# All 10 Notion Automations for System Design (Complete Guide)

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** August Bradley
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN0GkbIp10U
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/23146

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

With so many various types of notion automations released over the past year, it can be confusing what to apply to your systems? This is the most comprehensive one stop, single YouTube video covering all ten forms of notion internal no code automations. Beyond identifying the range of automation options, this video dives into use cases and ideas for applying them in notion life management systems such as pillars, pipelines and vaults. The demos here will be in PPV, but applicable to any personal system. These are the internal no code automations, so no external apps such as Zapier or Make or the API, and no formulas or coding language necessary for any of these. Each of the ten types of automations has a chapter marker, so you can jump to those of most interesting or revisit them. Here is the list of the ten automations that we'll cover. First notions classic automations. We'll cover these quickly, they've been around for a long time, but since we want to have a comprehensive list, we'll start with these and we'll include them. Number one is add an entry from a filtered view to automatically apply properties. Number two is using due dates or do dates for automatically rolling into filtered views. This is the most PPV specific automation that we've leveraged since day one. Number three is database templates. Then we'll get into the newer template automations. Those are number one default templates and number two recurring templates. Then we dive deeper into button triggers which include number one page button blocks, and number two database buttons. Next we explore database property triggers, often incorrectly called notion automations. But as we see here, they are just one of many types of notion automations. Then we finally get to AI automations, both number one database AI properties and number two AI page blocks. Before we dive in, I want to pause for a moment of context and honesty. You don't hear this much in YouTube videos or blogs, but I'm going to be blunt and very honest here. I do this channel first and foremost to help you improve your life, not to master notion. None of the notion automations here are game changing. None of them all have minimal benefits, though some are oddly emotionally satisfying and add some momentary joy and a sense of reward to progress on your actions. None of the automations currently available will have a meaningful impact on the quality of your life or on the ability of your system to guide you to a better life. Notion systems can life if designed well, but notion automations will not make a real difference in that, at least at this stage of their implementation. Same goes for notion formulas they will not make a meaningful impact or advancement in your life. But unlike the formula rabbit hole and unlike external API automations which all involve long complex learning curves, the internal no code notion automations in this video are all quick and easy to apply with very little time and effort spent for the streamlining they enable and for the emotional gratification they can provide. Formulas, on the other hand have a big cost, investment in time and constant tweaking. API automations have a big cost in setup and managing their ongoing breaking. The API is often changing and breaking the zaps and other external automations. These external or coding automations also have very little return on actual life enhancement, though they can be more valuable for team system management where they can shine more. We'll discuss formulas more in the future, but not in this video. This video is about no code automations whenever possible, I advocate no code approaches with notion. I minimize complex formula use in the systems that I teach and the templates I share. Since they do not get you closer to your life goals, they just require building time and ongoing maintenance and tinkering with no gain toward your value goals and life aspirations complex formulas are not a benefit in notion templates or in notion systems. They are a weakness. This channel is about applying notion to actually improve your life, to make progress toward your life aspirations, to design and build the life you want. Its about achieving top priorities in life. Notion is a support tool, its secondary and in service of the life aspirations that you design. Lets not overly tinker in notion, lets use it as a tool, keeping the clear focus on applying it toward making our lives better, defining our life aspirations and moving consistently toward them.

