Copy-and-Paste 2.0 – How Templates Make a World of Difference

If you use Agenda for things like weekly catchup meetings, daily standups, prospective client meetings, and onboarding protocols, chances are you often find yourself using copy-and-paste of notes from other occasions, because the “agenda” is usually fixed.

Here I’ll show you how to create note templates in a few simple steps using text replacement utilities. This makes Agenda even more powerful, and can save you a ton of time. nmcpNo more copy and paste!


In this article I’m using TextExpander, a third party tool made by Smile software, but in version 10 of Agenda you can make and use templates directly from within Agenda! :tada: Be sure to check it out: Creating and Using Templates


The easiest way to demonstrate how effective templates can be, and how you set them up, is through some practical examples. Below I’ll describe five of them; all are fictitious, but based on true stories.

Example 1. The Weekly Management Meeting
Example 2. The Daily Standup
Example 3. The Prospective Client Meeting
Example 4. Onboarding New Team Members
Example 5. The Regular Catchup with Startup X

Example 1: The Weekly Management Meeting

The management team of High Tea Inc. has a weekly meeting in which Tom, Janice, Peta, Christian, and Trevor discuss what’s going on in their own area of responsibility. Tom likes to run these meetings quite strictly, otherwise they end up going in all kinds of directions, usually ending with a discussion of the latest Yak yoghurt flavors. To avoid this, they now follow a fixed order, and the meeting minutes look very similar each time:

The High Tea Inc. management team meeting minutes follow a very similar order of events and topics each time.

At the start of the meeting a logical thing to do would be to copy the contents of the previous note into a new one, delete unneeded details, keeping only headers and other reusable content. Nothing too difficult, but kind of annoying.

This is a perfect case where a template would make a lot of sense, and a good starting point is to use the built-in text shortcuts feature of macOS. You’ll find it in the System Preferences under Keyboard > Text.

The Text preferences under the Keyboard section in the System Preferences.

Here you can define a short string in the first column that will get replaced automatically by the replacement string you define whenever you type it. It already has two abbreviations defined by way of example; if you type omw followed by a space you will see it gets replaced by On my way!. In principle, this works everywhere, including in Agenda.

So we can now create a template for our meeting as follows:

  1. Copy the notes from a previous meeting into a new note
  2. Delete everything that should not be part of the template
  3. Copy what’s left into the right column as the text to be expanded
  4. Define an abbreviation that should trigger the template

Now the result of these few simple steps is that when the next meeting comes, all you have to do is this.

teammeeting_500

A simple meeting template in action, typing tteam in the title, and mmeeting in the note. nmcp!


Tip: Choosing a good abbreviation

The trick is to pick a short, easy to remember abbreviation that you are unlikely to type by accident. Easier said than done. Here are some tricks that work well for me:

  • Pick a term that contracts multiple words into one, like teammeeting
  • Make an abbreviation using the few letters of the words, like nmcp for No more copy and paste!
  • My favorite is to take a single word, but double the first letter, like tteam or mmeeting

Example 2: The Daily Standup

Let’s take a similar example. First, I should admit that the above animation wasn’t recorded using the System Preferences setup. Unfortunately, that only works well for relatively short replacements. Longer ones are hard to edit, and don’t always work as expected. Instead I would advise you to use a tool like TextExpander, which is a lot easier to manage, and has some extra tricks.

You might have noticed that by typing tteam the title got expanded into Team meeting - 07 Mar 2018, this is also something that comes in handy for the developers of “Yak App” while keeping notes of their daily standup meetings. They are big fans of Scrum, a 10-15 min daily meetup where each answers three short questions about what they have done, what they’re working on now, and whether there are any roadblocks — all while standing.

Now a quick disclaimer: we don’t use scrum ourselves. But if we did a typical project might look something like the above screenshot.

Notice how I already prepared my notes for tomorrow’s meeting. I did the same yesterday for today’s meeting and afterwards added Drew’s and Marcello’s answers as well. This way I get a nice timeline built that allows tracking progress and going back in time to see what I have been doing for the last days, weeks, and months.

Want to know more? See this topic where @crijke discusses how Agenda is used to document his Scrum workflow.

