Learn about our latest features, product improvements and fixes.
In the last couple of months, we made significant strides towards making workflow automation seamless and fun. We’ve added new features, significantly improved the scraper, enhanced the UI, and much more.
Here is the digest.
We’ve introduced three additional windows: Results, Queue, and Notifications.
The new Results window stores the history of all success messages when playbooks and commands are run.
The Queue window shows all in-progress playbooks that are being executed. This window was created for the playbooks that take longer to execute, such as the ones that require transferring large files or extracting data from multiple web pages with our scraper.
You can run multiple playbooks in parallel without waiting until each playbook is executed.
The Notifications window brings important notifications and error messages from the Settings page to the front of the app so that you can check them effortlessly.
We’ve moved the main window to the center of the screen and removed the spotlight view.
Although this may not seem important, this change has massive implications on the UX!
Previously, when Bardeen was inside the extension window, it was subject to two limitations: 1) fixed window size 2) UI loading speed being throttled, causing an annoying lag when opening Bardeen.
With these limitations removed, you can launch Bardeen with a global shortcut and install playbooks from the website.
You can now launch Bardeen from anywhere on your computer! Yes, you can now schedule a Zoom call or send an email reminder right from your code editor or Photoshop.
You can configure the global shortcut from here: chrome://extensions/shortcuts
You can install and run playbooks right from our website. Just browse through our playbooks catalog or blog, and install the playbook directly from there—so no need to type the title of a playbook to add it to your favorites anymore.
Soon you will be able to embed Bardeen playbooks to your websites as well. You will be able to share a custom playbook with your colleagues and readers seamlessly.
The scraper has been one of Bardeen’s most beloved features. And we’ve been working relentlessly to make it even better.
The background scraper allows you to extract data from websites periodically and without opening tabs.
You can run a scraper model on a URL and send the results directly to Google Sheets, Airtable, or Notion.
The background scraper made it possible to track job listings on Indeed, rare products on eBay, or gigs on Upwork.
Try this command:
“Get data using scraper model [model] for URL [url]”
You can extract even more information by combining scraper models.
The deep scraper allows you to extract a list using the list scraper and then run an individual scraper model on each list item. Use the output of one scraper model as the input for another.
The most important information should be at your fingertips when you need it. With the background scraper, you can send yourself website screenshots via email or Slack automatically.
Think of Google Analytics, Stripe dashboards, stock market charts, and other websites that you check daily. Just set up a WHEN command and pick the frequency of reports.
Try this command:
“Get page as PDF on URL [url]”
Bardeen now suggests relevant playbook input arguments. For example, when running the “Zoom quick dial a Slack user” playbook, Bardeen will render suggested users and channels before you type anything.
We’ve also made command suggestions more relevant so that you can run nested commands more effortlessly, as we’re working towards our vision of fully proactive workflow automation (magic!).
The advantage of being a browser extension is that we can recommend relevant playbooks at the right moment.
You will be able to discover time-saving playbooks without deliberately searching for them. You can run your workflows regularly, and Bardeen will propose the appropriate playbook for your use case.
For this purpose, we are revamping our in-context widget that will include playbook suggestions. Stay tuned 🚀
The new input interface allows you to see all arguments inside a playbook. You can hit TAB to go to the next argument and SHIFT + TAB to go back an argument.
Compared to the old interface, you no longer need to delete correct arguments to edit the desired one.
In the future, we will introduce widgets optimized for each input type. For example, when you input dates, you will see a calendar input widget. And when you input text, you will see a rich-text widget.
You can now capture list data from websites. The list scraper identifies lists based on similar web page elements and allows you to capture specific elements in that list.
With this new scraper, you can build outreach lists and collect data for analysis in under a minute.
We’ve introduced two ways of capturing longer lists: 1) infinite scroll 2) pagination.
And finally, we added the ability to capture URLs from page elements such as buttons and text elements with a link.
From over a thousand survey answers, we’ve learned that meetings workflows are by far one of the most frustrating manual tasks knowledge workers have to perform frequently.
We’ve listened and created a meetings-specific automations with lots of new playbooks and tutorials.
You can explore the top meetings playbooks here.
Here are the new pre-built playbooks:
Zoom cloud storage starts at $40/m, and if you don’t subscribe, you won’t be able to share the recordings.
Now, you can get your Zoom cloud recordings to Drive or Dropbox automatically. Here is the new WHEN command:
When Zoom cloud recording becomes available [for meeting / with topic matching], then…
As we are working on revolutionizing how people interact with their data, security has been a top priority to us. We’ve just successfully completed a security audit by an independent security auditing firm. You can be even more confident in the safety of your data. See our security page for details.
Remember that your data does not touch our servers and gets requested from your client (browser) directly.
Additional commands added:
With the background automation, you won’t need to have your computer on for the WHEN triggers to fire. You will no longer need to worry about seeing an email from someone important late.
We’ve recently deployed the infrastructure to make this feature possible and are currently testing it.
The notifications will bring important messages and error reports right to the extension. So you won’t need to go to the Settings page to get this information.
The results visual blocks display the output data in a friendlier format, and you will be able to run quick actions with the output data. For example, if you get data in the table format, the new visual blocks will display the “Import To Sheets” button.
How about the release notes and this very page?
Now, you can stay up-to-date with our latest features and improvements. We will also announce new integrations, commands, and playbooks released.
What this means to you is more time-saving automations and 🤯 customizations for your unique workflows.
We’ve tucked away some UI elements to give Bardeen a more minimalist look. Clicking on the input field 🔎 now opens the focused mode to keep you concentrated on the task at hand.
You can forget about filling out the same 10 fields eeeeeeevery siiiiingle time you need to create a Jira issue. Create your custom playbook with our Jira integration to create issues quickly from anywhere.
Dropbox 📦. You can now trigger actions in your web apps when a file is added to a Dropbox folder. Or you can simply use Dropbox as a gateway to get your Zoom recordings uploaded to Google Drive automatically.
Check out the capabilities of Jira and Dropbox in Settings > Commands.
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