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

So let's dive into the ten internal no code automations that can streamline your system with very little upfront time and effort. It's the ease of implementing them that makes them worthwhile. I'm talking about for personal life systems here, for business teams, it's a different conversation since there you typically have someone else building and maintaining them and you're trying to keep a lot of different people at different usage levels using the system in a consistent way. So there's a stronger case in that scenario. We'll discuss that in future videos. So here we go. In previous PPV life design videos on this channel we've already had automations in the system. We leverage them pretty extensively even though there were very few, and it was hard to sort of squeeze automations out of them. But we did that, and I think we did that to an unparalleled degree back in the day when there were only a few options. Let's cover those quickly to be thorough before moving on to the newer automation features. So these are the classics, the ones we've had for a while, but since we want to be comprehensive, let's include them here up front. But we'll go through these quickly to get onto the newer ones and spend more time going more in depth on the newer ones. So the first one will be, if you're a long time notion user, this will be something you've known for a long time. But again, to be thorough, when we add a new entry to a database, we can automatically apply database properties by applying them in a database view that has filters already applied. And whatever the database is filtered for, those database properties will be applied automatically. So here we're in the action zone in PPV (Pillars, Pipelines & Vaults). But again, this works in any database, anywhere in any system. So we have a database here that's filtered to see only the items for today, this is our focused view of the things we're doing today. So this database is pre filtered to. Have a few rules here. So one is that the due date, the do date, the date which we plan and schedule to do the activity is on or before today for the most part, on today. But it on or before will catch anything that we forgot to move forward today, and anything that's not checked, done, or perhaps better, anything that is. Unchecked and anything that is status set to active. So because the database is filtered for these, when we add a new entry, it's automatically going to apply these. Let's say we also wanted to have any new entry be of a certain priority. So let's add another rule here. So priority is quick. Perhaps most of the ones we add are quick. If it's something more than a quick one, we'll then change it when we add it. So by default it'll be the quick priority setting. So those are our rules here, those are our formulas all set here. And whatever the formulas are, then we save this for everyone, hide that. And by changing that we now only see the quick one that's here. But that's okay. The purpose of this is to demonstrate the automation of applying properties when creating a new database entry. So now when we create a new. Database entry, we hit new, and by. Default it will have all of the properties that we're filtering for. The status will be set to active, not any other due date will be. Set today, priority will be set to quick. And of course done is unchecked. So whatever the filters are, when we. Apply a new database in that filtered view, we will get all of those properties applied that will only apply to that specific filtered view. And this is the new one we added. In any other filtered view, when you hit the new button and add a new one, it's only going to apply filters that other view is filtered for, so you can create custom filtered views for the purpose of adding a certain combination of database properties. And that's what we've done here in the action zone. This is the today view, the things we're doing today. So if we want to quickly add something to do today, we do it here. And of course, we would typically not. Filter for that property of priority. And now whenever we add a new one, it's going to be added for. What we filtered for, which is our today focus across all databases. That's one way to apply a preset combination of properties automatically. So the second classic automation that we've been doing for a long time, but this one is actually not as common because other systems don't use this rigorous application of the dodate, the due date method we use. A few other systems have copied our "Do Date" titling, but they didn't apply the process. And the process is where all the power is. So the distinction is not just that we call it "Do Date" DO Date, although that's helpful. It reframes it, and we can also have a due date if we want to. But more often than not, the due date is the more valuable one. And in fact, you need a

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

Do Date in order to ever meet your Due date. And in most cases, you don't need a DU date at all, you just need the date you're going to do it. So what we have here, if we open our calendar view, one of the things that really deviated from GTD and a lot of pre existing systems, and again, one that keeps PPV very unique in the life system design space, even within notion, is that we have this do date. And the protocol that wasn't copied even when the name was copied, is that we rigorously apply this to any and all active action items or tasks. We never apply an active task that does not have a due date, a do date. Now we could have projects that have one or two active tasks and then others queued up, but we're going to get to those as we manage the project. So every active project will have an active task, one or more, so that it's queued up to make progress. And if it's an active project, it. Must have at least one, if not more active tasks. This is one of the core principles of PPV that make it distinctive. So every project will have at least one active task, and therefore that active task must have a designated due date. Also, any individual solo tasks or action items that are not part of a project must have a Do Date. And the result of this is we don't have a monstrous, single overwhelming, debilitating to do list, which is the way virtually every other system works, including GTD. You have this monsters list that is just always building anxiety and always on your shoulders. We have a lot of short little ones, as you see here. Every day we have a little manageable one. If a day gets out of control, you just start reassigning and moving things around so that each day is manageable. But if you can't find a date that has room for you to assign a new task with a specific Do Date, a date you intend to do it, then you don't have room in your calendar for it. You either have to delete something else or this one won't make the cut. So we're rigorous about ensuring that everything we add to our active tasks has a specific due date. Therefore, we don't have a monstrous list. We have a lot of short, manageable ones, day by day and the evening before, we review and make final decisions on whether to keep the list as is or modify it for the next day. So there's an ongoing refinement, but when you're adding a task, you must give it a due date, unless it's queued up for later in a project and the project has other active due date assigned tasks. So this enabled us to have an automation from the start that very few systems had in notion, which is because every action item, every task we've assigned, that's an active task, it's not a do later as a part of a larger project will automatically roll into our window for today. This is our focused window for the day. All we see is what we need to get done today prioritized. Day by day, our queued up due date mini action lists will just roll forward automatically. So that is an automation because we are tying it to the date. And the date is an inherent automation in the notion calendar, as it is with every calendar. So from day one notion had this automation, most people didn't think of it as an automation because most people didn't have a Do Date assigned to every single active task. They just had this giant list. And every day they'd pick a few and choose and move around here and just try and manage this monstrous list. We had a lot of individual, manageable short lists because every single task has a do date, which gives us clarity on what we have room for and what we don't when we have to make tough decisions. So by doing this tomorrow we get some of these done. All the next ones will roll in automatically the next day. They all roll in automatically into our action item list for the day. Our focus dashboard. Okay, moving on to automation number three. And this is the third and last of our classics. This is the templates. We've had templates for a long time, but they are a big automation within notion. So we can apply these all over the place. Any database where we're applying new entries, we can have a pre built template. So let's go to our knowledge vault to look at an example of how we apply these templates. The knowledge vault is where we build our understanding, our insights, our wisdom, our knowledge, and all of our reference tools and ideas and information for any topic, in fact, every topic that we're interested in. So we come to our knowledge vault and here we have our knowledge vault template. Let's go into the edit here. But of course, once you have a template, every new entry into the knowledge vault will have that template applied. So the knowledge vault is every topic we have an interest in, professionally and personally. So examples of course would be business, admin, clubs, content creation, marketing, any hobbies, cycling

