How do you structure your Action Groups / Workspaces

Hey guys,

I just wanted to know how you all structure your Action Groups and Workspaces to get some inspirations and maybe change my setup a little bit.

Currently I dont have much workspaces, just for one ongoing project and some Tags I often review.

I use one Action group for tasks (& 1 action to create an event in fantastical).
then I have another Group for Note’s (evernote Actions) and template processing, one group for communications (messages, whatsapp, email…).
I have one group "MISC where I put other actions with no specific group or i dont use that often.
I use one group to test some actions i import and maybe use them later or when i develop an action it starts here, and then of course all the keyboard action groups.

how do you use or structure your action groups?

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For workspaces:

  • home - I have this workspace setup to filter out all the other workspaces so I can just see new drafts or drafts I’m working on at the moment. I try to keep this as empty as possible. (I don’t care for the name, but couldn’t think of anything better.)

  • cheatsheet - I use this like the Cheastsheet app/widget on iOS

  • share - links, tweets, podcasts, youtube videos, and other stuff I plan to watch soon. I’m trying to use this as a replacement for pocket or instapaper.

  • lists - drafts which have lists of tv shows, movies, projects, ideas that I’m saving with the Add to list action.

  • templates - drafts that have some standard responses for emails or tweets.

For actions:

  • messaging - some actions I have setup using my Group message action

  • tasks - actions for todoist, fantastical, Due, and reminders

  • cloud - actions to save to dropbox, icloud, dropbox journal,

  • search - actions to search on amazon, imdb, wikipedia, youtube, google

  • utilities - actions

  • my actions - actions I’ve written

  • test - I usually put actions I install here while I’m testing them to see how they work or if I think I’ll use them.

  • keyboard actions - I have several groups of keyboard actions.

Still experimenting with it all, but it’s worked out okay.

I wish there was an easier way than “include action” to make a shortcut to other actions. I think they hierarchy I have, but I’d like to have a “most used” group with the few actions I use all the time.

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No workspaces beyond the default.

Action groups:
Basic - email, text etc.
Searches - a dozen or so specialized searches, mostly converted from Alfred
Text - create new sheet in Ulysses, save to file etc.
Tasks and Calendar - (see title)

then all the stock installed ones plus

OF Taskpaper that Rosemary posted here
Action Scripting

and finally

Obscure and Disused - also used for testing new actions before deciding where they go

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Not much has changed from the review. I have found that a lot of my Workspaces and Action Groups mirror one another. This is all fluid, but as of this five minutes, this is where I am with all of it:

Workspaces

  • General: This shows all my drafts, except for writing, tasks, and scripting.
  • Journal: I’ve changed my journaling slightly (more on this at a later date, as I’m still working through it), so I created a workspace that filters only on a journal tag.
  • Writing: all writing / posts go here.
  • GTD: Everything task and calendar related.
  • Scripting: this is used mainly for writing action scripts. If I ever want to make CSS changes to my site, I’ll likely do it here as well.
  • Work: Notes for work.
  • Reading: This is for saving snippets from the web to read later. Not quite RSS, but it’s a nice feature for when I want to reference something later. Filtered on a read tag.

Action Groups

  • General: a mix of different actions that I commonly use in one action group. Mainly used for my iPhone.
  • Journal: all my actions for journaling. (Link)
  • GTD All my actions for getting things done. (Link)
  • Writing: all my actions for writing/posting.
  • Action Scripting: all of my actions used for scripting drafts actions. (Link)
  • Social: this is for messages, email, and tweeting.
  • Work: I have some very specific work actions that I need to use frequently, and they go here.
  • Secret Action Group: this item redacted
  • Keys: This houses a bunch of key-like actions. Most of them map to keyboard shortcuts. (Link)
  • Misc: Actions I want to hang on to for various reasons, but do not use.
  • WIP: Work-in-Progress actions that are in various stages of development.

I’ve linked to the ones I’ve shared. The other action groups that I haven’t contain personal information and can’t be shared. Hope that helps!

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This is where I am at right now. Some elements are in flux as I build in efficiencies to streamline my workflows.

Workspaces

  • Messages: Texts, email or other written media-type messaging
  • List: Simply filters/tags for list categories.
  • Reference: Collection of general and personal reference
  • Taskpaper: Taskpaper tag creation + filter only. Note: This is a case where I’d like to be able to assign a Workspace-specific syntax, in order to only open Taskpaper syntax. (My overall Drafts default would still be Markdown outside of this workspace.)
  • Javascript: Scripting Workspace (Same note as above would apply here, but always open JS syntax.)
  • Process: Cleaning & archiving space

Action Groups

  • Edit: main editing keys/actions
  • Markdown: md specific actions
  • Clipboard: (likely eliminating with one concise prompt button-based clipboard action)
  • Quick Access: Actions that link directly (via UUID) to certain lists. Also includes “Add to List” actions, preset groups actions for texting and email.
  • Search: Dedicated to any app or service I generally search. See: Terminology, Symbolay, Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, even the Drafts Action Directory, etc. It’s quite a list. I default-link to apps that exist on my iPhone, but some services (for lack of a good app or url scheme) go to web.
  • Apps: For getting text to apps used in my daily workflows like Fantastical, Dropbox variations, TextTool, Messaging, Mail, often with x-callback-url variations.
  • Things: Things 3 App gets its own group, with a variety of customized actions. If it wasn’t for Things, I’d just use Drafts for GTD.
  • Numbers: The handy (Agile Tortoise) number group.
  • TaskPaper: A Taskpaper specific action group.
  • Action Scripting: Tim Nahumck’s (see the gentleman who posted right before me here) curated group for scripting.
  • Testing: New/old actions in flux/being customized, etc.
  • Archive: A repository of mainly unused reference actions not yet in line for deletion.
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Yes workspace specific syntax would be great!

