How to Create Notion Buttons to Automate Your Workflow

If you’ve been around here at all, it’s no surprise to you that I am excited about Notion’s newest update to the button feature. As soon as it came out, I was already trying to figure out how to create Notion buttons to help automate my workflow and the workflow of my teammates.

Previously, Notion’s button feature was, well, pretty lame. I didn’t even bother using them. They weren’t worth the effort. But now with their latest update, you can add new tasks to your task database, change properties on different pages, create an actually helpful quick capture feature and more with just the click of a button.

Components of a Notion Button

At first glance, the configuration for the new buttons can be a bit confusing and daunting. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll want to create Notion buttons for everything.

To create a button in Notion, just type /button and hit enter. You will see these options:

Start by giving the button a name and an icon. Then you have to decide what you actually want the button to do. Here’s a brief description of all the options:

Insert blocks: You can create a block (full of whatever you want) and have it be added to the page when you click it. All the formatting options are available in this block, i.e. toggles, headings, lists, etc.

Add page to: You can choose a database and add a new page to it. So you could hit the button and have a page added to your Task List Database.

Edit pages in: This allows you to edit properties in pages that already exist. So you can change the assignee or status on a specific page.

Show confirmation: This will add a confirmation step when you hit the button like “you sure you want to do this?”

Open page: Pretty self explanatory. You push this button and it opens any page you want.

The real gold about these new buttons? You can add multiple steps to each button. You can change the order of the steps. You can even duplicate different steps.

For example, you can create a Notion page, edit the page you just created, have a confirmation page, and have the newly created page open in a side-peek. Or you can add 20 tasks to your task list at once. Legitness.

Let’s look at some specific use cases.

Using Notion’s Button for Quick Capture

I wrote about using buttons for quick capture a few weeks ago. One of my complaints about Notion has been its lack of quick capture options. If I ever want to just jot something down, it takes a few steps to actually get where I want to go. Buttons speed up this process.

I created a quick capture button on my personal dashboard (along with a few others).

With this button, I can easily add an idea or note to my personal Note’s Database. Here’s how I configured it:

I chose Add a page and selected my notes database. Then I added a step to open the newly created page in a side-peek so I can add my note or idea right then and there.

Create tasks

When I first found out about this new feature, I was most excited to figure out how to quickly add tasks. Once I figured it out, I added the button in a few different places, then created one for everyone on our team. Cause you know, why not.

For this button I selected Add a page and chose our master task database. But what help would that be if it’s not assigned to anyone? You can edit properties and assign it to a specific person (in this case, me) and change the status. Or whatever property you want to change.

I also added a step to open the task in a side-peek so I can add all the relevant information quickly.

I also created a synced block with four more buttons. A button adding a task for each member of our team and dropped the synced block into our meeting notes template. So every time we have a meeting and a task comes up, we can quickly assign it to someone.

Button inside of a Notion Template

Notion has a lot of things going for it. One of those things is templates. They have literally saved me hours of work. We use them in our editorial calendar, meeting notes, projects, and many other places.

But there was always a frustrating component. It was a bit of a headache to add any default tasks to any database template. This was a bummer for us. We have a lot of projects that we do multiple iterations of (like Focus Academy, Digital Planner, or Plan Your Year), and we already know some of the tasks required.

We had to either add them manually each time or create a to-do list of basic tasks and drag them into the task database once the project was created.

But not anymore. Muhahaha (maniacal laugh).

For our most common projects, we created a button in the project template so we can add a bunch of tasks (and update their properties) with the push of a button.

One of our recurring projects is Focus Academy. We also know most of the tasks required to pull it off, so we added them to a button in our Focus Academy project template.

Isaac (the Director of Focus Academy) and I added the main and already known tasks to the button. Oh, and you can create tasks using the parent-task and sub-task feature 😎

So now when we start working on Academy, we already know most of the tasks that need to be done to knock it out of the park.

Changing Assignee

Our articles and newsletter go through a lot of hands before they get published. Once an article has been finished, it gets passed to our editor. Once an email is ready to go out, it gets passed to Marcela to schedule it.

So why not automate this process?

I added a button on our Newsletter template that automatically changes the assignee to Marcela and changes the status to Review. All I had to do was choose Edit a page and choose This page. The This page setting is dynamic, so it changes whatever page the button is on.

