As any teacher can attest, our work can involve much more than our job titles let on. We act as communicators, organizers, record-keepers, and any number of other roles. The amount of small chores and tasks that pile up throughout a week can become overwhelming if left unchecked. As a way to help keep these additional duties under control, I have turned to automation.
The Workflow App for iOS devices allows a user to create custom, automated actions by selecting and organizing different conditions and parameters. With some creativity and tinkering, the user can configure a workflow that completes a multi-step process with one button. Just from trying out the app for about an hour, I was able to come up with four different workflows that would assist in my day-to-day life and help me feel more organized.
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| Four productivity-focused workflows, all found in one convenient widget. |
I began with something simple: A quick way to check MBTA alerts that could affect my commute to work. By adding this workflow to the widgets on my phone's home screen, I am now able to get this information without opening Safari, typing in a URL, opening a menu, etc. Creating this quick workflow gave me some familiarity with the app's interface, and I felt ready to create new, more complex tasks.
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| Above: A workflow for MBTA alerts. Below: Video of the workflow in action. |
Photo Collection and Organization
One of the more time-consuming extra duties I have each week is to gather photos of my students working, then post an album online for families to view. Through automation, I was able to greatly reduce the steps needed in organizing and transferring these photos. I began by creating a separate album in my Photos app, named after my school. From here, I created the workflow pictured below:
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| By adding a few filters, this workflow selects only photos that I have taken in school. |
When this workflow is used, the app quickly skims through my entire photo library, and selects only photos that I have taken in the past five days during school hours. The workflow then saves all of these photos to their own separate album. This allows me to sort out the recent photos I have taken in my classroom within seconds, and with just one button press. Once they are in their own album, I will be able to select Favorites that I will ultimately send out to families.
Because I take these photos with my phone but edit/post them from my classroom iPad, I also devised a Workflow to quickly transfer the photos I've selected to my school device, pictured below:
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| The Favorited images are automatically selected in bulk, and the share sheet is opened. |
By using these workflows to organize and transfer classroom photos, I have consolidated a large number of steps into just two shortcuts. Even though only seconds elapse and not much appears to be happening onscreen, all of the actions described above are being performed. Below is a video illustrating these two workflows in use:
Weekly Communications
Each week a family is scheduled to take home the classroom laundry, and to provide a fresh bouquet of flowers for the class. I send out emails each preceding Thursday afternoon as a reminder to a family that their turn is coming up. Normally, this requires either copy-pasting an older email, or writing from scratch. With the help of Workflow, however, this process becomes much quicker. Tapping the shortcut instantly opens the iOS Mail app to a draft of pre-prepared text. All I need to do from there is name the recipients and fill in a few specific details.
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| The body of the email has been entered into Workflow so that the Mail app opens with a pre-composed message. |
Conclusions
In just a short time, I was able to configure four different workflows to boost my productivity. My hope is that with more experience, and by reaching out to other users of this app, I can discover even more clever uses for automation. Unfortunately, while the tinkering aspect can be fun and rewarding, this app also brings with it some trial-and-error. Also, I quickly discovered that there are certain parameters that surprisingly cannot be applied to a workflow: for example, I was unable to select or organize my photos based on location (for example, telling the app to "Find Photos" taken in one location). Fortunately, I was able to find a workaround by instead limiting to photos taken within school hours. I look forward to experimenting further with this app and discovering more of its capabilities – there are a number of features, variables, and actions that I have not tried yet, so I feel I've only scratched the surface of what Workflow can do!
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