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IFTTT Formula for Doing Admin (All Teachers)
I cannot describe how much admin time IFTTT has saved me.
For anyone who hasn’t used it, it’s called ‘If this then that’. It connects up different services on the web. Which sounds dull, until you realise how powerful it can be.
I hate admin – it’s the most boring, mind-numbing part of our job. But now, thanks to IFTTT, my admin is almost completely automated. And it’s totally free. Here’s the first trick I learned:
Like many of us, I have all my students in a Google calendar to remind myself who I’m teaching. It’s fast, free, and you can use it on all your devices.
I also keep a spreadsheet of all the lessons I’ve taught to make sure I don’t miss anything out come tax day. But updating the spreadsheet is a pain in the arse.
So I made an applet on IFTTT. It’s really simple: If one thing happens, another thing happens. In this case:
(IF THIS:) If an event on my Google calendar is about to begin,
(THEN THAT) it prints out a line to a Google spreadsheet with the date, name of student and teacher who taught the lesson.
Now, when I check on my admin sheet, all my lessons are already laid out. That’s 700 lines of text that I didn’t have to write, and loads of hours of admin saved. All for free.
Let me know if you have any questions – I’d be happy to help you set it up for yourselves. Just wanted to preach about how much I love it.
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12 Replies
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Am I right in my understanding that it is a way of connecting and integrating Google Calendar to Google Sheets?:)
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You got it!
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Very clever – I really see the use for this…Eliza Jane Fyfe I am sure you can see the application of this too:)
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Totally – for the brief period that I had an under-teacher, I set up different accounts on IFTTT for each teacher. So when they added sessions to their calendar, it came up on the same spreadsheet, but recorded who had taught the lesson.
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Haha, can we Skype about this something next week…sounds like something I should know about it:) thanks for sharing it!
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You bet – I’ve even got one for tracking enquiries that you would absolutely love. You just ‘star’ an email and it prints their email address and name to a spreadsheet.
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Eliza is going to love this…I also have one for you as well called MailTrack.io that is a Google Mail plugin to see when someone has read an email. Super useful if you are wondering whether your email has gone into spam or is a student has read it but hasn’t replied as yet:)
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Oooh – that’s cool
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Amazing guys!
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So I discovered IFTTT the other week – I use it for making sure instagram actually posts photos to twitter rather than links!
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Can I just ask – do you not just have a spreadsheet of block payments when it goes through your bank account which you update at the end of the month? Just interested as to how others’ admin works now!
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Wondering what you think Guzel Akhatova! Maybe I can tidy up the way I do things…
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