I’m sure this can be done but getting lost in far too many YouTube videos that are only tangentially useful. I’ve got MacSparky’s IOS 13 and 14 Shortcuts Field Guide, I remember watching it a while ago, so pointers into which sections teach this would be great.
My goal is to have, on my phone, a note in Obsidian that has 2 “buttons” One is for a People Entry Log note and one is for an Equipment and Vehicle Log note. Alternatively I’d have 2 shortcut buttons on my main screen. This is part of where I’m getting lost, not sure which will be easier to do.I suspect the shortcut will be as I’d like the buttons somewere they are easy to locate and use.
Clicking one of those will then pop up some sort of input screen to collect specific information. Clicking save will then finish the processing, format it as a markdown note with Datavew fields as appropriate and move it to my Obsidian inbox. I envision one note per person or vehicle entry.
Within Obsidian I can move the individual notes into a folder or specific location. I can then create a report note using Dataview queries to provide the info in a nice table format. I can export that as a PDF file. This part is working well. I also have my templates for the notes I need with what data as inline dataview variables. So I’ve got the back end done just lost on the initial data entry.
The info I need to gather depends on whether I’m dealing with a person or a piece of equipment or vehicle. I have to be able to provide the log file to official veterinarians upon demand. The whole thing is part of me working on a Secure Sheep And Wool Supply Biosecurity plan for our farm in the event of a Foreign Animal Disease outbreak (such as FMD)
There might be other simpler ways to handle these log files but I had 2 requirements.
It has to be something I can pull up and use on my phone because it’s always with me.
It needs to eventually get into Obsidian as that is where all my official compliance documents are located.
I don’t use shortcuts enough to help with the main task, but I think you don’t have to choose between home screen buttons and “buttons” (links) in Obsidian.
Create the shortcuts, save them to your Home Screen, and also use the shortcuts URL scheme to run them from Obsidian.
You can even split the shortcut if you want to get fancy. Part One, saved to the home screen, launches the dialog to get information from you, and then launches Part Two, passing it what you entered.
Then in Obsidian, you can have a different version of Part One (maybe Part One B) that uses whatever text is selected in Obsidian, which passes it to Part Two to process and so on. This way, you can jot what you want to write in Obsidian, highlight it, and off to the races. (I’m not 100% sure you can access on-screen highlighted text when you launch a shortcut by clicking a link – in that case you could just use Keyboard Maestro or equivalent to launche Part One B). Another advantage of this approach is that I think you could have third version, Part One C, that launches from the share sheet.
So I think you have a lot of avenues for launching, once you know how to insert the promoted text into Obsidian.
I wasn’t thinking of Obsidian as being where the stuff was originally written, more of the shortcut itself collecs the data, formats it as a file and saves it as a .MD filein the approriate folder in my vault. I can do all the Obsiidian work when I get back inside on my main computer. I just need a quick data capture on the phone.
I thought I could do that by embedding the in-line dataview headers in the shortcut sort of a “driver_phone::” concatenated with input from field x type of structure.
Is this the sort of thing you want? (look in the shortcut to customise vault and filenames etc as this is a thrown together example)
Oh and install Obsidian community plugin Advanced-URI or it won’t work.
Shortcut link https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/60bc2bf297934af0b59fc2c56d127fb6