Building Smart Shortcuts

Part of The Shortcuts Series

In Part 1 of the Shortcuts series, we discussed how to transform workflow ideas into working shortcuts using the Shortcuts app.

Now, while creating shortcuts, we might come across situations where we need the shortcut to ask us questions or present an options menu and proceed accordingly.

In simpler words, be more interactive and work according to our requirements at the time.

So, in this part of the series, I'll show you how to design shortcuts that ask for data, present choices, and perform actions conditionally based on what we choose. Including multi-step workflows that get more specific as you keep answering.

Let's start by building:

A live template using Shortcuts

Live templates are an incredible time-saver.

Instead of pasting a generic block of text in an email or other response, a live template can ask us for personalisation details and return a well-formatted email, message or other text without any manual tweaking.

For example, I reach out to many companies for sponsoring my weekly newsletter and also for making app deals for Hulry members.

Writing the same email repeatedly and tweaking it for each company is a tedious task.

Live templates help me save time and effort by asking for the app name and any other metrics I'd like to include in the email, and then returning a formatted email in seconds.