Flow ideas for demonstration/tutorial videos

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

I'm considering making some demonstration videos, mostly for marketing purpose at first, but likely some basic tutorial videos later. But i need ideas of simple flows to present. Some requirements:

• Doesn't take too long to make, a few minutes at most, probably not more than 10 blocks.
• Doesn't involve third-party apps, except Google apps maybe, at least not for the initial videos.
• The purpose/result of running the flow should be visible on screen.
• Not using blocks requiring a rooted device or ADB, at least not for the initial videos.
• Probably not contain too complex expressions.
• Preferably it should be useful for most users, and work on most Android versions.

Got any suggestions of such a flow?

[thomasn...@gmail.com]

Based on a flow I made for myself: Every morning, show a list of events happening that day in a list dialog, from one or more user-selected calendars (my use case is to show all my contacts' birthdays that day from multiple accounts, which Google exposes as a calendar for each account).

To extend the idea further, pressing on a contact opens the default SMS app with the contact's number prefilled and a template "Happy birthday {name}!"

To simplify the idea, only use one calendar which will be hard-coded in the flow. (Suggestion: in the video, put a "homework assignment" to add multiple calendar selection)

The main features I used for this:

• File storage, to store a list of the interested calendars (just an array of the content://com.android.calendar/... URIs)
• Await time
• Calendar blocks: Has Event & Calendar Pick
• Choice dialog
• Arrays
• For each block

Is that sort of what you're looking for?

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

Thanks for the suggestion.

A "birthday" flow has the right scope, only a few blocks, useful by most.

The major obstacle is that the Birthday calendar has to be enabled prior, and only on the Google Calendar web edition, i think.

[klok wert]

I made a simple flow that enables you to take notes with google assistant.

This flow includes all the basic stuff:

expressions

forks

atomics

arrays

message/choice dialogs

but also some less basic stuff:

google assistant action

speech recognition

https://llamalab.com/automate/community/flows/39265

Please note that this flow is made in Alpha 1.29.0

Op do 29 apr. 2021 04:43 schreef Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist <henrik.l...@gmail.com>:

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[Arena Closer]

The first flow I ever tried to make with just a little python experience was a weather flow. What is good about that as a tutorial is that you can make it as easy or complex as you like, but it still uses basic operations one needs to know.

A simple version of mine, that can be further simplified for the tutorials sake, is https://llamalab.com/automate/community/flows/33317. It should at least feature a choice between “manually pick location on map” and “get current GPS location”, the last one with a failure catch. After reverse geocoding (maybe using the users system language), get the weather for each 6 hours (e.g. 0,6,12) and add details to array. Finally, show array[0], array[1] and array[2] in a message dialog (or in notification, whatever). 

This should teach beginners how to use:

• failure catch
• get setting (system language) and use in reverse geocode block
• saving lat/long variables to use in reverse geocode and weather block
• for each in some numbers
• add text to array and retrieve array[0] etc
• for more complexity: use inline if/else statements for weather details, e.g. clouds > 50 ? "☁️" : "☀️"

Let me know what you think! :)

Op donderdag 29 april 2021 om 04:43:22 UTC+2 schreef Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist:

[Arena Closer]

Btw, I know you said “Doesn't involve third-party apps”. Does that include the use of API’s? Personally, I enjoy working with API’s as you can get any information from them (https://llamalab.com/automate/community/flows/33988).

In a tutorial it would mean using an Input dialog (maybe store the input in atomics and retrieve when flow started again to save last input), a HTTP request to an API with the input as parameter, some jsonDecode and forEach stuff, and finally a message/web dialog with the information.

Now I’m thinking of any API that doesn’t require a key, all I can think of is the xkcd.com api lol

Op donderdag 29 april 2021 om 12:36:39 UTC+2 schreef Arena Closer:

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

I'll surely make an Google Assistant flow, probably not at first, for use as Play Store promo, since it rely on a third-party app.

"Note taking" may not be the best example, since Google Assistant can already do that, with a "note to self..." command.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

The result could be interesting, visually at least, showing a map and dialogs. But the purpose, weather, may not be that useful since many launchers already display it.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll add it to the list.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

Third-party APIs probably isn't an obstacle if they're free/open, but displaying copyrighted movie posters or comic strips in the Play Store listing or on Youtube isn't a good idea.