Console

Written By Julien Quintard

Last updated About 1 year ago

The term Console refers to the input you use to issue orders, save information, and search.

The console is part of the Dashboard but is also present throughout the app to perform basic actions like scheduling a task, searching etc.

In other words, whenever you interact with Routine through text instead of clicking, the console is involved.

📱 The Routine mobile app does not provide the same natural language capabilities because it is usually easier and quicker to use tapping and sliding for interacting on a smartphone.

📺 Interface

Through the console, the user can create and manipulate different types of objects, most notably tasks, events and text.

The console comes with natural language capabilities for the user to specify properties. Based on the provided properties, Routine deduces which command the user is likely willing to perform.

If multiple commands are possible, the console lists them for the user to manually select (↑ ↓) and trigger the action of her choice with ↵.

In addition, the console provides a summary of what it has understood of the user input, see below with “Buy sofa on Sun, Apr 17th in 🏡 House”.

👩‍💻 Commands

Most of the properties are indicated through the use of keywords for the console to understand what is meant. Below are described the commands along with the properties and keywords supported.

🗝️ Keywords

Routine allows creating objects of different types: tasks, events or any type you create.

In addition, natural language can be used to set properties. For instance, one could use natural language to plan tasks and events, add participants to meetings etc.

Below are listed the keywords recognized in the natural language:

  • on followed by a date

  • at followed by a time

  • for followed by a duration

  • with followed by an email address

  • every followed by a frequency

  • starting followed by a date

  • until followed by a date

  • this followed by another keywords such as week, month, year, Monday etc.

  • next followed by another keywords such as week, month, year, Monday etc.

Here are some examples:

  • Get a haircut on Monday

  • Submit tax report on September 22nd 2023

  • Declare taxes on 2025

  • Call mom on tomorrow

  • Prepare email draft on Monday at 2pm for 3h

  • Call lawyer on December 1st

    A default duration of 30 minutes is assumed while looking for the first available opening

  • Clean office at 3pm for 1h30

    The date defaults to today in this case

  • Sign contract tomorrow morning

  • Check metrics every workday

  • Call parents every Sunday starting next month

  • Yearly review every year

  • Schedule call with Henry every quarter until 2024

🤔 Completion

The console comes with a powerful completion mechanism which suggests the most likely items you are likely to type next, saving you precise time.

We advise you to make use of this mechanism as often as possible to increase your productivity.

Whenever the console displays suggestions, you can use the ↑↓ arrows to navigate and press ⇥ (TAB) or ↵ to validate the element you want to select.

💡 There is a slight difference between ⇥ and ↵ when selecting a suggestion. Let’s assume there are two suggestions: house and household.

  1. Using ⇥ on house, the console would complete house and continue to offer household as a more precise suggestion

  2. Using ↵ however would validate the selected suggestion, place a ⎵ (SPACE) right after allowing you to continue typing text or validate the command

👉 Redirection

If often happens when you capture a task, note, thought etc. that this information needs to be organized, next to other information on the same topic for instance, being movies to watch, stuff related to your house, a person or even a project.

Routine allows to specify the parent in which the object should be created. The same mechanism is used for specifying the calendar which should hold an event.

In order to specify the holder, use the > character followed by the name of the parent object or the name of the calendar.

You can go one step further and use the / character as a separator to indicate the heading (H1/H2/H3) under which the created object should be placed.

👾 Specials

Some actions are so common that it would be nice to be able to do without the keywords for those.

Routine can therefore detect the special words below without the need to use keywords

  • today

  • tomorrow, tmr

The same is true for default ranges:

  • morning

  • afternoon

  • evening

🙅 Escaping

Sometimes, you want to type text that include a word that the console interprets as a keyword e.g in, on, every etc. or as a special e.g tomorrow.

In order to tell Routine not to interpret a word, just hit ⎋ (ESCAPE) on the keyword or when suggestions are displayed and the console will consider the input as normal text.

🎭 Formats

Routine supports the following formats.

Date

  • Day: Friday, Monday, etc.

  • Month: September etc. in which case Routine converts into a full date for the 1st day of the given month

  • Year: 2023, 2025 etc.

  • Date: December 14th, the 12th of February 2021, etc.

Time

  • AM/PM: 2pm, 10:30am etc.

  • 24h: 13, 19:45 etc.

Duration

  • Minutes: 30m, 30min etc.

  • Hour: 1h, 2h15, 1h30min etc.

Frequency

  • Day of the week: Monday, Friday etc.

  • Period: day, week, month, quarter, year

  • Other: workweek