Drafts to Ulysses Sheet Workflow

Actions - Help & Questions
1

Hi all, I’m finally back to Drafts after some time away. I would like some help with the following:

  1. I discover some text such as a note, joke, story, creative idea, etc.
  2. I want to capture on my phone with voice recording or scan input
  3. Send the text to a created sheet in Ulysses labeled something like the categories above, or the Inbox would probably be OK also. Creating an IOS shortcut would automate this some more I believe.
    Any help greatly appreciated.
    Jim Adams USA KY
2

What sort of help do you need exactly?

Is there something specific in what you listed where you don’t know how to do it or where to start?

3

Thanks for the quick reply. I need to know how to pass the particular snippet to a specific sheet or inbox I want the snippet to go. Then delete the snippet from Drafts, but that isn’t a must.

Jim Adams
USA KY

4

I found an Action that sends the snippet in Drafts to Ulysses. It sends to the Ulysses Inbox. That is workable for sure, but I would like to pick a particular group before sending. Any thoughts? Please point me to a faq or examples if you can so I can start learning and contributing to the community.
TIA,
Jim USA KY

5

The actions in the directory for Ulysses are using x-callback-urls to add content. Ulysses don’t look as though they publish details of their scheme any longer (which is worrying … perhaps no longer officially supported?), but you can find the details via archive.org.

The URL scheme information for creating a new sheet is as follows and includes details for including a group.

new-sheet

Creates a new sheet.

Available on iOS since Ulysses 2.6 (API version 1), on Mac since Ulysses 2.8 (API version 2).

Parameters:

  • text
    The contents that should be inserted to the new sheet. Must be URL-encoded. Contents are imported as Markdown by default.
  • group
    Optional. Specifies the group the new sheet should be inserted to. This argument can be set to one of the following values:
    1. A group name (e.g. My Group) that will match the first group having the same name, regardless of its position in the group hierarchy.
    2. A path to a particular target group (e.g. /My Group/My Subgroup). Any path must begin with a slash. (More…)
    3. A unique identifier of the target group. (More…)
    4. If no value is given, the sheet is created inside the Inbox.
  • format
    Optional. Specifies the format of the imported text: markdown, text, html. Defaults to Markdown.
  • index
    Optional. The position of the new sheet in its parent group. Use 0 to make it the first sheet.
    Available since Ulysses 2.8 (API version 2).

Example:

ulysses://x-callback-url/new-sheet?text=My new sheet&index=2

I don’t use Ulysses, so I have no way to test this, but I would assume an action like this would cover the basics.

The prompt just has a list of buttons with each button being the group name to assign the draft content to.

The action is currently set to do nothing with the draft so you can test it non-destructively (or at least as non-destructive as your default is set :laughing:). If you are happy with it and want to add your draft to the trash (it will go to trash, not totally deleted - which is the norm), select the “trash” option from the “After Success” drop down in the action’s properties.

2023-02-27-21.56.02@2x
2023-02-27-21.56.02@2x726×302 38.1 KB

Hope that helps.

1 Like
6

Thank you. You are very kind and helpful.
Jim

7

Mostly for the sake of the thread…

~5 months ago, I reached out to Ulysses’ developers regarding this very subject and they responded with a .zip file (which I published in full on GitHub,) with this explanation:

We have deprecated support for X-Callback URLs, since most actions should be available via Shortcuts. However, X-Callback still works in Ulysses. You can find the documentation for X-Callback in Ulysses in the attached zip file.

1 Like