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

sports and fitness. So if we go into the template, we have a pre built layout. Now, first of all, we'll have pre established properties. Now, this particular one doesn't have any properties, but any property we assign in the template will be applied to every entry. That's less relevant here, but that's another way to add properties. With a new creation, with a new database entry, it's the other way as opposed to adding it through a filtered view, as we saw in automation number one. Here we are in automation number three. And in addition to adding properties that are pre populated in the template, you can add the title, icon on top and any top level graphics, and then even perhaps more powerful, you can have the full page built out down here. Now these toggles here all open to see pre built views of other databases in our system. So in our knowledge vault, as we open these, let's go into a specific entry. So we'll go into our systems thinking entry. Open that up. And this has the icon, anything we have assigned up there, it has a pre built table of contents here. So we can have a quick link to any aspect of this large comprehensive aggregation of knowledge, ideas and resources on this topic, which is systems thinking. You can see it's long and it's organized and it's sectioned and it's highlighted. So that makes it very useful to come in at any later point and just pick up where we left off. One of the things in the template was the table of contents, which is automatically applied. We have the body down here. And then perhaps most importantly for this template is we have all these self referencing filters to other databases that are linked to this topic in the knowledge base. So the knowledge base serves as a master tag database where we identify all the different topics that are related to all of our clients, all of our projects, all of our habits, all of the other parts of our system. And this becomes a one place to look at everything across our entire system that's tied to this particular topic. And by having this template automatically apply these self referencing filters, we see all the notes and ideas that are tied to this topic of systems thinking. We have all the goods and services that we've researched that are tied to this. They all resurface right here in context. We have all the courses and training that we've done or plan to do or considering doing all here reference to this topic. So we see all of those by looking in this one view of that topic. Across our whole system we have our media vault items, articles and YouTube videos and whatever that we've captured related to this topic and any documents we've saved and captured related. We have everything related to this topic and it's automatically compiled without us having to do any work by applying the template and having the template set up to sort and filter everything else across the system that is referring to this topic. That's the power of the knowledge vault. We have a whole video on knowledge vaults if you want to get into that. But the template lets us automatically apply this and then within it. When we have self referencing filters and table of contents and things like that, it automatically applies that functionality to every new entry in this database. So similarly, if we jump into projects, we have a projects template. So when we hit a new here, when we apply the template there, we. Will automatically have any icons or graphics. At the top, any properties that we've designed for that template. In this case, we could have different types of projects and each project could have its own custom template. And therefore by applying this we will automate the creation of each new project and a consistent layout and a lot of functionality. So similarly we'll have self referencing filter to what outcome goals this project is attached to. Any thoughts, reminders? It prompts us on how to organize and build out the project and then we get into action items. So these are the action items attached to the project, automatically built out, automatically filtered for this new project because we. Are filtering based on rules that apply. It to that particular template, which then applies it to each additional project. So this is automation. This is automation at its finest, and we've had this for a long time. Similarly, down here we have all these databases that are self referencing to the project and therefore compiling everything across our entire workspace, across our entire PPV system to this project will resurface when we look at the single dashboard for this project. And as we look at any other project, we'll have everything assembled in one place for that project. And when we create a new project we apply the template and