Once I hit this button, it notifies Marcela. I also then leave a comment letting her know it’s ready to be scheduled. I do wish buttons could automatically post comments, because that would be amazing.

I created a similar button for our article template. When everything is done, we just smash the button and it gets assigned to our editor-extraordinaire Jeff, and changes the status to Review.

Honorable mentions

There are a lot of little things you can do with buttons. You can create a button to simply open another page. I do this for my Learning Dashboard. I click the button from my personal dashboard and it opens my Learning Dashboard. There are other ways to do this, but buttons are more fun.

You can add confirmation steps to your buttons. Although not always necessary, it’s helpful when you’re wanting to do something major.

I showed you how to add a page to a task database already, but you can add a page to any database. You could create a button called Bug Report that would add an entry to a software bug report database. The possibilities are endless.

The goal of buttons is to automate your workflow, and so far it’s doing just that for me.

Wrap up

Notion just announced some new Project Management features. Their new project home base template includes some updated features such as an improved timeline view, Sprint databases, and Wikis.

They are also coming out with more automations. It seems that this new button feature is just the beginning. The new automation update is rumored to be able to do if/then statements, which would take workflow automations to a whole other level. Pretty exciting!

Although the new automations update is still TBD, the new button feature is a huge step towards automated workflows. Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to create Notion buttons. There are countless ways to use them to streamline your workflow.

Your imagination is the limit. Well there are a few limitations. But you get my point.

How We Created our Master Resource Database

A couple of months ago, we were in a Blanc Media staff meeting and we were talking about one of our resources, an e-book called Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. And I asked, “Do we have a central place to easily find all of our resources with source files and links?” Well, the answer was…. “um, I don’t think so”. So then I had the idea to track down all of our resources, PDFs, slide decks etc. and drop them into one place. So our Master Resource Database in Notion was born.

Just for a little bit of context, The Sweet Setup and The Focus Course have been around for a minute. Shawn has created dozens of PDFs, courses, and e-books and hosted even more webinars and workshops. We have A LOT of content floating around in the ether. So I wanted to create a place where we could easily access and share it without digging around our site for 20 minutes.

Why use a Notion Database?

For those who might be new to Notion or unfamiliar with relational databases, here is a brief intro (feel free to skip ahead if you’re already a pro). Using Notion’s databases are a great way to store important information that you want to find quickly.

A Database is essentially a dynamic spreadsheet. You can create different views of the same information. For example, you can see it as a simple spreadsheet (similar to what you might see in Google sheets), calendar view, Kanban view etc. The secret sauce of Notion’s databases is that they can talk to each other. I can easily reference information from several data sources in one place. If you want to learn more, check out this article we wrote on relational database.

We do all of our project management inside of Notion. It just made sense to build this master resource database inside Notion. Plus, it connects to all of our projects.

Problems it had to solve

If this whole thing was going to work, it had to solve a few problems for us. We needed a place to store the links to PDFs, source files, Keynote slide decks. We also needed the link where the PDFs “lived” on our site. If it’s part of a course, where is the sales page in case asked about the resource?

We wanted this database to be helpful, but not so complex that it becomes rigid and unusable. Thanks to the versatility of databases and their properties, I think we figured it out.

Database properties

First off, don’t be alarmed by the amount of properties we created. They all serve a purpose, and luckily we can hide the ones we don’t want always displayed.

Here’s a list of all the properties we have:

Name: This is pretty self explanatory. This is the name of the resource, like A QuickStart Guide for going Paperless or Margin Assessment.

Resource Type: This is for noting the file type, i.e. PDF, Slide Deck, Pages File… We used a select property for this one (a select property is basically a dropdown).

Content Type: Similar to resource type, we used a select property to distinguish what type of resource it is, i.e. Worksheet, Assessment, Guide, etc.

Content Category: Also a select property. We can add the category for each resource, like “Time Management”, “Margin”, “GoodNotes” etc. This is helpful in case we want to see all the resources that we have on a certain topic, like PKM.

PDF Version: Next we have a file property. Here is where we upload the actual file. So for our Focus Method Checklist, we can upload the PDF file and add the link to find it on our site.

