How Text Blaze saves you time
If you wanna save time while working at your computer, you need to stop touching your keyboard so often.
So in today's video, I'm gonna show you how Text Blaze can help you reduce the number of keystrokes and make your life so much easier.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
In today's video, I wanna show you what Text Blaze is, how it can save you so much time and help you complete your emails, your chats, your documents, that much faster with text expansion.
So, let's dive in.
How often are you asked the exact same question via email?
Here's an example where someone is asking me about my pricing options.
At first glance, I may say, ah, this is gonna take me a few minutes to properly describe my packages, give the pricing, maybe include some links.
Well, there's a much better way.
When you have something like Text Blaze installed, all I need to do is type in just a few key letters and I've got everything here, and now I can hit send and move on to my very next email.
Yes, I just hit three keys on my keyboard, and I've got a complete response here, including formatting, including links, I've got all my pricing information, and now I can move on to the rest of my day.
So, how does Text Blaze work?
Well, let's jump over into the Text Blaze dashboard.
Text Blaze dashboard and snippets
Here you can see I've got a number of different snippets that are already set up.
The one that we just used here is called Quote Options.
So I took a little bit of time crafting the ideal message to the questions that I most commonly receive.
In this case, it has to do with my packages and my pricing.
So I've spelled out the different packaging, I've included the links, I've even formatted things, including bolding certain things and maybe italicizing certain things so it looks great and professional.
But all I need to do is select this shortcut key /QO.
I've chosen the letters QO to represent quote options so I can input this wherever I go.
If things change, I only need to go to one place here and maybe update some links or adjust my pricing, and then I can use this going forward.
Email is a classic example where text expansion can come into play, but let's take a look at a few other examples before we look at how we can set this up for ourselves.
Here's another one that I've created called /VC for video conferencing.
So many of us are sharing the details of our meeting rooms, whether you use Zoom or Teams or Hangouts, and here I've just taken a moment to include those details here.
So let's go back to an email example, I'm just going to delete the contents here.
This time I'm gonna go /VC, which stands for video conferencing.
Now I can input this wherever I want.
If someone's asking me for my details via a chat, I can do so.
If I wanna include this within a document, I can do so as well; just a couple of keystrokes on my keyboard, and then they have direct access to my meeting room.
Use Text Blaze for labels or common phrases
Another example that I love to use is for using Text Blaze for labels and here I'm gonna use an example within my calendar.
As you can already see here, I like to add some emojis to some of my calendar events, just so they stand out a little bit more.
One of those other examples is I like to use an emoji and maybe a term or a word in all caps for certain tasks just so they stand out and I can recognize the difference between them.
For example, let's say I wanna make a phone call later this afternoon.
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on my calendar to open up this event, but I'm just gonna type in /P.
This brings up my emoji and call, and I can say call Jane regarding the meeting, that's exactly what I want to do at that time.
So this is really helpful to me because whenever I want to add something like this, let's do another one, maybe on a different date here.
Again, it's as easy as just typing in that letter, and I can call Bill regarding the email discussion we had last week.
So now that you know some of the benefits of using Text Blaze, let's take a look at how we can create our own and add even further functionality so that your snippets, the things that you input into your documents, your chat window, or anywhere on the web, can be that much easier and that much more customizable.
How to create Text Blaze snippets
Here within the Text Blaze dashboard you can see that I have a list of my snippets here on the left-hand side.
You can see the names which I have given those snippets, and then on the right-hand side, you can see the shortcuts which will be used.
Of course, Text Blaze also gives us the option to create multiple folders.
So if we want to create our snippets in different categories or different themes, we can do so to make it that much easier to manage.
But to start your snippet, all you need to do is hit this plus button here, and we will be provided with a new window to give it a new label.
Again, this label is gonna be something just for yourself.
So in this case, I'm gonna call this one review process.
Next, we need to choose a shortcut key.
You'll notice that many of mine start with a forward slash, and there's a purpose or a reason behind this.
It's often not a great idea to use shortcut keys without some type of special character prefacing those letters.
Why? Because what if I create a shortcut key such as TH?
Well, TH is probably risky because anytime I spell the word the or that or those or any other TH word, then this snippet is going to be put into place.
So I'm gonna stick with a forward slash here, and why don't I just put RP for review process?
It can be as short or as long as you like.
