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Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

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Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#51
I used google scripts and google forms for some of my automation like:

1 - Notify me when Movie tickets are available to book. Used google scripts that run every minute and hit a URL to check if tickets are available now.

2 - Book a class when it's available, I have joined a Gym where you have to book a class before going, and the Zumba is very famous there the time it opens it fills up in 30seconds and there are limited seats, so if you are late it's gone. I wrote a script that checks and books the slot for me and then adds the same in my calendar. I extended the same using google forms when I want to book another class at some specific time which is currently not available if somebody cancels it will be available. The script keeps on checking until class start time, if available books and notify me.

3 - In my team, everyone plays Foosball and after lunch, it's everyday discussion who will play first and with whom. I wrote a script which will decide the matches and players in each team. I used the google app engine to deploy it, which is still running and just by hitting the API will sort the things for us.

There are a few other automation I did using IFTTT.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#52

I used google scripts and google forms for some of my automation like: 1 - Notify me when Movie tickets are available to book. Used google scripts that run every minute and hit a URL to check if tickets are available now. 2 - Book a class when it's available, I have joined a Gym where you have to book a class before going, and the Zumba is very famous there the time it opens it fills up in 30seconds and there are lim…

I wonder who else is refreshing the class registration page and filling it up within 30 minutes? Or do the special people get advance notice that registration is about to open?

I remember reading a wild tale of how someone made a program for a used car salesman that would check a particular car auction site to make sure they get a good deal (I wish I could remember the details, or better yet, find the URL)

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#53
I have many cron jobs in AWS Lambda functions for many tasks.

I wrote a blog post about how to monitor a competitor website using Python / Lambda and serverless framework for deployment: https://dzone.com/articles/monitor-your-competitors-with-aws...

For lots of workflows we also use No-code/Low-code tools like Zapier / Integromat.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#54
I jut begun to do some partial automation of website interaction with the extension Tampermonkey for Google Chrome to inject my own scripts on certain websites, often creating an additional control panel UI for custom actions such as scraping or data input. I use Tampermonkey in such a way that the code managed by Tampermonkey are only loading scripts that load my actual scripts from GitHub and other sources, such that I always get the latest published versions of my scripts.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#55

Probably off initial topic, but: - FileJuggler on Windows, to automatically clean Desktop, Download folder and archive everything into a date-based folder structure in Drive. - AutoHotKey to insert text templates into everything (e.g. current date, formatted Jira issues, annoying things to type) The problem with automation is that one will want to break even quickly [time saved > (time spent finding/setting/maintaini…

Perhaps underappreciated aspect of automation is friction reduction. Having a semi-automated process can be what it takes for you to stop avoiding doing some little chore, or what makes you no longer suffer as you do it.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#57

Probably off initial topic, but: - FileJuggler on Windows, to automatically clean Desktop, Download folder and archive everything into a date-based folder structure in Drive. - AutoHotKey to insert text templates into everything (e.g. current date, formatted Jira issues, annoying things to type) The problem with automation is that one will want to break even quickly [time saved > (time spent finding/setting/maintaini…

Some more items that I've setup in AHK:

- Launching commonly used apps, like Notepad, Windows Explorer or Sublime Text

- Launching commonly used websites in a browser, e.g. gmail

- Paste from the clipboard into a language translation site (languageX to languageY via URL parameters)

- Open a to do list in Excel (hard coded file path)

- Text expansion for personal and work email addresses

- With one keypress, open the train schedule on the website, type in the 'from' and 'to' stations, search

- Text expand to symbols that I always forget, eg. euro symbol, hash sign etc

- Google/Wikipedia search clipboard text

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#58

I jut begun to do some partial automation of website interaction with the extension Tampermonkey for Google Chrome to inject my own scripts on certain websites, often creating an additional control panel UI for custom actions such as scraping or data input. I use Tampermonkey in such a way that the code managed by Tampermonkey are only loading scripts that load my actual scripts from GitHub and other sources, such th…

would be interested to see why you use tampermonkey instead of GreaseMonkey. I tried both but stuck to GreaseMonkey as it was open source.

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#59

I used google scripts and google forms for some of my automation like: 1 - Notify me when Movie tickets are available to book. Used google scripts that run every minute and hit a URL to check if tickets are available now. 2 - Book a class when it's available, I have joined a Gym where you have to book a class before going, and the Zumba is very famous there the time it opens it fills up in 30seconds and there are lim…

I wonder who else is refreshing the class registration page and filling it up within 30 minutes? Or do the special people get advance notice that registration is about to open? I remember reading a wild tale of how someone made a program for a used car salesman that would check a particular car auction site to make sure they get a good deal (I wish I could remember the details, or better yet, find the URL)

@netsharc, the class booking opens every day at 10:00PM and everybody knows that. :)

Re: Ask HN: What automation tools have you used to replace mundane activities?

#60
If you travel regularly, Tripit is a great service for organizing your flights and hotels on to your calendar (Google Calendar also does this with Gmail but it doesn’t work reliably, especially if you book some of your travel via your personal email account). You can set up a free Tripit account and either forward your receipts to it or let it look into your email for them automatically. Add the calendar of your Tripit trips to your work Google Calendar. These now show up in as a second calendar but are not visible to your co-workers. Create a free Zapier account and use a Zap to automatically copy all events from your Tripit calendar to your work calendar, which your colleagues can see. If you want to be shown as available while traveling, you need to change the multi-day event that Tripit creates from busy to available. And if you change your flights, you need to manually delete the old ones. But, people will no longer book you into meetings when you're on a plane.

Zap: https://zapier.com/apps/google-calendar/integrations/google-...

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