Of course, a repetitive meeting like this is great for a note template. Here is how I would configure a TextExpander “snippet”.

  1. First create a new group of snippets for use in Agenda.

2: If you want to, you can let TextExpander limit the use of the snippets only to Agenda, so that you never accidentally trigger them elsewhere:

  1. Create a new snippet with an abbreviation of your choice (I picked sstandup).

  1. Make one with the abbreviation sscrum for the title. Notice how TextExpander allows you to insert the current date as well.

And voila! Tomorrow your scrum meeting notes are setup in a second.

scrum

A simple daily standup template in action, typing sscrum in the title, and sstandup in the note.


Tip: Use Copy-as-Markdown.

Note that the replacement text is usually a plain text snippet, but Agenda does support using its markdown syntax so you can create headers, checklists, use bold, italics etc. Even easier, get the Copy as Markdown premium feature and copy the formatting from a previous note straight into TextExpander.


Example 3: The Prospective Client Meeting

Chris organises events for hotels in the Pencil Islands :sunrise::man_cook:, the central theme is barbecue, all food — from starters to deserts, meat or vegetarian — is done on the BBQ :meat_on_bone::corn::plate_with_cutlery:.

By now most hotels know how to find him and organising an event usually goes along these lines.

  • A visit or call to the hotel is made to discuss what they want and explaining the options
  • A proposal is prepared and sent
  • Organising food, equipment, freelance cooks is undertaken, and waiting staff are arranged for the event
  • Last minute wishes are tracked, and specifics planned ahead of the event
  • BBQ! :poultry_leg::tropical_drink:
  • Invoicing, follow ups, lessons learned after the event

Given both the event itself and many of the items to organise are strongly coupled to dates, Chris finds Agenda a perfect fit. Here is how he sets things up, and how templates make his life easy.

  1. For each new event he sets up a project, and at the top he adds a pinned note:round_pushpin: with the important details he needs to always have quickly at hand.

  1. He prepares a note for the client meeting and creates the event in his Calendar :alarm_clock:. Of course for both notes a TextExpander snippet is a no-brainer.

  1. Notice how the snippet includes a checklist using the markdown syntax. That way Chris won’t forget to present these options and immediately checks the ones the client wants, adding some details if necessary. The checklist trick also comes in handy when taking care of hiring the freelancers he needs at the event :woman_cook::tipping_hand_man:. He has added a list of the freelancers he usually relies on.

All he has to do is type sstaff, and he is in business :raised_hands:.

  1. The last thing that Chris does is to create a To Do note that he marks as On the Agenda. This is where he collects all those last minute requests, ideas, and “don’t forget’s” for the event :shopping_cart::bulb::telephone_receiver:.

With help of the Overviews and saved searches in the sidebar, Chris can easily manage multiple projects at the same time, making sure all his events are a feast! :clinking_glasses::confetti_ball:


Tip: Add checklists to your snippets :white_check_mark:.

Checklist can easily be added to your templates using the markdown syntax.


Example 4: Onboarding New Team Members

Another area where templates shine is when you need to follow a protocol or fixed set of steps. “Duh!”, I hear you say, but often for a lot of the things we do, we don’t think about it in this way.

Take for example the on-boarding of new employees in your team or company. There’s usually a bunch of things you need to take care of and walk someone through. It’s definitely not the same for everyone, but often there are common items that make a template useful to have.

Where Agenda shines is that it’s flexible: you can delete parts of the inserted template easily, add additional comments, move items around, and change the text however you see fit. It’s great for when things don’t exactly follow the same steps each time. What follows is an example from Christian, the CTO of High Tea Inc.

Christian on-boarded Victor, the new iOS dev, last week, but still needs to add him to the website, and introduce him to the management team. Earlier today, he also met Judith, who is new in marketing. It’s easy to understand Christian’s process: each time a new employee starts he types oonboard, and he has the list of items to go through.

Notice that he struck out two of the items, because they were not relevant for Judith. In cases like these, TextExpander can make your life easier, because it allows you to customise the snippets before you insert them with fields, popups, and optional sections, which is exactly what is needed here.

Tada! The next time Christian types oonboard, he sees this:


Tip: Make use of the clipboard.

