Presented at the 2016 Community Engaged Research Institute. How researchers can cut down on the tedium of their work by using tech tools and cultivating a practice of automation

1. BECOMING A
POWER USER

2. What is a Power User?
Definition from Techopedia

3. What Are they NOT?
 Power User ≠ Computer Programmer
 Power User ≠ Tech Wizard

4. Gateway
 Starts with using keyboard shortcuts
 Ends with remapping your keyboard

5. What is Automation?
 Using some process to let the computer take
care of an action or actions rather than doing
them manually
 “Social Media Time” – Clock strikes 7:30am
 Open Feedly
 Open file tweets.csv
 Open Facebook Page admin panel
 Bring up posting checklist
 Play “Morning Playlist” on iTunes
 Popup message saying, “Get Posting!”

6. Why Automation and
Power Usership?
 Your time is
precious
 Tedium rots
the brain
 You feel like a
genius

7. These Things Add Up
 1/3 of life is spent
unconscious
 4 weeks brushing
teeth
 In the afterlife, you’ll
relive these things in
sequence
 How do your
cumulatives stack up?

8. Time Savings

9. What We’ll Cover
 Clipboard Managers
 Text Expanders
 App Launchers
 Automator
 Macro Editors
 URL Processes

10. Keep In Mind
 We’ll use specific examples, but focus on the
utility genre
 We use examples, but power usership and
automation are personal missions
 Use AlternativeTo.net to find other apps

11. Before We Get Started…
 Buddy up
 Write down as many tedious, repetitive, mind
numbing, boring, things you have to do (or
make your RA do) in your work
 No complaint is too small

12. Hold Onto Your List
 Make note of when you see a connection
between these tools/processes and your
problems
 Don’t try and work problems out, just make
note and we’ll talk through some of them at the
end

13. Step up your copy pasta
Clipboard Managers

14. Clipboard
 Text/Images that you cut or copy are stored on
a “Clipboard”
 Clipboard Managers give you a history

15. What For?
 Copy multiple things from document
 Get that text you copied ten minutes ago

16. Apps
Mac
ClipMenu
Windows
Ditto

17. Don’t retype long strings
Text Expanders

18. Text Expanders
 Generic term for utilities that watch for a typed
string trigger and then replace it with another
string
 Strings are sequences of characters
 Trigger/Expansion pairs are called “Snippets”
 Doctors use them to write reports
 Medical terms are long and complicated
 ‘chlx’ ➡ ‘Chlorhexidine’
 ‘tdap’ ➡ ‘TDaP’

19. Features to Look For
 Taxonomy
 Should allow you to organize effectively
 Tags or Groups
 Placeholder Tokens
 Allow for inputs
 Keypress Tokens (advanced)
 Tab, Return, Arrows, etc.

20. aText Example

21. Actions from your keyboard
App Launchers

22. What Are App Launchers?
 Utility that let’s you search for files, apps, or
the web and perfom actions
 Mac = Spotlight
 Windows = Windows Key

23. Alfred
 Create custom searchs and use them instantly
 No need to go to a site or database to search it
 Don’t break your train of thought!
 Search
 Journal Databases
 JSTOR
 Google Scholar
 Nearly Anything

24. App Launcher Apps
Mac
Alfred
Windows
Listary

25. Do it all at once
Batch File Operations

26. Automator
 Mac’s graphical process builder
 Chain together actions to get desired result
 Pretty user friendly, but also a pain
 Google “Must have Automator workflows” to
explore its uses and how to build things

27. Automator
 Workflows
 Happen inside Automator
 Applications
 Saved as a .app file and used in the finder
 Service
 Actions that can be summoned from the service
menu or contextual menu (right click)
 Folder Actions
 Apply rules to folders that they’ll automatically
follow

28. When you’re really into automation
Macro Editors

29. What Are Macro Editors?
 Macros are a preset series of actions and
instructions
 Pairs of Triggers and Actions

30. What Kinds of Triggers?
 Hot key
 Typed string
 Time
 Connecting to a network
 Adding files to a folder

31. What Kinds of Actions?
 Move mouse to coordinate and click
 Access application menu items
 Write to a file
 Type text or keystrokes
 Open or switch applications
 Set and call variables

32. My Favorites
 Chrome — ⌘ + L
 Copy URL of current page
 Everenote —⌘ + K
 Activate link editor, paste most recent link, hit return
 Text — twf
 Pastes current clipboard as plain text (non-formatted)
 Anywhere — researchmode`
 Launch Off Campus Access (if off campus)
 Open research folder
 Bring up current task overview
 Calendar – Switch to Calendar
 Switch to Week View and center on today

33. Tips for Growth
 Start small
 Don’t overwhelm yourself with things to
remember
 Set limited goals for the week
 Copy others
 Embrace the reward over the gain
 You deserve it

34. An example of doing boring stuff less
boringly
Case Study: Fun With URLs

35. Link Checking
 The Need
 To check lots (dozens to hundreds) of URLs to
see if they’re active
 The Bad Way
 Copy the URL, Go to browser, Paste it in, Mark
result
 The Better Way
 Give a link checker 50 links at a time, mark the
bad ones

36. The Process
 Repetitive tasks are best left to the computer
 URLitor will check multiple links for you
 Will even give you the results as a spreadsheet!

37. Link Opening
 If you need to actually look at things on the
page
 Many web tools will do this
 Open All URLs
 Multiple Link Opener
 URL Opener
 Opens any URLs you give it in new tabs

38. Multiple Similar Searches
 Need to do searches where only one or two
things change
 Put the search phrase into a spreadsheet
 Create formula to generate search URL
 Paste into URL opener

39. Query Strings
 Like with Alfred, searches are just URLs
 Google
 https://www.google.com/search?q=SEARCH+TERMS+HERE
 I’m Feeling Lucky
 https://www.google.com/search?btnI=&q==SEARCH+TERMS+
HERE
 Search terms go in Column A
 Formula for query string in Column B
 =CONCATENATE("https://google.com/search?btnI=&q=+",SUBST
ITUTE(A2," ","+"))

40. Finished Product
 You now have your query strings
 Go ahead and use one of the URL openers

41. Surely you’re sick of listening
Discussion Time

42. What Looks Useful?
 Did anything here sound useful?
 What specifically will you use any of this for?
 Did any of this relate to what you wrote at the
beginning?
 What repetitive tasks do you want solutions
for?

43. The Conversation Continues
 Hand in your gripe sheets