Now down below, we can put in whatever we want into this snippet.
In this example, I'm going to assume that someone has sent me a document and maybe as a part of my business, I need to review these files or review this document and I promise to get back to my clients within three days.
Using Forms and Dynamic Content with Text Blaze
So watch how I'm gonna create a customized response, including some dynamic dates, into this message.
First off, I want to address them by name.
So I'm gonna say hi, but what I'm going to do is add a dynamic field here.
I'm gonna add a text and I'm gonna say that this is a name field.
Now this field name is optional.
In fact, all of these three options, the default value and the columns, meaning the width of that text field, are all optional.
I'm just gonna input name at this point, just so I know what this field is for when it comes up and I am prompted.
So I'm gonna say hi, and I'm gonna put a comma after it and then I get to start, oops, that's a period.
I'm gonna put a comma afterwards, and then I'm gonna start my message.
I'm gonna say, thanks for sending over these files.
I will review them and get back to you by…
Now here I wanna put in a dynamic date.
Remember it's all about saving time and making things easier for me.
So I'm gonna come back down here, but instead of using this forms and dynamic content, I wanna use this one, which is called Time and Date Shifting.
You can see there's a variety of different options we can include, including the current date and the current time and other insertion context.
But in this example, I wanna use time and date shifting.
So I'm gonna say in three days, I'm gonna promise or tell them that I'm gonna get back to them within three days.
So now I can insert this, I'm gonna put a period at the end because it's the end of a sentence.
Now that date three days from now is going to be input directly into this response.
But I'm not quite done here because as you can see, the date format is a little, shall we say a little strict or maybe a little too formal.
It's not gonna sound that natural if I tell them that I'm gonna get back to them in this date format.
So all I need to do is select this and come down here and select time-date format.
Here I have the option to change it.
First, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna remove the format that is currently there.
Then I'm gonna come down here and select this one.
This is going to give me a preview so in this case, it's going to say September 10th, 2021.
I like that for the most part but you know what, including the year that might sound a little rigid or maybe someone will clue in that I'm some automation.
So all I'm gonna do in this case is I'm going to eliminate the year and because it's the end of the sentence, I'm also gonna eliminate that comma.
So let's test it out and see how this is going to look.
Text Blaze makes it very easy, you can see we're in the edit version or the edit tab here, all I need to do is come over here and select Preview; and this is what it's going to look like.
I'm gonna have the ability to fill in the name and then thanks for sending over the files.
I will review them and get back to you by September 13th.
That looks really nice and clean, doesn't it?
Okay, let's remember what was the quick key? /RP.
So let's pretend that I've received those files and I'm replying to this client.
I'm gonna hit /RP on my computer and I'm presented with a new dialogue.
And here you can see I've got that name field that I created.
So I can say, hi Bill.
That's all I need to do at this stage and hit enter on my keyboard.
Now it's entered directly into the email and as you can see, September 13th, which is exactly three days from now, is entered into my response.
I can immediately hit send and get on with the rest of my day.
So if you have certain processes, if you have certain replies, if you have certain responses that you'd like to add, you can do so right here.
Adding calculations to Text Blaze snippets
One of the more complex things that you can do, if you really want to take your text expansion to the next level, is by adding calculations.
Here's an example called Forms where you can actually input drop-down options and it will calculate the price for you.
Let's take a look at this example back in our email version here as well.
I'm just gonna clear this and I'm gonna use the /form.
Once again, I'm presented with this dialogue so I can enter in a name.
Here you can see I can enter that name in once, but it could appear in multiple places.
And here I can say, well, a customer bought 13 widgets at a price of 12 per widget and now it's calculated the total price down below.
I can hit insert and now it's right here within my email response.
So you can actually get quite advanced if you like right here within Text Blaze.
Pricing and Plans
Now not only will you save a huge amount of time with Text Blaze, but you will also save money.
Why? Because Text Blaze has a free forever plan.
Now you are limited to only 20 snippets, but you can have up to 2,500 characters in each of those snippets.
If you need more and a few more features, the pro version is only $2 and 99 cents per month.
And for the amount of time that you're going to be saving, this is absolutely nothing.
For the cost of a coffee, a regular coffee, you will be saving so much time using Text Blaze.
If you'd like to start saving time right away with Text Blaze, be sure to click the link in the description below.
Remember being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.
