Perform online tasks automatically with the If This Then That service

Use of IFTTT requires a free account. To get one, launch a web browser and go to the If This Then That website. Click the blue Join button in the upper right-hand corner of the page, choose a username and type in an email address and password (plus password confirmation). Click the Create account button to sign in to your new account.

Spend a moment or two reading through the explanation of what IFTTT is and how it works. In essence, this boils down to ‘if a particular trigger occurs, then perform this action’. There are a number of supported online services that can act as triggers or have actions performed upon them – and these are referred to as ‘channels’. At the time of writing there were around 30 channels to choose from, including popular services such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

IFTTT refers to the trigger-action definitions as ‘recipes’. You can, of course, define your own but there are also a number of ready-made ones to help get you started. This is a good way to way to understand the kinds of things IFTTT can do, and how it does them, so start by scrolling up to the top of the page and click the Recipes button in the navigation bar to the upper right. Now browse through the list of recipes.

To change the order in which recipes are listed, use the Sort dropdown menu to choose a new arrangement. Alternatively, search for a specific keyword, such as ‘weather’, by typing into the search box to the upper left of page before clicking the magnifying-glass icon to the right of this.

Find a recipe that you like the sound of – we’ve chosen one that sends out an email if the weather is going to be wet tomorrow – click its icon or blue arrow to the right to find out more. When you work with recipes for the first time, you may be required to authorise the channels (or websites) that the recipe needs to engage. Click the Activate button next to any item that appears in the ‘Missing ingredients’ section to start the configuration process.

In the case of our weather-warning recipe, the Weather channel needs to be activated by supplying a location. Type in a town or postcode, click the search button and then click to select the relevant location from the list. Now click Activate followed by Done. We now need to activate the Gmail channel, as this is the email service that will be used to send the weather message (so if you supply the same address in Step 7, weather reports will appear to come from yourself). Click the Activate button, sign into your Gmail account and click the ‘Grant access’ button before clicking Done.

Now choose the weather-condition trigger before typing in the email address to which you would like to send the weather warning (remember, the Gmail credentials supplied in Step 6 are used for sending the email, though there’s no reason the messages can’t be sent and received by the same address). Use the +Addins dropdown menu on the right to select any extra information that should be sent with the report, such as the highest forecast temperature. Adjust the subject line of the email if you wish, but make sure that the {{TomorrowsCondition}} part is left in place. Extra text can be added to the body of the email, and the +Addins dropdown menu can again be used to include extra information. Click the Create task button when everything has been set up. A weather report email should arrive in your inbox shortly.

To create a task from scratch, rather than relying on IFTTT’s presets, start by clicking your username at the top of the screen to view the IFTTT dashboard. A list of available channels combinations is shown on the right. Click the ‘Get more channels’ link to see more. Click the icon representing an online service that you use, or another option such as Date & Time, and then click the Activate button. The more channels that are activated the more combinations will be available.

Return to the dashboard by clicking your username again and then click ‘Create a task’. Click the ‘this’ link and then click the icon for a channel – we’re using Date & Time. We’ll create a recipe to send an email every Friday, so click ‘Every week at’ and select the relevant day and time before clicking ‘Create trigger’. Click ‘that’ and select the channel to trigger – we’ve opted to send an email reminding us that it’s the weekend, so to celebrate with a takeaway. Then configure the options you want to use and click Create action.

Recipes can be switched on or off as needed. Click the Tasks button at the top of the page and a list of all of your tasks will be displayed. Any you no longer need can be deleted by clicking the bin icon, while clicking the power button icon next to this toggle the task on and off. To create a variant of a task, click the pestle-and-mortar icon; to make changes to a task, click the arrow.