One neat way to customise your templates on the fly is to have TextExpander insert the contents of the clipboard into your snippet (it’s one of the options in the toolbar we just used to make items optional). For instance if you always start by adding the email address of a new employee, you could copy the address, switch to the Onboarding project in Agenda, and type oonboard. TextExpander will include the copied email address in the snippet that gets filled in. So copy-and-paste it is still here after all :smiley:


Example 5: The Regular Catchup with Startup X

Our final example shows how templates can help you bring more structure to your workflows, without having to give up on flexibility.

Meet Mike. Mike works as partner at a VC firm investing in promising retail startups. Most of his day he’s busy talking to dozens of young and enthusiastic entrepreneurs who think their startup ideas will be the Next Big Thing™. Right.

Where Mike struggles is that it’s difficult to keep a structured view on all of these candidates, because a) there are so many; b) interaction is often unplanned and/or informal; and c) communication spans various channels, including email, Skype, telephone, conferences — you name it. So if Mike is asked by the board to present the 10 hottest investment opportunities, it’s an almost impossible task…

This is where Agenda with templates can really help out. Here’s what it might look like.

Mike creates a new project for each startup. In the first note he adds some key details using a template — all he has to do is type nnew — which he keeps pinned at the top. It gives a quick overview of what each startup does and where it is at.

Then each time he interacts with the startup he adds a note associated with today’s date, and, if necessary, updates the summary pinned at the top. Most importantly, he always adds a quick status section to the note (using a template and typing uupdate):

This ensures he always asks for a few key facts that help him build a record of how this startup has been doing over time. Did they do what they promised? What did they discuss last time? Have they grown to the number of customers that they thought they would? It doesn’t mean he always asks all of these questions. What’s important is that he collects at least a few key facts each time they interact. Doing so will allow some semi-structured overview of the startups he interacts with, and will make it much easier to keep track of them!


Tip: Think small, use snippets everywhere.

You don’t need to use snippets for entire note templates. Keep in mind that they could be something as simple as typing ddate or nnow to have the current date or time inserted. Snippets for single sentences, small checklists, short paragraphs, anything you frequently type, can all save you a ton of time.


Where To From Here

I hope these examples give a good idea of how templates can be used in Agenda. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see you can use these approaches for almost anything, and make Agenda even more powerful and versatile. Whether you use Agenda for app development, teaching, psychotherapy sessions, clinical trials, or preparing the Sunday’s mass, templates can make you even more organized and effective.

Curious to hear what you think!
Alex



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15 Likes

Get 30% off TextExpander for a limited time :tada:

As you can tell we’re big fans of TextExpander, and it turns out the people from Smile software are equally big fans of Agenda. They’re so excited that they decided to offer all Agenda users a limited time 30% discount on a 1 year subscription of TextExpander!!

Here’s how you can make use of the discount (offer lasts until end of March):

  1. Start by clicking this link to go to the TextExpander site: Redeem My 30%

  2. Sign in to your account or create one, and the discount will automatically be applied.

At this point if you followed through the steps and choose the annual LIFEHACKER plan, your window should look like this:

Important: If at this stage the window does not show the Save 30% - 1 yr TextExpander Life Hacker discount, click on Have a redemption code? and use code KL4HH6KTGN.

  1. Complete the purchase, download the TextExpander app for Mac and start creating those templates!

A huge thanks to the people from Smile for their generous offer!

Interesting approach to templates. But I think I’d prefer actual templates within Agenda - not least becuase they’ll be easier to edit. A menu option when you right click the + sign for example? And a folder in the left hand sidebar with templates in it - essentially just notes you can’t accidentally overwrite.

Also, I’m reluctant to sign up for an annual subscription to TextExpander to get this functionality. I’m also trying to make the most of native apps, and the Text Shortcuts in MacOS does 95% perhaps of what I want, and I can live without the other 5%!

13 Likes

Coming to iOS version ?

3 Likes

+1 for TextExpander support in iOS

I was struggling to copy templates in Agenda in iOS, so I decided to try using a TextExpander template instead, with no success, even with the TextExpander keyboard.

Am I missing the easy answer? Is there a way to copy or duplicate template notes in Agenda?

