Workspace Specific New Draft Settings

In the latest release of Drafts, we gained the options to specify a default action group and extended keyboard. I’d like to suggest being able to specify a default new draft for a workspace.


Content

The first part of this would be some default content. Perhaps content specified within a field within the workspace’s settings, or as a path reference to a standard template file (as defined in the template utility tag)

The latter appeals to me as it would make it easier to maintain a common template acoss multiple workspaces … but I also appreciate that such an approach may be less accessible to the typical user. I’m not sure which end of the spectrum someone who would look to make use of this would appear.

Syntax

The second part would be being able to specify a syntax for such templates, whereby it then overrides the default app settings.


I feel this would be useful in a variety of circumstances where users switch between workspaces to adopt different “modes” of working. Whilst some of this is already possible using actions to create new drafts for a workspace that, for example, loads a particular action group or extended keyboard row; I think that tying it to the new draft function ("+" or CMD+N) would provide a consistency and make it easier to access and maintain the new draft defaults.

If this is something others would appreciate too, please leave a comment, give it a like, etc., to let Greg know there’s interest by more than just me :sunglasses:

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Interesting. That seems to be your “thing” @sylumer. :slight_smile: Using workspaces as, ahem, different work spaces. So I can see this would be really useful for you.

For me workspaces are more like tag-driven folders. But the addition of workspace-specific actions - and your perspective - is causing me to re-evaluate.

I could use a group of “work” workspaces and “hobbyist” workspaces. Right now have e.g. “javascript” as a workspace name - containing snippets that an action can choose from.

And anything that beefs up workspaces - like this - has got to be good.

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Fits with the ethos of Drafts (as I understand it) and I can see how I’d find it useful, particularly the content aspect. I’d probably want my template within a field, as with Actions, rather than external, but the option of an external template could be handy too.

Another approach might be for the Workspace settings to allow for specifying an Action to be called when creating a new draft within that workspace, since the functionality is already there in Actions to change syntax, insert templates, set action group, keyboard, etc. This would also allow flexibility of creating the new templated draft either from within the workspace or from an action, or externally from Shortcuts.

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I like the idea of an automatically-run action. Then that could - if as a global one it queries the current workspace name - tailor its activity. Likewise, if it were workspace-specific it would be handy and wouldn’t need to query the current workspace name.

In some specific groups that I have - Journal and Work, as examples - I have an action which creates a new draft. That draft is created with the specific tags that are needed to funnel it into the proper draft list. I do, however, often start a new draft using ⌘N for another purpose while I’m in another workspace.

My suggestion: create an action which provides the different tags/syntaxes needed for the different workspace, tie it to ⌘⌥N, and then select from a prompt the draft type you need. You could also query the workspace you’re in and have it create a new draft based on that. I think I’ll be setting one of these up for sure in the near future once there is a method in scripting to query the workspace.

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Thanks for the insights everyone’s posting. It’s great to see that interest in this isn’t mine alone. Just to pick up on a few of the points above…

I had considered that initially. Hoestly that would give the most scope, and I would certainly be happy with that approach.

The first reason I didn’t suggest that originally was that I couldn’t think of a case where the action wouldn’t be focussed on the creation of the initial draft from no content; in which case templates seemed to cover the vast majority of likely content creation scenarios I could think of; though others could have scenarios templating (and within them tags) would cover.

The second, mainly informed by the first, was that I figured it would be more accessible to a typical Drafts user. But this is just a gut feel on my part based on what I see posted in the forum and on Twitter, and I could be wrong about that.

Just to highlight that this external template came to mind simply because it is an existing feature in Drafts. Again I think having external templates is more powerful, but the extra hoops to jump through in creating and maintaining such templates is perhaps a nudge further than some Drafts users might expect to tackle.

Unfortunately tying it to a keyboard shortcut works only when you are using a keyboard. Most iPhone users for example wouldn’t have the device attached to an external keyboard when using it. I suspect the majority of iPad users also don’t use an external keyboard. My expectation would be that such users would simply use the standard new draft button (“+”), which is why I suggested tying the behaviour to the draft creation process rather than a particular action.

As it happens, you do seem to be able to extend CMD+N to trigger an action after draft creation. :wink:

Well that assumes it will exist in the near future. Anyone who wants that should probably post some support to the thread @martinpacker created:

I’m not sure how I missed this thread when it first cropped up, but consider me to be in favour! Especially the syntax option - that would make my life much easier in certain workspaces :slight_smile:

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I want this too. Now that we have a create draft action step, why not just trigger an action from the new/plus button based on the given workspace!