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00) [20:00]

that is the automation of rebuilding this instantly from scratch with no additional work. In addition to projects, we can do this in our daily routines and tracking. We can do this with our client database. content database, any database. We have a pre built template that applies the most functional, practical, useful view into that database, or even multiple different types of entries into that database. So that is the third of the three classic automations that we've had all along, but they continue to serve us very well, so I wanted to include them in this comprehensive view. Now let's move on to some of the newer automations that we've been getting over the past year or so, and since the pillars, pipelines and vaults that have appeared over the past year, and perhaps most importantly since the last of the PPV videos that I did a while ago. So we'll be updating how PPV can take advantage of these newer automations. So moving into some of the newer automations, we have default templates, which is building on the automations of templates with automations for templates. So let's just go back into projects. This is a simple one, we can show this quickly, but it adds a new level of automation to what I just showed with the capabilities of templates themselves. So by default there's no default template or the empty page is the default. You can make it so that whenever you hit the new button you don't have to click the down arrow and select a template, just the new button itself will apply the default template and you simply set the default template by clicking the three dots here and set as template. You can make it for all views. Of the project's database or only for particular views of the database. We'll set it for all. So now when we click the down arrow we'll see that is the default. And anytime we hit new here or new down here, it will automatically apply that template. Nothing groundbreaking, but it's an automation on top of the automation that templates already are. So anywhere in the system, let's say across PPV, there's so many places for this, let's say in our action zone, we would want to apply this to our daily tracking. We can make this our daily tracking template the default. Now whenever we apply a new template in daily tracking we will apply the primary default template for that. Similarly, in our cycle reviews we go to our daily monthly weekly cycle reviews and we can apply that's the same one we just saw, but we can apply Arcero for our weekly reviews. We can apply our default weekly review template as the template going forward. So it's that simple, but a nice enhancement so you're not constantly having to apply templates, it just automatically applied with whatever you want. Different views can have different default settings so that different views have different preferences and functionality optimized for that view. Similarly, our next relatively new automation in notion is recurring templates. Now this takes things a little bit further, a little bit more interesting. So let's say back in review cycles here we're going to be doing a weekly review every week. So what we might want to do is set this to repeat here. We can choose the cadence. Since this is our weekly review, we'll set it for weekly. You can choose what day it pops up on, or even multiple days to repeat on a weekly basis. But let's say it comes up every Sunday. So that's when we do our weekly review. You can set the date it starts, time it pops up, maybe have it pop up early in the morning. So it's there waiting for you when you get to it on Sunday. And you can have whatever cadence you want. You can have it come in multiple days a week, every week, and this sets a rhythm. And then as they're waiting for you, it might be set as a reminder. So if you set one of the properties with you as the owner, it'll notify you that you have a notification in the upper left corner in your inbox. That's one way to know. Or you can just know that every Sunday there's going to be a new entry here with the template already applied, waiting for you, ready to go. So that's another automation on top of the automations that templates are similarly back. On our action zone. You could do a similar thing with daily tracking. So every day you could have a new one applied. So here we do daily and maybe. It'S every day, every two days, whatever you have control over it, every three. Days, whatever you set, the time it. Starts. You can pick any start date. You want and it will automatically apply. Now, perhaps the most powerful use case of this is for tasks and action items. So first of all, you can use it for recurring tasks. If every Monday or every Monday and Thursday you want to do a certain recurring task, you would just set that here, you would create a template for. That task and then you would set that, the. Cadence for that recurring task. Repeat weekly, monthly, whatever

