Tool to automate repetitive tasks
Maciej Czajkowski
14 replies
I'm looking for a tool, that will let me create a simple scripts of repetitive tasks and automate those tasks for me. For instance, everyday I'm opening my CRM, copying a number of contacts and pasting it to my spreadsheet. I'm looking for a tool, that will do that for me.
Do you know anything like that?
Replies
Shi Ling@taishiling
If you are copying to a spreadsheet that's hosted online like on Google Sheets, you can give UIlicious a try:
https://uilicious.com
Disclaimer: I'm one of the makers of UIlicious.
UIlicious is a online browser automation tool, mainly used for testing websites, but folks are often sharing with me creative ways they are using the tool to automate their lives, e.g. reordering their favourite bag of coffee online from a shop that doesn't offer subscriptions yet. If the task of copying contacts from your CRM to a spreadsheet happens all within a browser, you can entirely automate it with UIlicious. The paid UIlicious Studio edition for professionals includes setting up scheduled jobs and storing sensitive information like login credentials securely using Datasets.
And if you are using MacOS, it already comes with Automator, which supports recording your actions and replaying it. See: https://support.apple.com/en-sg/... . This lets you automate any kind of tasks on any application, but the downside is that it will take control of your computer when it's running, so you can't do your own things.
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@taishiling I'm on Windows, but even if I was using Mac, taking over my computer is a dealbreaker for me. I need this to happen automatically.
What I need to do exactly is I need to open a URL, log in, fill in a form to get data out, copy that data and paste it into spreadsheet. Do you think uilicius can do that?
@mac_czaj Yea, that can be done with UIlicious. Depending on how the data is presented on the webpage, the copying part could either be very simple, or requires some programming logic with loops involved, but still feasible. For the last step, you will need to have the spreadsheet open in the browser using Google sheets or Office 365.
Zapier or integromate works well to transfer data between systems.
If you need something more complex I recommend using google sheet macros, there is an option to schedule them for automatic launch.
@fabian_maume I know those are tools to transfer data between systems. But the thing is, that I've got my data only accessible via URL. Right now, a person manually opens those URLs's once a week and copy the data to a spreadsheet. Do you think Zapier can do that?
@mac_czaj What type of url are you getting the data from exactly?
You can certainly make a scraper for it and run it on Apify or Phantombuster
@fabian_maume Those are private URL's that you can only access after logging in. So I'll need this tool to be able to go to URL, log in, fill a form, wait for the data to get displayed, and than scrape it and paste it to spreadsheet.
Do you think Apify or phantombuster can do that?
@mac_czaj yes it is possible to automate with Apify or Phantombuster, it will just requires some custom development. You can book an appointment if you want to discuss the use case further: https://calendly.com/fabian-tetriz/
@fabian_maume Thank you very much. Right now I'm looking for a tool to show it to a person, who will be trying to automate her work, but she will only be available in like 2 weeks from now. Do you think we can schedule a call then?
And are you involved with those tools in any way?
Hello Maciej, I just launched a automation platform and we can do customize workflows for you. Happy to connect or chat if you are interested. https://www.producthunt.com/prod...