You could also use Alfred App - which is great BTW - and add the Powerpack, a one-time license (no subscription model). Then use the Snippets feature, which has a few dynamic placeholders like {date}.

6 Likes

To add upon your remarkable ideas for templates on a Mac @mekentosj , iOS Shortcuts can leverage the system even further in my opinion.

It’s easy to create a new note via x-callback URL from #shortcuts , and adding a general template while doing so is even easier. But while those templates could be also copied and pasted, the iPhone knows even more, like calendar information, contacts or maybe the current context.

So for me what works best is having the following templates for Agenda set up in #shortcuts :

Meeting Minutes:

Looking for an event in my calendar, which is currently in progress, gathers all the information from it and writes a meeting template derived from those information. Additionally, it creates a reminder with the x-callback URL to the actual Agenda Note to remind me on sending those minutes to all attendees.

Mentoring Sessions:

As for my mentoring sessions, I’m searching my calendar for the next appointment in the next 30 days, create a scheduled Agenda based on previous sessions as well as an Reminder the day before the event, just to be prepared.

Stand Up

Asking me directly in shortcuts the necessary questions, and makes a beautiful protocol out of the information due to markdown.

Quick Notes

I like the idea of capturing everything, and while I’m never certain if it is just a reminder or already some more information I want to get out of my head, I capture everything in Agenda with a follow up reminder in OmniFocus with a link back to finish that thought in Agenda later.

The clue:

I created a shortcut, which asks what type of template I need and then simply runs the one from above the list, just like object based programming. :wink:

Maybe someone ( @rickholzer) finds that idea helpful, as there is currently no text expander for iOS.

9 Likes

That’s brilliant, thanks for sharing and couldn’t agree more that the Shortcuts support often form an even more powerful alternative than text replacement.

This is awesome! Thanks for making this. Where can I get this Shortcut? Is there a direct link someone can please provide? Thanks!

Hey @SM7, I think sharing this shortcut won’t make it for most people, I just wanted to give some inspiration. It’s rather complex and should be adjusted to personal needs.

But maybe I can support in creating one shortcut that fits for you.
Here is my one:

Shortcuts-Meeting Notes in Agenda

Thanks! For some reason, Shortcuts times out when trying to download the Shortcut… Is it an active link?

Probably because of my iOS 13 Beta, due to some changes in shortcuts there. :neutral_face:

I started to use my TextExpander snippets in my iPad Agenda. Surprisingly they do not work correctly.

In MAC’s Agenda, over the title of a new note I write the shortcut for my template, and everything works very fine, the note’s title and body, all at once! Very nice.

However when doing the same in iPad’s Agenda, all snippet is drawn into the title (so title and body stuff goes together to the title). It seems it doesn’t recognize the special codes form TextExpander.
Also the fill-ins doesn’t work on iPad (not only in Agenda)…so the question is: is there any deeper information about using TextExpander in iPad’s Agenda? Will this be fixed? It would be nice to have a consistent behavior in the MAC and iOS.

Any way, keep on with your excellent job with Agenda.

Thanks
Joao

5 posts were split to a new topic: Issues using keyboard maestro

Hi Joao,

We have no support in the iOS for TextExpander. It requires embedding a special library, which is not needed on macOS, and we need to investigate whether the library will work with Agenda. Agenda has a very customized text editor, which may not work that well with their approach.

I think you should be able to use the TextExpander keyboard on iOS. Is that what you are trying?

Can you post a screenshot of the issue you see?

Kind regards,
Drew

Hi Drew
I’m very sorry to take so long to replay. Work issues…:slight_smile:
Everything works in iOS Agenda and TextExpander, if we automize separately the title and the body of the note (so, 2 shortcuts). On the contrary if we create a new note on Mac we can press just one shortcut on the title, for the entire set (title and body).
This way the shortcut created for MAC doesn’t work correctly on iOS, so we have to create 3 shortcuts (1 for MAC and 2 for iOS) todo the same in both environments.
Any way it’s no big deal although it would be very nice to use the same snippets on Mac and iOS.
Thank you

Great suggestion. I hadn’t used Alfred in such a long time. It’s evolved!