Downloadable Shortcut:
6.2 - Import Questions

Transcript:

Okay, here's a real simple shortcut. It just takes a name and a website and then builds that into text and shows it as a result. Let me run it. 

So, my wife started working for Disneyland again. Hooray! And I made this little shortcut where she could share that. But what if I wanted to change that data? And that's what import questions handle. 

Now if I go to ... from the Shortcuts Actions menu over to the Shortcut Details. And then over from Details to Setup, you've got this option to create Import Questions. And what that does is, it lets you, on the first time you run a shortcut, change some of the default values. 

So, I'm going to hit the + (plus) button here. And I need to Choose a Parameter. This text field here is name, so I'll click that. And then it prompts me for a question. "What is your name?" Now you can put a default answer in here if you want. But I've experienced bugs with this with Shortcuts for Mac. Sometimes Shortcuts, for whatever reason, doesn't hold onto the default answer, so I'm not using them at this point. Hopefully that gets better in the future. But now we've created a ... an entry for What is your name? Let's do it for the website, too. So, we'll create another question here. Import Question. I'll click on the second one. We'll say, "What is your company website?" Click Done. And now I've created import questions. And that doesn't change anything when I run the shortcut, because all those questions have been answered, and those default values have been set. But when ... if I were to send this to you, and you were to import it, it would prompt you for those import questions. 

You can also force the issue with this Customize Shortcut... button. So, I'll hit that button and change it. The name, "David Sparks." And these are the import questions showing up. Then I'm going to change the website, www.MacSparky. Come on, man. macsparky.com. And you can see in the background, it's been updating those while I type them in. When I'm done, I just click Done. And now I've changed the default values in these shortcuts, and then when I run it in the future, it'll show that data. 

So, what's this useful for? If you're making shortcuts to share with friends, family — maybe you've got some elderly parents, and you're building some automation stuff for them, but they need to fill in some details — you can use these import questions. And once they run it the first time, it'll set those up for them, and then they'll never see it again. And it's just a real simple way to share a shortcut with somebody who hasn't necessarily gone through this course, but still wants to get the advantage of your shortcuts. And they're called import questions, and you can find lots of uses for them.