The most powerful mobile app for your phone - IFTTT

Hello guys, hope my previous blog was a little informative and interesting. Though I expected few more tractions, but I would say it has done fairly well enough when compared to my previous blogs. Thanks to those patient readers and to those who took time to comment on Facebook (no comments on the post yet... :p) as well.

Ok so in this blog, I will introduce you to that one essential application which you can install in your mobile.  In the last two decades phones have evolved from landlines to mobiles to wearables.  They have come a long way since their inception. I still remember those big landline phones in my home, with which I used to do all sorts of nuisances (finding a number from a bulk telephone directory is an art, if you know what I mean :p). Especially the sound which it gives when connecting to internet through a modem is absolute bliss. Truly technology is magic.

Imagine this: Your mobile is connected to your home Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth is turned on. After getting bored from a monotonous lockdown life you plan to go out for a drive and get in to your car. Once you get into your car, the Bluetooth automatically connects to your car infotainment system and your music player starts playing your favorite music. Once you drive a distance and are out of your home area, your mobile’s Wi-Fi gets automatically switched off as it is no longer required. You reach a scenic place and you take some picturesque photos, your photos are automatically uploaded to Instagram and Facebook. You move around to discover some more places and unknowingly your mobile’s battery percentage drops to 2%. Now your phone senses it and sends an SMS to your close contact, about your last location and that your battery percentage is very low so that they are aware of this situation and do not panic when they start calling you and you are not reachable. You drive around and come back, once you enter your home area, your mobile’s Wi-Fi automatically turns on. And as soon as it connects to your home Wi-Fi, your home assistant (Alexa, Google Home) welcomes you home and switches on your home appliances depending on the time of the day.

In all of the above said scenarios, there are two things which are making it possible 1. Your mobile phone with apt sensors 2. The software (App) in your mobile which keeps collecting vital data to perform the corresponding actions. And that one piece of software which can do all these is IFTTT

What is IFTTT?

There are multiple software companies providing niche services specializing each in one area. For example, Uber providing Cab services, Swiggy providing food delivering service, Amazon providing shopping as well as many other services.

Disclaimer: The following event is my imagination while the facts remain true

One day Mr. Linden Tibbets (founder of IFTTT) whilst taking shower imagined in his mind that what if all these services could work together. He just thought what if different events happening within one app could trigger another event in another app. What if, if all the app could talk to each other and work seamlessly. Well with that idea striking hard in mind he called Mr. Jesse Tane (co-founder IFTTT) and together they coded and create the exact same Software and named it as IFTTT.  

Back to reality:

If This Then That is the expansion of IFTTT and as the name suggests is primarily a service which allows a user to run response programs for an event triggered in other web space. The partner with various service providers that supply event notifications and execute commands that implement the responses.

I came to know about IFTTT from Amazon shopping website where many products mentioned that they integrate with it and most of the product catalogues were in the Home Automation category. Intrigued enough I just went into their website to check out what exactly it was, and it was love at first sight.

Features I like the most:

1.      The UI is super simple and elegant. It was a cake walk for me to create my first applet. They call each integration as an applet and you can create ‘n’ number of applets with this.

Check out their definition here: https://ifttt.com/explore/new_to_ifttt

2.      The number of services they as span across. They have partnered with almost all major brands which includes Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Phillips, Strava, Uber, Slack and the list goes on and on.

3.      They are free or maybe were free initially and after 2020 went into freemium mode. You have to pay for a PRO mode and now they even have a PRO+ version.

Plans: https://ifttt.com/plans

4.      They are everywhere Web, Android and iOS.

Webhooks:

The best feature of any app is empowering the user to configure it as they wish and IFTTT was already doing it. And to top it all it also made the DIY (Do It Yourself) projects integration possible, which means I can create my own app and integrate with the other available services.

If you are wondering what an Webhook actually is, on an eagle’s view it is a service which enables your app to communicate with another app. For more detailed insights you can check this link

https://www.getvero.com/resources/webhooks/

Last year I had a one-line requirement to send notifications to many people either through WhatsApp or SMS or by any messaging app. I searched online for any ready-made tools and all I could find is only bulk SMS gateways which were charging for that service. I then quickly realized that I’m a software engineer 😊. Let me make one on my own and got into it. I built a small utility which makes use of the IFTTT’s webhook integration service and connected it with my Android’s SMS service.  

It’s a windows desktop application for now and maybe I can build a web one in the future. Here is the link to download it. https://github.com/zaheer800/BulkSMS_IFTTT/releases/tag/v.1.0. Give it a try.

Using the BulkSMS IFTTT app:

• Once you install with the BulkSMS_IFTTT_Setup.msi and open the app it will ask you to enter the configuration settings. 
• In the Event name box – Enter the event name and Key, for which I’ve given a tutorial too on how to get those from IFTTT website. 
• It will also ask for a contacts file which again I’ve provided with the release. It should be an Excel file with only two columns Name and Phone number. 
• If you wish to contribute to the project you are welcome to do so here

Screenshots of the application: