Tinderbox Meetup Video - Saturday, May 13, 2023: Using TBX as a CRM, Email and Social Media Posts from TBX

Tinderbox Meetup - Saturday May 13, 2023 Video: Using TBX as a CRM, Email and Social Media Posts from TBX

Level Intermediate
Published Date 5/13/23
Type Meetup
Tags 5Cs, 5Cs Learning and Knowledge Management, Action Code, Attributes, Automation, CRM, Email, Hashtag Cloud, Hootsuite, Jerry Michalski, Obsidian, Project Managment, Social Media, Templates, The Brain, Tinderbox
Video Length 01:29:58
Video URL TBX L Meetup 13MAY23 - YouTube
Example File TBX L - Meetup 13MAY23.tbx (358.7 KB)
Chat chat.txt (7.7 KB)
TBX Version 9.5
Instructor Michael Becker

In this Tinderbox meetup, we compared and constructed Tinderbox to other apps, like The Brain and Obsidian. No tool is necessarily better than another; it all depends on your individual context in need. Mark Anderson and Michael Becker demonstrated quantitative analysis in Tinderbox. We explored displayed expression use and the role of a parser. Peter Wasilko asked a question “Has anyone used Tinderbox as a CRM tool.” Riffing on this question, Michael Becker explains how he uses TBX as a CRM and project management tool. He explained how action code can be used to create people, entity, and term notes. He demonstrated how it emails people from Tinderbox using different templates. He concluded his demonstration by showing how he creates and manages his social media posts and Tinderbox and automates the posting of them with Hootsuite.

Agenda

  • A review of tools, e.g., the Brain, Obsidian
  • CRM in Tinderbox
    • Creating entities
    • Creating people
    • Using role attribute
    • Emailing from Tinderbox
  • Managing and posting social media posts, including the automation of a hashtag and mentions cloud
  • Basic Project Management in Tinderbox

Discussion

  • The Brain
    • has closed rank around a closed product (two attributes, type and a tag); they don’t want to link to other products
    • it is a mind-mapping tool
  • Obsidian
  • Tinderbox
    • Forces you to think about your notes, your connection, and structure, the UI is not that important.
    • The interface, get out o the way
    • Getting stuff out

References

  • Marketcircle’s Daylite is a good lightweight CRM
  • Jerry Michalski, The Brain expert
  • In the early Industrial Age in the UK, it took 75 years to agree on “standard” screw threads… & to best of my memory there are still 5 “standard” screw threads in use soruce
  • Book: Philadelphia’s Philosopher Mechanics: A History of the Franklin Institute 1824 - 1865" by Bruce Sinclair
  • Book: The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution," Charles R. Morris, 2012
  • Book: Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880, Craig Murphy & JoAnne Yates
  • Book: The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World, Simon Winchester
  • Book: William Kent’s “Data & Reality,” 1978

Please comment

Please help with the development of future sessions by answering the three questions below.

  • What were your top 2~3 key takeaways from this lesson?
  • What do you want to learn next? Learn more about?
  • What exercises would help reinforce your learning?

@satikusala, could you please share the AppleScript you used to generate a rich text email from Tinderbox during your CRM demo? I would like to use it for a similar CRM project that I’m working on in TBX.

Thank you in advance!

Hey, actually, we no longer need AppleScript. @eastgate obliged with some updates from my backstage requests on this very subject! :slight_smile:

Two new attributes have been added since Tinderbox 9.5., specifically $EmailSubject and $EmailTemplate. If you add an email to a note, e.g., $Email=test@email.com, and $EmaiSubject=“this is a test email”, and $EmailTemplate=“tEmail”, and the body of your email to the $Text=“this is my test email.” Then all you need to do is click the email Icon next to the $Email attributed in $DisplayedAttributes, and you’re good to go. I also added user-generated $FirstName, CSS styling, and a ton of other tweaks to my use case.

See example:

Email Demo.tbx (145.6 KB)

1 Like

Oh, wow. This is fantastic. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Michael!

1 Like

Wait until you see today’s meetup recording. We spent nearly the entire meetup on this topic?

2 Likes

Great meetup, thanks @satikusala !!