S1. Ep37 - How to Set Up Business Automations on Your iPhone

Katie: Welcome to the AI Automations for Business Podcasts. We're your hosts, Katie and Null, and we'll be discussing how you can use AI for your business along with the latest news, updates and automations to help you stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to grow and scale your business more efficiently. Please be sure to subscribe and I hope you

Noel: enjoy this episode.

Katie: Hello, welcome back to another episode. Hi, I'm Katie. And as always, I've got Noor here with me. Hi, Noel.

Noel: Hello.

Katie: How you doing?

Noel: Oh, amazing as always. Amazing.

Katie: Have you recovered from the Mait Conference yet?

Noel: I think so. It was a lot to take in. Yeah.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Yeah, it was a really fun event.

Katie: Yeah, that was. Okay. So this week, we are talking about, like, multiple tasks. When running a business, like when you first start your business, you kind of just started thinking, I want to do this. And you kind of don't realize all of the tasks that go with it. So it could be like admin, marketing, accounts, you know, all of those things. And actually, a lot of them can feel overwhelming, even though some of them might be, you know, fairly straightforward or simple. And this week, we are kind of being an advocate. for some of those tasks, even if they seem simple or straightforward, to some, I would like to add in, too some. So, yeah, this week we aren't sharing a complicated automation or, you know, a tool or piece of software where I need quite a lot of experience. So if you are a beginner to automations or or still getting used to them, then this is definitely going to be your episode because we're going to be talking about the shortcut app, which is available on iOS. So if you've got an iPhone. So this app, it's so much fun. And there are many things that you can use it for that aren't business related. There are things that you can use it around the house, like, you know, remembering and to take the washing out of the machine or, you know, remember if someone's coming to your house or something like that. So, yeah, this app allows you to create custom workflows to automate tasks. So the app is often pre-installed on an iPhone. So if you're thinking, oh, I don't recognize the name, I would maybe like search it on your phone because very often it is already on. there. So, yeah, you can do lots of things with this app like make a PDF from a website with a single tap. You can run shortcuts by asking Siri to form them by name, automate reminders and much, much more. So when you open up the shortcut app, it's going to be pre-populated with the apps that you already have on your phone. So it's going to be, you know, those standard ones like, you know, your camera, your calendar, but also things like Amazon. and Facebook, whatever. So one of the tasks that I personally find overwhelming, and Noel, you'll have to tell me if you find this, because actually we haven't had a conversation about this, is when someone asks me for my availability for, like, a meeting or to record a podcast. Yeah.

Noel: Yeah, I get that a few times. It's like, I've got a lot of calendars going on on my end. Yeah.

Katie: So I use calendar because I feel like it gives quite a professional feel. And people can just like then automatically book in. It sends them a Zoom link.

Noel: Like great. But with me,

Katie: a lot of the time, my calendar is not up to date.

Noel: That's true. You've really got to keep on top of your main calendar, which it links to, haven't you? That's the crux of it, isn't it?

Katie: Yeah. And I sort of always forget to do it. So maybe that is a whole kind of different automation that I need.

Noel: I'll get to work. Yeah.

Katie: So I always need to make sure that it's up to date. And sometimes I think as well, if people have asked you for a meeting, it's then not going to be you sending a Zoom link. Or if they want you to be on their point, podcast, they're going to be sending you a link. And so actually sometimes sending a calendar link over, you know, with that automation, if it sends over, you know, like the Zoom link to them, actually isn't going to work because actually what they're going to do is send over their own link

Noel: for you to join.

Katie: But yeah, so if I do then have to send over my calendar link, obviously I've got to sit and update it. So that then takes me time. Like it's another task. It's not just a quick copy my calendar link and send it over to someone. It's a whole like, well, now I have to go through my calendar for the next two weeks to make sure that, you know, I've blocked out the time so that I don't double book myself because as well, I have double booked things before,

Noel: which is not good.

Katie: So, Noel, you're going to walk us through, aren't you? How we can use the shortcut app, using the calendar app on our phones to reduce overwhelm, you know, reduce task, fatigue and give a bit of a faster response.

Noel: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess first thing is first, if you've got an iPhone, obviously this is, you know, if you've got an Android, I'm sorry, I don't, you know, I'm sure there's ways of doing it.

Katie: You don't have a shortcut app though, unfortunately.

Noel: No, no. I'm sure they've got their own version, but there you know. So for this one, what we're going to need to do is, first off, if you haven't already, is set up your business calendar on your phone. So that's going into the Apple Calendar app and then connecting, you know, whether it be Outlook, Google, whatever calendar you use, and getting that connected in. So, you know, ideally when we're sending our availability, you know, we don't really want to be sending them details of everything that we're doing on an evening, you know, it's like, oh, I'm going out for dinner tonight. They don't care about that. That's in your personal calendar.

Katie: No,

Noel: they don't know when you've

Katie: got your waxen appointment.

Noel: I know, when is that? I need to check when I've got that

Katie: booked in.