Link to Access Resource: This is where we save the link where the resource lives on our site. So if someone asks us where they can find our Goal Setting worksheet, we can just send them the link to the resource (like when you click on a link and it opens the PDF in your browser or downloads it onto your computer).

Location on site: This is different than the link to access resource. Let’s say that someone wants the workbook for our Focus Like a Boss program. We can send them the actual PDF or we can send them to the page where they can download it themselves, like a course page. In a more common scenario, we have a few dozen of our most popular resources on a dashboard for our Accelerator members. So, we can easily point them to what we call “The Vault” where they can pick and choose what they want to download. So we may not always need the Location on site property, but it’s helpful in some cases.

Editable Source File: This is another file property. We only use this property for slide decks or the Pages version of our workbook. With these source files, we can make quick edits or only export certain sections, if needed.

Notes: Well, this is pretty self explanatory. An example of a note that we’ve written is “Also available in the All the Things Course,” which means that one of our resources is available in multiple places on the site, including the All The Things Course.

Sales Page: This, again, is pretty self-explanatory. In some instances, it’s helpful to know where we sell certain resources, like our Day One in Depth Guide. Sometimes people ask us where they can find certain resources and thanks to this property, we can quickly send them the right sales page to buy the resource.

Site: This is another select property where we can distinguish what site it lives on, The Focus Course or The Sweet Setup.

Related to another resource?: This is a relational property. You create a relational database by simply connecting two databases together using a property called relation. This tells one database to pull in information from another database. But in this case we are pulling in information from itself. I created this to connect resources to each other, if needed.

For example, “A QuickStart Guide for going Paperless”, “A Kick Butt Cheatsheet for Getting Your Email Inbox Calm”, and “Setting up a Distraction Free Mac & iPhone” are all part of a bundle called Workflow Essentials. It makes sense to connect them together, but what’s great about connecting them to each other is that once I connect one to another it shows up for each of them. Lost? Check out the screenshots below.

Created by: Again, self-explanatory. This property automatically captures who created the new database entry. This is using a property called “Created by”.

Projects: This is another relational property. Except instead of relating to this page, it relates to our Projects database. If a resource is relevant to a particular project, we can easily connect them. This is helpful in the case of course workbooks. Like the “Focus on Time Workbook” connects to the Focus on Time project.

Use cases

We don’t use every property for every resource. It’s just not necessary. But we still created all of them because it’s pretty handy for some resources.

The main view (the spreadsheet view) might seem a bit overwhelming at first glance. So we created a second gallery view. It only displays a few properties, such as site, content type, and resource type.

But if I ever want to see all the properties for a resource, I just have to click on it and it will open for me.

This might seem like a lot, but what actually took the longest was hunting down all the resources across our sites. Let me assure you, this has already come in handy, especially in our Accelerator membership. Our members get access to everything, and they ask about certain resources or recommendations. I can easily jump into this database and grab what I need without needlessly looking on our sites.

Infinite Canvas App Roundup: Comparing Miro, Freeform, and Obsidian Canvas

I’ve been spending time playing with infinite canvas apps lately, and there are a lot of great options available. In this article, we’ll compare and contrast the features of each of these apps to help you choose the one that best fits your needs.

What is an Infinite Canvas App?

An infinite canvas app is a digital board that gives you an unlimited virtual workspace to create and organize your ideas, sketches, notes, and other types of content. Think of it like a virtual whiteboard, but with no predefined pages or fixed dimensions so you never run out of space (hence the term ‘infinite canvas’).

Infinite canvas apps are particularly useful for creative professionals, artists, designers, and educators who need to brainstorm, sketch, or plan their projects in a flexible and unrestricted way. They can also be beneficial for personal use, such as for note-taking, mind mapping, or laying out the different parts of a large project.

The goal of an infinite canvas app is to provide you with the space and tools to think more creatively about things. I’ve spent a bit of time with three of the more popular ones as of late:

• Miro
• Freeform
• Obsidian Canvas

What surprised me is that these three different apps really have three very different scenarios where they shine. Here’s how they stack up and where they really shine.

Miro

Miro is a collaborative online whiteboard platform designed to allow teams to work together on brainstorming, planning, and visualizing ideas. It is primarily focused on visual collaboration, allowing teams to create diagrams, mind maps, flowcharts, and other visual representations of information.

