Working smarter, not harder

First spoiler alert: this post has nothing to do with my normal topics. You won’t learn anything here today about partnerships, Microsoft, Azure, the cloud generally, or even AI, all topics I love and think about deeply, every day.

No, this post is really about another passion of mine…automation. And specifically, how I use automation as a small business owner at VelociPartner LLC to do important but boring tasks for me, so I have more time to focus on delivering additional value for my clients.

I love automation…all kinds. 微软 Power Automate , IFTTT , SmartThings , 亚马逊 's Alexa Routines …even 三星电子 ' Bixby Routines ! But hands down, my absolute favorite is 苹果 's iOS Shortcuts . I have literally hundreds of Shortcuts, little snippets I’ve found online and adapted for my needs or written from scratch myself to automate countless tasks I no longer have to think about.

This then is the story of how I applied automation to solve a simple, but complex business challenge many of you in similar situations face every day.

Second spoiler alert…stick with me until the end and you’ll receive, absolutely free, a pair of Shortcut automations I use to solve a problem every consultant with multiple long-term clients has…schedule deconfliction.

Here are the caveats. 1) Do this at your own risk. 2) These aren’t beginner Shortcuts, so learn about them and ease into it. They aren’t that complicated, but they aren’t double-clicking setup and walking away either. Remember, you need both Shortcuts, and did I mention the caveats again?

My problem statement was simple; for long term clients where I have an email account on their network, how do I prevent being double or even triple booked for meetings? Employees at my clients who want to invite me to meetings aren’t going to know or care to send invites to [email protected] , they’re going to check their own internal calendaring system and see my account at their company.

So how do you solve the schedule deconfliction challenge without either revealing details about your other clients or doing a lot of manual and duplicative calendar management that gets worse with each new client you bring onboard?

To solve this once and for all, I created a pair of Shortcuts (iOS Shortcuts can be chained such that within a Shortcut, you can call another Shortcut).?

The main Shortcut grabs the next 30 days’ worth of appointments on my main VelociPartner LLC master calendar (my “real” work calendar), and for every one of my meetings across multiple clients, will create empty placeholders with the name “Conflicting Meeting,” and absolutely no other details on the calendar at each of my clients where they have set me up with an email account and calendaring.

And here’s the really cool part. Remember how I said one Shortcut could call another? The second part of the pair is called at the very start of the main Shortcut. When run, it automatically deletes any appointment on my client calendar with the name “Conflicting Meeting,” leaving any meetings others at my client created for me.

That’s it. It works no matter whether your client uses Outlook, Google, or anything else for their email and calendaring system. The beauty is, I’ve automated the execution of the Shortcut itself to run daily at the end of each day. All I have to do is keep my VelociPartner calendar up to date, and the Shortcut automatically keeps everything synced and up to date at each of my clients.?Scheduling bliss!

Yes, there are some additional things to think about, which I’m sure will come up in the comments. We can address what those are and how to set things up so you can use this functionality too if you want to.

Here are the Shortcuts (you need both, because the main one calls the other). In each of them, you need to modify both the name of your main calendar, and the name of each of your client calendars. It’s easy to do, I promise. Don’t like the dummy placeholder name of “Conflicting Meeting?” Change it to whatever you’d like it to be.

Delete from Client cal - https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/adf9c674d28a497e91b7559a6b0392ea

Copy Work -> ClientCal 1 Mo - https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2988b1cc5162462eb23358df4a1349bf

If you’re new to iOS Shortcuts, there are no shortage of great YouTube creators who can help get you started…and btw, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, or any other AI tool you use can also help get you started learning about these amazing bits of code that can simplify your life. I highly recommend these if you’re interested (each of them has a lot of content on this topic to explore):

1. Proper Honest Tech - The iPhone Shortcuts App Explained - iOS Shortcuts for Beginners
2. Stephen Robles - App Automations 101
3. DailyTekk - Why Siri Shortcuts Are Such A Big Deal
4. Chris Lawley - What are Shortcuts and How to Build Them - Shortcuts 101
5. Snazzy Labs - Amazing Shortcuts to Power-Up ANY iPhone
6. The Godfather himself….Matthew Cassinelli - How to Find the Best Siri Shortcuts examples to get started

Whew! Long post, longer than I anticipated. I hope you like it. I can't wait to see your comments. If you found value, consider sharing this with your network.

VelociPartner LLC helps Microsoft partners become better Microsoft partners by optimizing your use of everything available to you as part of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program . Whether you need help getting started, getting your products listed on the Azure Marketplace or AppSource, obtaining your Solutions Designations, building a Co-sell program or leveraging available incentives, investment funds and rebates, we can help. Interested in learning more? Let's have a discovery call...get started today at https://www.tinyurl.com/velocipartner .