Save time by automating interactions between services with IFTTT

Did you know about IFTTT? Underneath this very strange acronym is hidden the phrase “If this then that,” which perfectly defines how this free online service works. It is designed so that your services execute very specific orders under certain conditions, and so that they’ll repeat them whenever those conditions are met. In other words, “If this, then that.” IFTTT is tremendously helpful, and you should try it out for quickly and automatically providing organization to your work or day-to-day tasks.

Let’s say you always have to send a file to the same person—a weekly activity report—for example. It’s something you always save in the same Dropbox folder, and later send to your boss by email. Why doesn’t the computer just do it on its own, if it is always done exactly the same way? This is where IFTTT comes in.

You have to create an account, obviously, and later connect all the services you want to use for automated actions. In this made up example, those would be Dropbox and Gmail, but there are a ton of services to choose from, such as Evernote (which is one of the most benefited services from tools such as this), email accounts, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The amount of services to choose from goes up every month, practically.

You can’t go so far with IFTTT as to use it to program hours of file uploads, but it makes up for where it lacks with the ability to share recipes with other users, and with one of the best web app designs you’ll see on the Internet. It follows succinct and specific directions step by step, and correcting an error is as easy as scrolling to the top and starting the recipes over again from whatever step you’d like. And, all the recipes are available from a tab so you can edit or delete them at any time, a feature which works perfectly.

Lastly, IFTTT is slowly but surely making the jump to mobile, where it will definitely find a goldmine. They have decided to start with the iPhone, and recently launched an app, which is also beautifully designed with simplicity in mind. It allows you to use your contacts, images, and video from the iPhone itself for automations. Let’s hope that the Android app will come soon.

As a service, you can’t find any fault in the idea behind IFTTT, although using it still relies too heavily on a computer, which is a problem in the supposed post-PC era. Its language and terminology for creating recipes are so simple that it’s hard to believe the complex operations it can do for the user.

Download IFTTT for iOS | http://ifttt.uptodown.com/iphone
Go to the IFTTT web app | http://ifttt.uptodown.com/webapps