come up with the answer myself.

Simply, I want to clip text from Safari or Instapaper, and send it to Drafts with a heading/first line comprising:

  • the date/time in %Y%m%d%I%m format
  • prompt for a source, to be entered manually
  • prompt for a subject, to be entered manually

… so the eventual draft would look like:

202001030920-james-on effort

… and I can then ping it off to Dropbox or some other archive.

Can I a) do this, and b) do this from the point at which I clip the text, or do I need to do it as part of an action enroute to Dropbox?

(And can I trigger a “send to Dropbox” Drafts action when I clip from Safari, so it all happens in one fluid movement?) Either way, how?

Suspect the answers lie in Shortcuts, but I hit the same blockage there. Any help appreciated.

2

To me, this is entirely Shortcuts. The only reason to involve Drafts is if you want to edit the clipping or add your own comments to the end. Try this:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/afaf98e01d7d44e594d3fefd00e36c0f

It’s for running from the Share Sheet in your browser and expects the text you want to save to be on the clipboard. You didn’t mention it, but it adds the page’s URL to the bottom. You’ll need to give it access to your Dropbox account the first time you run it.

(Just realized I didn’t include the time in the date stamp, but it’s easy to add.)

1 Like
3

This is extremely helpful, thank you. You’ve provided a solid basis for some tinkering. Not sure why I’ve been so dense re Shortcuts and Drafts, but light is beginning to glimmer. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to help me out.