Noel: Yeah, so yeah, just, yeah, making sure that we've got all that pre-configured, ready to go. And, obviously, like you mentioned before, you know, we also need the shortcuts app installed. Really is fine on the Apple store if you haven't got it already. But once we have it open, you'll see there might be things all kind of pre-populated in the library. There's some useful tips, things that you could automate from the work go. But you'll see at the very bottom, we've got automation and gallery. So the buttons at the very bottom. And for us, this automation is already going to be pre-built and is in the gallery, which is really, really helpful. So if we click on gallery, you'll be met with a whole host of really cool automations that you could set up on your phone. But if we scroll down to collaborate better, you'll see the share availability automation. So there's a little plus button. So we just click the plus and then that is now added to the library. It's as simple as that. So we go on the three buttons at the very bottom, we'll go back to library, and we'll now see that that's there ready to go. But there are a couple of things that we do need to change in order to get this to work properly. So at the moment, there is no button on your phone to very quickly go off and check this, you know, just show your availability. So we'll add that. And also, as standard, this is just going to look at every single calendar within your account. and then send the availability of for everything, which is not what we want. So to do this, you'll see there's three little dots in the top right corner on the shareability app. So I'm just going to click the three dots. And this looks very daunting. There's a lot of things going on within this, but we'll keep this very simple. If we scroll down, you'll see you've got a module where it's called find and then calendar event. So that's the only bit we need to look at. We don't need to change anything else. So we can leave that alone. On that card, we'll see if we've got an add filter. It's about halfway down. And what we'd need to do, just tap add filter. And then straight away, it's already come up and thought, well, maybe they want to pick the right calendar. So it says calendar is. And then choose is kind of gray down. So if you click on choose, and then you can then select your company business calendar. and then yeah once that's done that's all good to go we don't need to go off and save it or anything like that we can you know leave as it is but if we want to then add the shortcut button there is the share button in the very bottom bottom right so we've got the you know the usual square with the up arrow for sharing so if we click on there at the very bottom you'll see add to home screen and if we select that you can then pick how this is going to look on your phone. So you could have, you know, you can select different colors. You can add different symbols to it. And then once you're happy with it, we can click on add, and then that's now added onto your home screen. So every time somebody says, oh, what's your availability? You can come to your home screen, click on that app. And the first thing you see is then your calendar. So, well, not your calendar, but a date picker, should I say. And then, yeah, you just select the date, click done, and then it goes off and then, you know, you can then share it either by email or by text message or however, wherever they contacted you. So yeah, really, really straightforward how to configure that.

Katie: And it should, we should also say as well, like you can edit that before you send it as well.

Noel: Yes.

Katie: So if you do have everything on your calendar on your phone, it's personal and work staff, you, you can just change it. So, you know, perhaps Noel is going for his waxen appointment. He could just change that to private appointment.

Noel: Yes.

Katie: Or not available. Yes. Yeah,

Noel: you get to see exactly all the information, but yeah, make sure to sanitise. Yeah.

Katie: Yeah, you have. It doesn't just go, you know, you don't click sharing and then it, you know, it zooms off somewhere because you've got to click, how you want to share it, who you want to share it with. So, you know, you have plenty of opportunity to edit it before you send it to whoever you want to send it to.

Noel: Absolutely.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: So, yeah.

Katie: I feel like that's quite another nice hack as well. Like, you know, we were saying at the beginning, you know, you want to to choose your business calendar but actually if you've just got everything on one calendar that that's fine it's just that you know you might have to do a bit of tweaking before you send it but

Noel: for me

Katie: i would rather do the tweak in that way like just say like you know delete you know what's actually say i've got palates i would just change that out and kind of just but not available. Yeah.

Noel: There's some really cool things you can do with that shortcut app.

Katie: Yeah. There's lots, isn't there?

Noel: Yeah. And also it's different for everyone because it depends on the apps that you have on your phone. But not every app has shortcuts available. So, you know, we did some testing earlier, didn't we? And it was like, well, that'd be cool. And then it doesn't actually do, they don't have any shortcuts whatsoever. Yeah.

Katie: It was like things like Asana and no. motion, wasn't it?

Noel: Yes.

Katie: We were like, oh, it would be really cool. Like, if you could have an automation, sorry, a shortcut on your phone that would, like, add in a task to, like, Notion or Asana, but they're not there at the moment, are they?

Noel: No, not as standard, no. No, there are ways of getting around that which we're going to get as far too technical. Yeah.

Katie: Yeah,

Noel: because if we

Katie: want to keep this episode, like, really nice and simple for people to feel like really confident to be like I've got my iPhone I can create automations just using my iPhone with no other software or tools yeah absolutely but I would definitely go and have a little play around with it I've seen lots of cool things being able to automate and kind of like hack your business and also life using the shortcut app. And No, you're actually going to do a little bit more about the shortcut app in our membership, aren't you, the AI business club on school.

Noel: Yeah, I think it's probably going to be a bit more of like a course than kind of like a quick, quick video that we usually do. So yeah, I think this would be a bit more in depth. But yeah, there's plenty of things. that we can do and do some more really cool advanced features with it. I've seen some in competitions as well. I was like, wow, okay, that's pretty clever.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: You know, they're taking pictures of things and then that's getting processed and things like and you're getting all sorts of information back or, you know, with AI and stuff like that. So yeah, there's some amazing things that can be done.

Katie: Yeah. I've even seen some cool things that you can do like with, say, like Facebook and Instagram as well. Yeah. Well, I will look forward to seeing what you create for AI Business School using, you know, the shortcuts at. And if you do want more information about AI Business Club over on school, then we would love for you to check out the link below. Or you can come and join us on our free community, which is on LinkedIn. It's a LinkedIn group. It's called AI Automations for Business and anyone and ever. everyone is welcome to join. Come and tell us what you're creating, what you're building. If you've got any questions, lean into the community. If you're brand new, then, you know, feel free to use the brains of the people within the community already who might be a few steps ahead of you. I heard somewhere as well that some people are really frightened that they've missed like the AI boat. But I would say, like far from it, I think there are millions of boats still very much in the harbour. Would you say that as well, Noel?

Noel: I would. I'd say for most of them, they're still being built.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: They're not seaworthy yet. You know, we're still very early to this. It's, you know, it's getting better as time goes on. But yeah, it doesn't take long to very quickly get up to speed and yeah you'll be you'll be set in sale before you know it

Katie: yeah amazing well thank you so much for listening to this week's podcast episode and we will catch you next time for another episode very soon