Omni Automation Videos

A good way to understand the power of Omni Automation is to watch it in action. These videos demonstrate the use of Omni Automation on both the macOS and iOS platforms.

The Temperature Map

Here’s an example of using the content of graphic metadata tags in a document to retrieve and apply the current temperature data to a map showing various cities in the United States.

The script in the provided Omni Automation action uses the fetch( ) method of the URL class to retrieve textual weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in XML format that can be parsed for the temperature data for the cities whose weather station codes have been assigned as metadata tags to the text graphics containing the names of the cities.

The Heat-Map Scenario

Have you ever looked at a table of data and wondered if there was a better way to represent the data, so as to better judge the impact of the information?

The technique of “Heat Mapping” is a common mechanism for visualizing data. According to Wikipedia:

A “heat map” (or heatmap) is a graphical representation of data where the individual values contained in a matrix are represented as colors [or shades of a color]. The term ‘heat map’ was originally coined and trademarked by software designer Cormac Kinney in 1991, to describe a 2D display depicting financial market information, though similar plots such as shading matrices have existed for over a century.

For example, this webpage contains a map of the United States and two tables of data (displayed vertically in the right page column). Clicking or tapping the map image on this page adds a map of the United States to the current OmniGraffle canvas, and clicking or tapping each table will transfer data from the table to the map on the current canvas.

This kind of interactivity enables a workflow that really shows off OmniGraffle‘s ability to visualize data! And best of all, the techniques demonstrated on this webpage work on both macOS and iOS. Here’s the workflow using OmniGraffle for macOS:

Outline to Slides

Using Omni Automation to create slides in the current OmniGraffle document for each of the topics in the current OmniOutliner outline.

Numbers Table Sums to OmniGraffle Document

Just a tap transfers column sums from a table in Numbers (iWork) to an OmniGraffle doc for use as labels! Try it yourself! Download Numbers doc & download the OmniGraffle doc.

Tag and Import into Containers using Web-Data

Using Omni Automation scripts embedded in a webpage to tag containers in an OmniGraffle document with metadata, and then to import images into the tagged containers based upon URLs placed in their metadata.

Heat-Mapping using Web-Data

Using embedded Omni Automation links to add a map of the United States to an OmniGraffle document, and then to heat-map the map using data from tables on the webpage.

Omni Automation Link as an Object Action

This video demonstrates how an Omni Automation link copied from a page on this website, can be assigned to an object as an action.

Integrating Omni Automation with the Workflow App

Using Omni Automation and the Workflow app on iOS to create a new textbox in an OmniGraffle document with the contents of the clipboard selected in the Notes application. View the Omni Automation Workflow webpage for more examples.

Transfer Webpage Table Data to Document

Omni Automation in a webpage enables the data to be extracted from a table on the webpage into the current OmniGraffle document:

Transfer Webpage List Data to Outline Document

Omni Automation in a webpage enables the contents to be extracted from a list on the webpage into the current OmniOutliner document:

Omni Automation Overview · AUC /dev/world 2017 Melbourne, AU

Sal Soghoian’s keynote presentation to the 10th anniversary /dev/world 2017 developer conference attendees in Melbourne, Australia. In an hour-long session, Sal details the features and potential of Omni Automation. (video hosted on YouTube)

Cross Platform Automation Magic for iOS and macOS

Sal Soghoian’s session at the 2017 MacTECH Conference. (video hosted on YouTube)

Script Magic for macOS and iOS

Sal Soghoian’s session from the 2017 CMD-D Conference.