Apple Shortcut (1/X)
HOW DO I EXTRACT NAME CARD INFO AND FOLLOW UP QUICKLY?
My recent hobby is writing Apple Shortcuts for everyday tasks. It is only a hobby now because I write one whenever I am bored and actually have a lot of fun doing so. I have been asked to share these shortcuts, so I am starting to pen them down to refine them with your input or to help you with your day-to-day stuff too.
It's the end of SWITCH week, and the real work begins now that the dust has settled. As the university embraces sustainability and stops issuing name cards, I have always felt a massive handicap in my business interactions with industry folks. Moreover, typing in every name card info and following up usually triggers my flight response (there are 90 odd cards on my table now). So, I was trying to solve two problems with this shortcut. I want to share my digital name card within 1 minute of the other party offering me their card and quickly jot down the areas we spoke about to continue the conversation online.
WHAT YOU NEED
The idea is to jot down the discussion points quickly and not have to type anymore from there. Using the native "read text from the image" function already available in Photos (and in shortcuts), extract the text and send it into ChatGPT to make sense of the text information. ChatGPT has been 99% accurate in identifying and sorting each piece of information accordingly (don't worry, I have sent it to no memory, and the info is not used for training). I used Model 4o, but 4-mini is a lighter model to run on - they are less likely to fail, too. The chunkier the model, the slower the processing and the longer it will take to deliver the output. In my case, I sent the prompt below at the following stage:
Extract the information in the field using the format below, do not include any other text:
{Extracted Text from Image}
Name ||Company ||Position ||E-mail ||Mobile No. ||Office No. ||Fax No. ||Company Website ||Company Address
领英推荐
Through a small batch of trial and error, the "||" has proven to be an essential marker to help determine where the information will be spliced in the output so that the data can be fed into a spreadsheet as discreet cells rather than a continuous chain of text. Adding a space at the end does help make the string of text easier to read and verify if necessary. It also minimizes the chance that if there are no entries for a specific cell, the script pushes forward the entries to the wrong column.
I chose to export the file into Apple Numbers for this project as it is the easiest way to receive the data in various text lengths. This is my first use of Apple Numbers, and I find it a somewhat limiting and cumbersome spreadsheet-style app. I typically export the output into Google Sheets, which, unfortunately, does not support heavy text-based output like this. This will be covered in the following article.
I wanted the email to be sent back to the users as the GPT-generated content can only partially achieve the tone, style, and approach I prefer. This allows me to edit the email and send it off quickly (I attach the email address at the end of each email).
The rest of the setup should be straightforward.
HOW TO IMPROVE THIS
Less Prompts: Three prompts are sent to ChatGPT, which significantly slows down the processing of this script. There is a processing time between a prompt sent to ChatGPT and receiving a response, and with three prompts, it takes about a minute for each card to be processed completely. However, I have yet to write a prompt that allows me to extract the results consistently. Even with other scripts I've written for different functions, the outcome has yet to be consistently formatted, especially in the correct line break formats.
Sending prompts directly to WhatsApp recipient:?Since the WhatsApp message I have prepared is static, I would prefer the extracted text to be sent to the recipient directly rather than having me forward the information to them (usually, this is my digital name card I am sending across). However, WhatsApp shortcut has not included dynamic recipient as an option so this can only remain a pipedream for now.
Feel free to let me know how else you would improve this. Love to hear from you.
(PS. Shockingly, this article is not ChatGPT generated)
(PS. I collected all the info on 90+ name cards in about an hour, neatly arranged by the fields. I can't type as fast or as accurately as that. The follow-up e-mail took an hour. However, this script took me 6-7 hours to develop/experiment on a pretty mundane Saturday evening on 26 Oct.)
Here's the Apple shortcut link if you would like to try this on your own: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/6bd5a6bbe1b64aab89badf6396d669ea