When you create a board in Miro, you have the option of using a pre-made template to help get you started. There are templates for meetings, kanban workflows, flow charts, product roadmaps, presentations, and much more. If you can think of a business use case for collaboration (i.e. a SWOT analysis or department-level OKR tracking), there is probably a pre-made template you can use.

Because Miro is first and foremost a web app, it offers integrations with lots of other popular online productivity tools. For example, you can embed cards for tasks from apps like Asana and ClickUp, embed design images to get feedback from apps like Figma and Sketch, and collaborate from other communication tools like Slack and Zoom.

What I like about Miro is that it’s really easy to pick up and use. The templates make it easy to get started, and it’s easy to collaborate with others regardless of the technology they decide to use.

If you’re looking for something strictly based on how easy it will be to collaborate with others, Miro is a solid choice. You can access it from just about anywhere, and the integrations with other popular productivity tools make it an ideal choice if you need to work with others (especially in a corporate setting).

Freeform

Freeform is an infinite canvas app from Apple designed for creative brainstorming and collaboration. It comes pre-installed on current versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, giving you built-in creative tools on any Apple device.

With Freeform, you can create multimedia boards on top of your infinite canvas that includes photos, video, audio, documents, PDFs, links to websites and map location links, sticky notes, shapes, diagrams, and more. You can use drag-and-drop from Files and Finder and built-in alignment guides help you snap objects into their proper place.

But the big emphasis in Freeform is on collaboration, with the ability to have up to 100 collaborators on each board. You can drag a board from Freeform into a Messages thread, and all members of that thread will instantly be invited. FaceTime is also built into the app so that you can connect in real time as you collaborate in the app.

What I like about Freeform is the ability to sketch and use the Apple Pencil when using it on my iPad. I still like GoodNotes better for sketching, but using Freeform on an iPad opens up a lot more creative possibilities. Unfortunately, it’s hard to use handwriting like this on your Mac, forcing you to use it more like a standard collaborative whiteboard app.

If you’re an Apple Notes user who has ever wished you could just drag things around inside the Notes app, you’ll love Freeform. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but it’s a pretty impressive thinking tool that offers simple collaboration with others — as long as they are fellow Apple nerds.

Obsidian Canvas

Canvas is a new feature added to Obsidian that gives you the ability to create an infinite canvas app inside your Obsidian vault. It’s available as a Core Plugin inside the app and is available on both desktop and mobile (but must be enabled to be used).

Once enabled, creating a Canvas allows you to lay out your notes and ideas so you can organize them visually. You can embed your notes alongside text blocks, images, PDFs, videos, audio, and even fully interactive web pages. Canvas views can be embedded in other notes, and even inside another Canvas.

While Canvas files in Obsidian use a different file format from the standard Markdown formatting the rest of the app is built on, it’s still designed with interoperability in mind. By using an open-source JSON format for Canvas files, apps, scripts, and plugins can enhance your Canvas by adding or modifying the cards and connections it contains.

What I like about Canvas is that I don’t have to leave Obsidian. It reminds me a lot of the corkboard feature Scrivener had back in the day, where writers could lay out all the parts or sections of their writing project and move them around visually on screen. There’s something powerful about simply rearranging your ideas visually that can cause things to click.

If you are all in on Obsidian, Canvas is a great tool for helping you make sense of your notes and ideas. The killer feature is the ability to create boards inside your Obsidian vault and make connections between things. But, it doesn’t allow you to collaborate with others, and if you don’t keep everything in Obsidian then it is pretty feature-limited compared to other infinite canvas apps.

Which Infinite Canvas App is Right for You?

If you need to collaborate with others in a corporate environment (or don’t have any influence over the devices your collaborators will use), check out Miro. It offers a free tier, and the large template library makes it easy to get started.

If you are all-in on the Apple ecosystem and feel comfortable using Apple Notes, check our Freeform. The tools will feel familiar, and your boards will sync across all your Apple devices.

If you are a heavy Obsidian user (like me) and use it for note-taking AND writing, check out Canvas. There’s a lot of insight to be had from arranging the contents of your Obsidian notes visually, especially when brainstorming or planning larger personal creative projects.