If you’ve never heard of IFTTT let me explain: It stands for “IF This Then That.” It’s a simple idea that is taking the internet by storm and you could use it to automate your business. Here’s how it works:
You tell IFTTT that when X happens, you want it to do Z.
There are limited options to what it can do, but here’s some actual examples from their website:
- If the forecast calls for rain tomorrow, send me an email.
- If somebody tags me in an image on facebook, download that image to dropbox.
- If people magazine posts a new article, tweet about it automatically.
You get the idea?
You can use this with Filevine.
With Filevine’s unique text and email features, you can use IFTTT to your advantage. Here’s a couple ways I’m using it today:
Example1: If somebody on twitter mentions “Filevine”, email my Filevine project called “social mentions”
IFTTT sees brand mentions and sends them to the email on this project
This one is a no-brainer. We need to know what people are saying about us, and brand monitoring is an important part of that. With IFTTT we can always know when somebody is talking about us. Obviously it doesn’t need to be just twitter, this is just an example.
How I would do it if I were you: Set up a “google alert” that searches for your brand name. When you create a google alert you can choose to have it email you, or to create a “feed” of everything it finds. Choose a feed. Then, in IFTTT, select the RSS (or Feed) option for the “if” portion of the formula. Choose to have it email your “brand mentions” project as the “then” part of the formula. It’s going to look like this:
Now, whenever google finds anything about your brand, you’ll see it too, right in the same workspace where you keep your team communication.
Example 2: If I star an email in my gmail account, forward it to my Filevine task list email.
I love this one. If you use gmail, you know that it offers you a little star icon that you can click to indicate an email is important. IFTTT allows you to tell it to use a “star” action as the “if” part of the formula. So what’s the “then” part? Tell it to forward that email into the appropriate Filevine project.
I love this one because it lets me move work from email into filevine with a single click. I see an email that my team needs to know about? Just click the star.
Example 3: If I get a text from a certain number, send that text to the appropriate Filevine project.
I have a couple of clients and co-workers who love to text me. The problem? I don’t want to deal with keeping track of their assignments through text messages, nor do I want to take the time to transcribe them into another system. So I use IFTTT to send texts from those people to projects specially set up to catalog their messages. Here’s what it looks like:
Basically it says “If you get a text from number X, send an email digest of the texts at the end of the day.”
Filevine then makes sure I see it in my Feed. If something is important, I assign it to one of my team members. Otherwise, nobody else has to see it.
Obviously there are tons of possibilities here. If you add in other programs like Zapier, there’s a huge variety of ways you can bring important data, alerts, and communication into Filevine where you work.
If you’ve found a neat tip or “hack” for Filevine, be sure to let us know.