Drafts: Methods for Running AppleScript

04 Apr 2020

Drafts is utilitarian text app available on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS that I use frequently. To say I’m a daily user would not do justice to the app. As the tag line says this is the app where text starts, and that’s certainly true of my use cases. It provides a quick point of capture and powerful tools to let me do more with the text to prepare and send it to its final destination than any other app possible could; and that says a lot when you look at apps like Keyboard Maestro, Text Soap and Sublime Text!

In the latest release (version 19) of the app on macOS, developer Greg Pierce (aka AgileTortoise) has significantly extended the automation and processing scope through the addition of AppleScript, and in this post I’m going to walk you through some example set-ups related to this.

Preparing for SuccessFactors Learning in 2020

27 Mar 2020

The first SuccessFactors release of 2020 is just around the corner, and with it will come the release of the new SuccessFactors Learning administrator user interface.

In case you have not yet thought about your preparations for the transition to the new interface, I would like to draw your attention to the SAP transition guide and FAQ, and provide the following suggestions which I hope that you will find useful in planning your activities.

Protecting my Stream Deck on the Go

23 Mar 2020

My Elgato Stream Deck is a great little piece of hardware that I can have dynamically offer up differing controls depending upon the application I’m working with, and the type of work I’m doing. For my MacBook Pro use, it is generally on my home office desk as an alternative to the Touch Bar which is less easy to view, and I also use it almost daily with my work PC. But, there are occasions, COVID-19 restrictions aside, when it is useful to take my Stream Deck with me. It certainly elevates my PC usage and makes jumping around non-linear PowerPoint presentations much easier. For the MacBook Pro, my Touch Bar is usually sufficient, but sometimes I want the Stream Deck with me so that I can create things for and utilise it directly. But simply slinging my Stream Deck into my backpack for my travels would not give it much life before it inevitably broke, and for that reason I decided to purchase some Stream Deck armour.

Github Pages Publish Notification

22 Feb 2020

Last year I finally made my big web site move from Squarespace to Github Pages. In that post I went into some of the background of the move, and while the vast majority of things have improved in terms of my requirements, one thing has been much worse. For the site I use a static web site generator known as Jekyll. It works by converting various configuration templates and content files into a web site. Locally, on my Macbook Pro, I tend to use an incremental generation during my testing and within a few seconds it churns out the new site. With a full site generation it actually takes closer to a minute. This site is many hundreds of cross referenced pages, so it takes a while.

When I upload the content to Github Pages, which also utilises Jekyll, it takes even longer. Minutes in fact. This is where it falls down in comparison to Squarespace. I don’t get a near instant publish. This means that I could inadvertently post links too soon, or I have to check back to see if it has published yet. Sometimes, there can even be failures (very few and far between fortunately). This has been an annoyance for a few months now, and so I recently took a look at creating something to help me with this.

Q1 2020 : SuccessFactors Employee Central Service Centre - Quarterly Review

21 Feb 2020

While SAP SuccessFactors has now moved from quarterly to bi-annual releases, SAP Cloud for Customer (C4C) remains on a quarterly release schedule. This means that Employee Central Service Centre (ECSC) continues to get quarterly updates on the C4C-side of the solution, with updates to other solution components following the SuccessFactors release timelines.

In this article, I’ll briefly cover some of the features that have reached general availability before examining many of the enhancements relevant to employee service use. Particularly surprising is the number of enhancements in this release are related to e-mails in and out of the system.

Safari Tab Management on the Mac

08 Feb 2020

I’ve been a Google Chrome user for many years, but with my regular use of i*OS and spending more time using my Macbook Pro out and about, battery life management and sharing of bookmarked sites across device has become more important for my everyday use. As a result, I’ve been using Safari as my default Mac web browser.

But there are a few tab management features that I was missing from Chrome, so a while back I set about adding those in using some of the tools I had at my disposal.

Extra Clipboard Functions for Mac Shell Scripts

19 Jan 2020

Working with shell scripting is in essence very similar to programming in a more traditional compile-to-run language. The key differences for me are the depth of access and that it is interpreted. On occasion the scripting commands available simply don’t do everything you might want in one simple to execute command, and so, just like any other areas of coding, you can go down the path of creating your own functions and shorthand. In this post I’m going to share a few functions I’m using for adding content to the Mac clipboard/pasteboard.

Stream Deck Icons

12 Jan 2020

The Elgato Stream Deck is a versatile piece of hardware that allows you to have dynamic buttons to trigger processes on your computer via the Stream Deck software. These can then trigger actions such as interacting with a piece of software insalled on your device, or even an online or network service, which in turn can do things like automatically update a social media profile, or turn on lighting in your home/office. Each button is programmable, even dynamically, to display text and images to illustrate the current purpose of a button. But where do the images that you can use come from, and where can you get them?

LaunchCuts Folder Set-up

12 Jan 2020

This week saw the public release of the i*OS app, LaunchCuts. It’s an app created to fill a gap in the functionality of the i*OS Shortcuts app. Specifically the challenges of trying to organise Shortcuts. It’s something I’ve covered before in my posts on smart folders for Workflow and in passing on a post about Shortcuts, my naming conventions for shortcuts. There are a few other bells and whistles to it, but the core function is simply that it allows you to organise shortcuts into folders for ease of launching and editing; albeit outside of the Shortcut app itself. The functionality it delivers is something I’ve been waiting on for several years, and in this post I’m going to share a little bit about how I’ve set it up.

Keyboard Maestro Plugins for the Elgato Stream Deck

11 Jan 2020

Last year, Keyboard Maestro 9 launched with official support for a piece of hardware known as the Elgato Stream Deck. Providing a set of dynamic buttons, the Stream Deck in conjunction with Keyboard Maestro fundamentally allows you to trigger macros from the Stream Deck’s buttons. This makes for a versatile and engaging set-up for anyone wishing to streamline their workflows and make them easily triggered. The integration through works through the use of a Stream Deck plug-in, but did you know you can use more than one Keyboard Maestro plug-in for the Stream Deck?