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thank you guys, really helps to find the right setup :slight_smile:

I have one workspace dedicated to one of my podcasts for notes relevant to that. It also has some actions only relevant to that workspace. Most of those actions are to allow me to quickly hop between notes. I have one that I use to “reset” the draft which basically keeps the title and nothing else.

I have another workspace for my other show, but that one does NOT have specific actions.

I have a workspace where I keep various groups of words I routinely mute in Tweetbot for short periods of time.

I have a workspace dedicated to scripts I’m playing with (aka attempting to learn with) and some associated actions.

Then I just have one for any drafts that are untagged.

Most workspaces spend time in my primary action group.

I do have one group of actions that I never directly call. They are called either by other actions or by other apps via url scheme.

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It sounds like most of you are using workspaces like folders, to group related drafts together. I’m curious…is that really the case, or do you use different “list option” settings for your various workspaces? If so, which ones do you find useful?

I use them to filter my drafts related to projects/content.
I dont use much different list options, mostly i’ll just show the title of the draft and maybe the last action. I like to have a clear view and dont see content of drafts in the workspaces. For some workspaces i show the tags of the drafts, too but e.g. in my list workspace i dont need them, on the other side when i look into my general workspace i show the tags because they help me to quickly find what i need.

Sure, I use Workspaces kind of like folders, primarily to filter out everything else. If I am longform writing or updating my lists, I don’t want to see documents unrelated to those endeavors.

In terms of list options, sometimes I only need to see the first line of drafts in the document list, for example, in a journal-type space. And I might have these sorted by creation date, instead of access order, etc.

It’s really all about your personal use cases for the how and why of what you write and what works best for you.

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New to drafts so excuse my ignorance. I’m trying to figure out how to use workspaces to my advantage, but it just seems like it’s the same as filtering by tags. I’m sure that’s not correct so if someone has a reference link that walks through this all that would be great.
I see the power in drafts and have been using it for very basic things, but now I’m trying to really harness the capabilities and have it work for me.

Thanks,
skp

Workspaces really are about custom filtering of your Drafts content—to create tag-specific and/or text query specific spaces for your notes, lists and writing, etc.

It gets interesting when you take a look at how you want to work with Drafts—and what tag filters you access most?

Do you need to filter tags by ANY (or) ALL? And maybe, in one Workspace, you only want to toggle on title previews (and not body preview) for viewing Draft lists? Are you going to further sort the Inbox, Flagged or Archive via any of the 6 additional parameters, per Workspace?

There are also new scripting and url scheme capabilities (in Drafts 5.2) that allow for further customization. For example, there’s the capability to switch to a Workspace and also automatically load the Action Group/Keyboard you will always want to use in that Workspace. There are more detailed descriptions about that here: https://nahumck.me/drafts-5-2-the-navigation-update/

As you can gather from this thread, You determine how to harness efficiencies within Drafts Workspaces; it’s highly dependent on, and can be designed to facilitate, how you want to work.

Looking at your structure gave me permission to get rid of a bunch of Action Groups I am not using!! Thanks for the inspiration!!!

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I also use my Workspaces like folders. Here’s my current setup:

  • All-ish - Everything that doesn’t appear in the following lists
  • Scripts - I actually store my scripts as drafts and just have the actions run the text in the drafts. Much easier for testing and making updates. Link for how to do this.
  • Work - I’m a Software Architect by day and am in constant meetings. This is where I keep track of my To Do lists, schedules, meeting/project notes, etc.
  • Zettel - I’m experimenting with using the Zettelkasten methodology in Drafts. For all of my own data (i.e. not work), I am definitely a more mobile first person. However, the guys over at Zettelkasten are not mobile-first in their approach so I’ve had to play around a bit with things. It’s not exactly what I’d like it to be…but it suffices for now.
  • Minecraft - I’m a 12 year old trapped in a 43 year old’s body. I love Minecraft and playing it with my 4 kids on our own server. This is where I keep all server related info, Minecraft commands, etc.
  • All - This is the real “All” list with no filters.

My general inbox is growing though and I probably need to add some new Workspaces based on what patterns are actually in there. In the older versions of Drafts, I had a bunch of filters set up for numerous types of things but held off making a 1 to 1 set up in D5 to see what I actually use. I will likely add a journal section next.

I really don’t have my Action Groups organized since I use Drafts mostly from my iPad with a keyboard. I just trigger things by shortcut and rarely even open that panel.

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How are you managing your zettelkasten? Would love to consolidate more in Drafts and save some subscription money from other apps.

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