Beginner's Guide to Siri Shortcuts - Part 6: Good Design

Welcome to part six of my Beginner's Guide to Siri Shortcuts. In this sixth and final part we'll look at some techniques and strategies that will improve the design of your shortcuts, making them more robust, more flexible and easier to maintain.

#sirishortcuts #shortcutsapp #siri

GEAR
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[sorengiver]

Thanks a lot for this series. The best on YT for Shortcuts.

[skulio]

Great series! Within one day I went from 0 to hero and in 2-3 hours created my own file sorting shortcut. Nothing fancy but still extreamly useful when you export 20-30 images from apps like Affinity Designer. I admire your ability to explain things right to the point without unnecessary noise. I'm so glad you popped up on my youtube that one beautiful day.

[queensofthedthrone]

I’d write a TLDR on why you are instantly my favorite tech channel I have ever found, leagues ahead of vague recollections of second place. I would. Idk, Merry Christmas. Love to anyone in the hacking community.

[JJCoxUTube]

- Enjoyed all 6 parts and I’m looking forward to your continuation. Thanks

[StefanSteinbauer]

Awesome series... Thank you for taking the time and adding stuff to my mindset.

[GeorgeCoghill]

Nice “best practices” video. The conditional input thing was a great addition to my shortcut building mental approach.

[gunhasirac]

Thank you very much for the tutorial.

This series gives very concrete tips for not only shortcuts but also all programming and scripting related actions. I personally uses macros on PC, shortcuts on iPads, Latex and mathematical simulation for study. These tips are definitely helpful in all these aspects. The readability and flexibility in maintenance are the most important aspects in creating these pieces. The longer and sophisticated it gets, the more important they are. Looking forward to deeper and more interesting shortcuts videos.

[waymamma]

This was an absolutely fantastic series Rob, thank you! I first discovered your channel when searching for Pi4 + iPadOS, but this series on Shortcuts was the one that really made me go “oh Wow!” and now am a regular viewer. Great work!

[safetypylon]

These vids have been SUPER useful! Thank-you . . . 6 hours ago I didn't even know there were Siri Shortcuts!

[monteval]

Amazing series. First time diving into Shortcuts and series was a big help. Thank you.

[cristinapereira]

Very good videos (all six videos) and thank you very much I learned a lot. Is very explained. Are you continue with Siri Shortcuts? To be deeper. Shortcuts has a lot to learn. Can I copy one shortcut to another? Where says execute shortcut will work? What is false and true? 1 is true and 0 is false?

[NitramTheDark]

Rob : I recommend starting exploring these 7 categories
1st category : *Is empty*
Rob : ... 
Also Rob : I recommend starting exploring these 6 categories 

Great series ! Was hard to find such a neat presentation of IOS Shortcuts! Great Job and Channel !!

[rogerwprice]

Super, real-life experience and tips - many thanks

[woodyj]

Rob, love this series and all the videos you have been producing keep up the good work. Just getting back into programming in a formal way since a 20 year break. You have gotten me excited about programming and gave me a much deeper view of shortcuts than I had imagined. Thank you.

[marcodimario]

Hi Rob! I didn't watch all the videos of this series of 6 but I can say IT'S A WONDERFUL GUIDE! (And not only for beginners I think...)
Congrats :) Very high quality contents. Good, good job Rob :)

[kemerthomson]

I wish I had discovered this series earlier. These days (coming from a retired old codger) documentation has become passé; Apple generally leaves documentation to Marketing flunkies, or (even worse) programming flunkies pushed into Marketing. They have failed badly with Shortcuts, so it is material like this that is essential. Many thanks.

[prathameshdhumal]

Please make an video on explaining each and every action in shortcuts app if possible.
By the way thanks for this free series.
I’ll share your series as much as possible.

[etienne]

Thanks for this series. It helps to get ideas how to use it.

[PCkaos]

Thx thx thx for doing this series for beginners.

[ericbell]

This series was a huge help for me! Thanks a lot.
I have a problem I like to solve (smarter) i currently have a solution but this involves 4 shortcuts with about 500 operations in total. And I think there has to be a simpler way.

I like to design a variable story with almost everything that can be random should be random. The story is in a different universe but for simplicity i‘m explaining it with harry potter.

I like to give the reader the choice of either Gruffindoor, Slytherin, hufflepuff, etc.
But after that the „mean“ house should be random (in case you choose slytherin) and thus I like to randomize the other two as well when we are ar it:)

Is there a better way than:
If „own house“ is X
Than „mean house“ take random from remaining list
(Repeat for all three other houses)

Fast forward:

If „own house“ is X and
If „mean house“ is Y And
If „befriended house“ is Z
Than take the remaining one.

Is a chain of endless if-than statements the only solution?

The universe is actually warrior cats and there are 5 or more (houses/clans in this case) so the if-if-if statement still has a list of 2 to choose from.
So to choose the forth random clan, there are about 300 operations in the single shortcut (which is a lot)

Now i have a problem in this complicated shortcut and I can‘t find the error.
Sometimes it defines 4 different clans /houses. Sometimes the third and fourth are identical.

I didn‘t know where to start so I made a debug shortcut as well.
It will generate the 4 houses (this time with a random first so I don‘t have to click it all the time) once I run it it adkes me for the amount of repeats, checks the results and saves a note with the incorrect ones.

Last time I ran it with 50 runs and 15 out of the 50 results were wrong. I can‘t seem to find a pattern in the results.

Rebuilding the whole thing would be an idea but is there a simpler way?

This might be way to confusing since I don‘t know all the terms. (Started with ios programming just last week)

Cheers and thanks again for those tutorials