Auto-tagging new posts

[Al Sargent 21]

Two related requests, in agile user story format:

#1:

As an Evernote user

I want to be able to setup auto-tagging rules (e.g., when text contains <the domain of my kid's school>, apply tag with my kid's name)

So that my notes have a richer set of tags that let me search more effectively across the thousands of notes I have in Evernote

#2:

As an Evernote user

I want to allow Evernote to read my Gmail filter rules

So that Evernote can use those rules, when appropriate, to apply a richer set of tags that let me search more effectively across the thousands of notes I have in Evernote

--

Auto-tagging helps tremendously when searching across thousands of Gmail conversations. It only seems natural that Evernote would apply this same thinking to make searching across thousands of notes more efficient.

Yes, I know that Evernote now suggests tags, and for the most part, this is helpful. But even though this has been rolled out for a while (months? years?) Evernote still hasn't figured out even my most basic tagging habits. (E.g., any note whose text contains my boss' first name, gets a tag of his full name.) So I'm left to manual, tedious tagging. I'd love to create explicit rules so I no longer have to put in this manual effort to stay organized.

 

[DTLow 5,736]

5 minutes ago, Al Sargent said:

Two related requests, in agile user story format:

#1:

As an Evernote user

I want to be able to setup auto-tagging rules (e.g., when text contains <the domain of my kid's school>, apply tag with my kid's name)

So that my notes have a richer set of tags that let me search more effectively across the thousands of notes I have in Evernote

#2:

As an Evernote user

I want to allow Evernote to read my Gmail filter rules

So that Evernote can use those rules, when appropriate, to apply a richer set of tags that let me search more effectively across the thousands of notes I have in Evernote

Some workarounds: There's an app Filterize that does something like this, and as Mac users we could use AppleScript for automatic assignments.

[briancaldwell 202]

You might also explore the solutions at IFTTT https://ifttt.com/evernote

and Zapier https://zapier.com/zapbook/evernote/

[TheGooch 25]

I love this idea. I spend way too much time processing my Evernote inbox. It would be nice to have a script or set of rules to apply tags, change the title, and move the note to the correct notebook in an automated fashion. 

[Al Sargent 21]

Thanks Brian and DTLow. However, I really am not comfortable shipping off my data to third parties such as IFTTT, Zapier, or Filterize. My notes include confidential information (sometimes financial and medical documents) and I'm sensitive to how many companies can see that.

And, thanks, but I'm really not up for learning AppleScript. (Would that even work for notes sent via mobile phone web clipper?)

[DTLow 5,736]

14 minutes ago, Al Sargent said:

Would that even work for notes sent via mobile phone web clipper?

For sure, using Applescript would auto tag notes from any source

>>I'm really not up for learning AppleScript.

If Evernote implemented auto tagging “rules”, there will be a learning curve

[Al Sargent 21]

To the point about using AppleScript: I appreciate the suggestion. Evernote's AppleScript looks pretty powerful.

However, one attraction of using Evernote is precisely because it works across operating systems and vendors. Which to me is a big knock against Microsoft OneNote and Google Keep, to name a couple of competitors.

Using AppleScript is great for now, when on a Mac but we also use PCs in our family.

 --

Another issue with the Applescript workaround: there's not a lot of lot of documentation on how to use AppleScript, it seems incomplete, and it's hard for any non-developer to understand. Much harder than Gmail filters (have you used those?). 

This page provides a lot of good AppleScript snippets. For instance, how to create a NEW tag and apply it to a search result. But I wasn't able to find anything on:

- How to escape quote characters. For instance, if I want to apply the tag "johndoe" to all notes with "John Doe" (exact phrase), what do I write in AppleScript? For example:

set matches to find notes "John Doe"... will find notes containing "John Smith" and "Jane Doe", thus polluting the results.

Again, Gmail's filter functionality avoids this issue, since you're not writing code. I'm guessing it can be done, but it's a pretty deep rabbit hole to force users to go down (compared what Gmail offers) and not a lot of users will have the expertise or patience.

--

Appendix: here's a working AppleScript to apply the tag "foo" to everything that matches search "foo". Pieced this together from a few different pages. Hope it's useful.

tell application "Evernote"

set matches to find notes "foo"

assign tag "foo" to matches

end tell

[DTLow 5,736]

32 minutes ago, Al Sargent said:

How to escape quote characters. For instance, if I want to apply the tag "johndoe" to all notes with "John Doe" (exact phrase), what do I write in AppleScript?

The escape character is backslash (\)
Example code      tell application "Evernote" to set myNotes to find notes ("intitle:\"John Doe\"")

I've learned more about applescript code by examples on the internet, and asking questions in the forums

[Al Sargent 21]

Cool, thanks!

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, Al Sargent said:

Using AppleScript is great for now, when on a Mac but we also use PCs in our family

Yes, applescript solutions require that you have a Mac
likewise Windows solutions require that you have a Windows computer

There are cloud solutions which don't require any devices

I have an old Mac mini at home chugging away, executing scripts on schedule
For example, I have a script to backup notes; it runs each morning for all notes updated the previous day; the update could have been any device/platform