### Segment 6 (25:00 - 30:00) [25:00]

set your cadence. In a tier every month starting on this date. Boom, you could have every month, every. Other month, every third month, similarly with. All the other cadences. Weekly is nice because you can set specific dates. It's not just alternating every fixed number of days, so you get a little more precision with the weekly one. Now the downside here, there's one thing that really I wish we could do is this is going to apply it when that day comes. So on the day the task is. Set to be done, or on the. Day the weekly review is to be done, on the month that whatever you are doing monthly is set to be done, it will appear and pop up. Unfortunately, at this point, we cannot set a fixed number of days ahead of time. So it's not going to inform us on our schedule. As we look at planning in our action zone where we can see what's coming up. It's not going to tell us what's coming up because it's not going to automatically add them ahead of time. I really wish it could do that. I have spoken with notion about it and have communicated how important it is that we have due dates ahead of time. It's not something available at this point. They are aware that many of us want that, so hopefully that'll be added. I think it's inevitable that will be added. Notions relatively new with automations, they're rolling them out, they're improving them. I'm pretty confident that's going to happen, but it's not here yet. And that's a bit frustrating because I really want to see it days ahead of time, weeks ahead of time, what's coming up. But at this point we can have. It pop up on the day and it'll be there visibly, automatically. So that's the automation there. You can apply this in so many different ways, but some of the classic ones in pillars, pipelines and vaults would be cycle reviews on the weekly, monthly, annual, quarterly reviews, and for the daily tracking and morning routine, midday processing and end of day wind down. And then most importantly perhaps is in the tasks have things pop up on a regular basis. I will say in many cases I still prefer the manual process of say this is a recurring task, I put. An icon on the top, say I use the recycle icon and then I. Know that's a recurring task. And when I complete that, instead of checking it off, I just change the date to a future date of my choosing or of whatever cadence I want. And then it's rescheduled further. It takes no additional time to change the date rather than check it. Done. It works brilliantly. This is what we've done from day one on PPV. A lot of people found this unsatisfying because it wasn't automated by the software, but honestly it is just as effective in many ways. More effective because now we can see it's coming up and we can pick any day in the future. So we have some flexibility of judgment. And it takes no additional time. So what are you really getting from an automation if it doesn't actually save you any time? This I use for any of my more important things that I want to see ahead of time. So that manual one is still available for you. But now we have some automation if you so choose. And in addition you could also add tasks using this recurring system to check in. Say you want to make sure you check in on how your particular project is progressing or how a particular client is doing in their progression, or perhaps in your people database. You want touch base with somebody on a certain cadence. You can set this kind of recurring template for those check ins. Of course you can always do an alert. You can go into any page, either in the page or in any date property. You can set a reminder in a way that's another type of automation that can also notify you to take action on something that's already in your database. Okay, moving on to another type of automation that's been expanded is buttons. So first we're going to talk about page button blocks. Now, we've had page buttons for a long time, but not too long ago, in the past year or so, they have been dramatically expanded. So let's look at what we can do with the current high powered page button blocks. Let's look at some use cases where they'd be valuable in PPV. So let's say we go into our people database. This is one of the expansions we've done in PPV since the original YouTube series. It's quite an elaborate version of a. People database, a personal and business CRM combined. We're not going to get into all that now. Let's just create a new one that's blank. We've got a number of templates. Of course, what I'm about to show you could be applied to any template, but let's just say you wanted to keep it simple or you wanted to build this into a template. We can now create a button, and. This button has a lot of powers far beyond what they used to have originally and a lot of creative approaches. So one thing to do, say in

### Segment 7 (30:00 - 33:00) [30:00]

a people database, let's say this is for. I mean we could create this as. A template, but let's say this is for a particular person and we're going to create this new button. So updates. So every time we talk to Jim or anyone we apply this template to, we'd like to have this preset prompt instead of entries prepared for us and ready for us to apply it. So when the button is clicked, we're going to insert an action and look at all the possibilities we have. Now we can insert blocks, which we always could, but we can do even more in the blocks now. We can add a page to any other database. So we can pick any database. You click this, it can add a task in the task database. It can add knowledge or insights or new entries into the knowledge vault. It can add projects. It can create anything from the click of a button by entering a new entry into the database and thereby applying any template we choose and any properties we choose. So we can also edit pages in another database so we can modify properties in another database. We can show confirmation. It'll be a pop up. Are you sure you want to do this? That's particularly useful on teams where you want to urge caution. Or you can open a page, you click this, it opens perhaps instructions for team members or guidance or a reference that you might want to refer to when you're doing whatever entry is in the blocks or the pages you're creating with the button, then you have all these controls of how to modify properties in the same database we're currently in. So we can change any of these properties just by clicking the button. But what I find is really useful on a practical level. A lot of these are nice to know. You could do all that, but what are we actually going to use it for? Here's something I use this for all the time. When a button is clicked, we insert blocks. And first of all we can title this up here. We'll call this update. So now we see the button name. Is update and now we click here. Review notes from previous discussion this is a particularly valuable one for a client. For example, we'll make this a toggle. So we have a block here, we have all the functionality of a block. We have a toggle here. We'll give it a couple lines agenda to discuss final notes after call. We. Can set a little bullet point for each of these because prompts us to do them in bullet points. We'll close these and now we have this. So we had done. Now when we hit update, it's going to give us the three things to do throughout the call. So first, before the call we'll review our notes from the previous discussion, then set an agenda. And then after the call we'll review. This here, click this button here and. We can modify things. So that's a particular block. You could have each of these in. A separate block and then we can. Put a divider under it, keep it nice and organized. And then it would also be useful. To have a title on it. So we can put at today update so it'll be labeled and defined properly. Give it a header of h two.