Using the Obsidian Quick Add Plugin  ## Metadata - Author: [[Nicole van der Hoeven]] - Full Title: Using the Obsidian Quick Add Plugin - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #obsidian - #quickadd - #automation Author: Nicole van der Hoeven Source: YouTube – *Using the Obsidian Quick Add Plugin* Reference: [Video Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU) date created: 2025-08-22 20:45 --- # Title: Automating Meetings, Logging, and Task Management with Obsidian Quick Add ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) --- ## 📝 Summary: The Obsidian Quick Add community plugin enables advanced automation for note-taking, daily logs, meeting templates, and task management. Although simple at first glance, its power lies in customizable "choices" (templates, capture, macros, and multi). These features streamline workflows, reduce context-switching, and improve meeting efficiency by pre-structuring notes, capturing logs seamlessly, and automating content creation through macros. --- ## 📖 Main Content: ### 🗒️ Notes - [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&t=1) **Overview** - Plugin often overlooked because it appears basic. - True power is in automating workflows like meetings and logging. - [02:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&t=142) **Templates** - Choices allow creating new notes from templates. - Meeting templates auto-apply naming formats (date, title). - Notes stored in designated folders for organization. - [04:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&t=273) **Hotkeys + Commands** - Add notes via commands or hotkeys. - Supports vertical/horizontal pane opening for focus control. - [06:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&t=406) **Daily logging** - Capture logs into daily notes without breaking workflow. - Insert logs into specific sections like “Log” headings. - Can include timestamps, bullets, or tasks. - [09:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&t=543) **Cross-platform notes** - File paths differ for Mac vs. Windows/Linux. - Customizable hotkeys for capture actions. - [11:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&t=686) **Agendas** - Capture notes into “Agenda” sections for recurring meetings. - Ideal for managers, direct reports, or ongoing projects. - [13:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&t=819) **Kanban integration** - Add new content ideas to Kanban boards. - Apply templates depending on project type (personal/work). - Emojis and metadata auto-inserted via macros. - [16:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&t=965) **Macros** - Multi-step automation combining capture + template. - Example: Add content idea to Kanban, create new note, apply template, assign emoji. - Reusable across workflows with hotkeys. - [18:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&t=1088) **Advanced automation** - Combine Quick Add with Dataview, Buttons, and Templater. - Highly customizable and modular. - Scales from simple daily logging to complex workflow automation. --- ## 📖 References: - Obsidian Quick Add Community Plugin Docs - Dataview, Buttons, and Templater plugins --- ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: **Original**: “Capture lets you add something to a file without opening it or leaving your current note.” **Paraphrase**: Capture allows you to insert information directly into an existing file in the background, so you never have to disrupt your workflow. **Original**: “Macros combine multiple steps like templates and captures into a single automated workflow.” **Paraphrase**: With macros, you can chain actions—such as creating new notes from templates and adding metadata—into one seamless command. --- ## 📰 Newsletter: ⚡ **Boost Your Obsidian Productivity with Quick Add** If you’ve ever wished meetings, logs, and task notes could magically write themselves, the Quick Add plugin is your new best friend. This overlooked gem in the Obsidian community lets you automate note templates, capture logs on the fly, and even manage Kanban workflows—all with a single hotkey. Want to prep for meetings without fumbling through folders? Done. Need a daily log without breaking your flow? Easy. Pair it with Dataview or Templater, and you’ve got yourself a powerhouse of automation. 👉 Try it out: [Quick Add Plugin Walkthrough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU) --- ## ✅ Action Items: - Consider parallels in **WordPress contributor onboarding**: - Quick Add = automated contributor templates. - Capture = background log of contributor activity. - Macros = workflows for managing GitHub issues. - Aligns with OSPO director focus on standardizing processes. - Use as analogy for **automated contributor agreements or reporting**. --- ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - H1: Quick Add reduces note-creation time in meetings by 70%. - H2: Macros lower errors in recurring workflows by 50%. - H3: Automated agendas improve meeting effectiveness. ### 📊 Methodology: - Time studies: manual vs. automated workflows. - User surveys on meeting satisfaction. - Error-tracking in captured logs. ### ❓ Questions: - How can this automation model transfer to open-source contribution tracking? - Would templates encourage consistent onboarding in WordPress? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Explore integration between Obsidian automation and GitHub/Jira logs. - Study volunteer engagement when repetitive admin tasks are automated. ### 💡 Implications: - Could make contributor admin tasks lighter. - Supports sustainable participation in open-source. --- ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - Visual: Folder hierarchies and Kanban workflows shown. - Aural: Video format supports auditory learning. - Verbal: Clear explanations with step-by-step detail. - Kinesthetic: Encourages hands-on experimentation. - Logical: Structured workflows with logical progression. - Social: Suggests shared workflows for teams. - Solitary: Individual templates/logging supported. - Naturalistic: Not present. Reading level: Intermediate (late high school / early college). --- ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - Screen Reader: Needs alt text for visual examples. - Keyboard: Hotkey-based—very accessible. - Contrast: N/A in transcript. Should ensure plugin settings UI is high-contrast. - Text Resizing: Markdown-compatible, responsive. --- ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - Cultural relevance: Focused on productivity, neutral. - Inclusive language: Gender-neutral, no exclusionary phrasing. - Neurodiversity: Templates and automation reduce executive load—ADHD-friendly. - Representation: No explicit diversity references. - Psychological safety: Supportive, tutorial-style. --- ## ✅ Logical Validity: - **Strengths**: - Causal reasoning: Shows how automation reduces context-switching. - Sound deductive reasoning: If automation saves time → workflows are more efficient. - Appeal to evidence: Demonstrates live in video. - **Weaknesses**: - Slight **appeal to novelty**: Implies automation always better than manual. - Lacks counterexamples where automation may add overhead. Tone: Instructional, supportive, pragmatic. --- ## 🔍 DARVO Analysis: - **Deny**: Not present. - **Attack**: None. - **Reverse Victim/Offender**: Absent. Conclusion: No DARVO tactics used. --- ## 🔍 SEO Evaluation: - Keywords: "Obsidian Quick Add," "note automation," "Obsidian templates." - Title: Could be optimized → *“Obsidian Quick Add: Automate Meetings, Logs, and Tasks.”* - Meta: Missing—add 155-char description with keywords. - Headers: Strong H2/H3, could embed more keywords. - Content length: Good for tutorial depth. - Links: Include internal/external links to Obsidian docs + plugin repo. - Images: Add descriptive alt text for settings screenshots. - Mobile optimization: YouTube-native, but plugin docs should be mobile-friendly. --- ## 🎯 Conclusion: The Quick Add plugin transforms Obsidian from a note-taking app into a workflow automation hub. Its true strength is in modularity—templates, captures, and macros make meetings, daily logs, and project management frictionless. For open-source and WordPress communities, this plugin’s approach parallels how automation can streamline contributor engagement, reporting, and documentation. --- - Summary: The Obsidian QuickAdd plugin is a community plugin that allows users to easily add content to their notes. It offers different features such as templates, capture, macros, and multi-elements. Users can create templates for specific note formats and easily create new notes based on these templates. The capture feature allows users to add content to a note without leaving their current note. Macros are used for multiple-step actions, such as creating cards in a Kanban board. Overall, the QuickAdd plugin provides a convenient and efficient way to automate note-taking and organization in Obsidian. - URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LrQVQ37y6IU&si=yV2Cs1JCG_7M62D4 - The Obsidian QuickAdd community plugin is often overlooked, in part because at its core, it just lets you easily add content to your notes, which makes it seem unnecessary. But the real value is in the automation. In this video, I'm going to talk through the features of this awesome community plugin and how I use it for automating my meetings, my daily logging, and even task management. Once you install the QuickAdd community plugin, enable it, and then go into options. Now I've already got one template in here but if you've just installed this plugin, then you won't have anything in here. Now in QuickAdd, anything that you add here is called a choice. The terminology is a little bit weird but it is just an element that can be either a template, capture, macro, or multi. We'll go over each of these. We'll actually start with multi because multi is just a folder. So when you click on it, you can put My folder here, click Add Choice, and then you can add things within it. I haven't really seen much of a need to have folders in here. So I'm just going to delete it here. Using template, you can instruct QuickAdd to create a new note according to a template that you specify. I like to prefix my choices here with the type of choice it is, in this case, template. I'm going to type Add New Default Meeting. What I want to do here is that when I select this Add New Default Meeting choice, I want it to create a new meeting and apply automatically the meeting template that I'm going to specify. So I'm gonna add that choice and then click Configure here. Now the template should contain the path to the template. I already have a meeting template so you can go ahead and create that first if you'd like. And I do want to have a very specific file name format. So I'm going to enable it here. And in this file name format, one thing that I want is definitely the date. So I want to be able to see at a glance what date a meeting was on. So once you type the double brackets here, you'll be able to see some choices for the format. In this case, I do want date and I want the year, month, and day. And then I'm going to put value. Now, adding value here is going to tell QuickAdd to ask me for the file name. So I might want to be a little bit more specific about the kind of meeting it is. And up here, I can see like a preview of what that would look like. And this looks exactly the way I would want my meeting to look like. Now, I do also want this meeting to be created in a specific folder. I don't just want it in with all my other notes. So I'm going to enable this so that it creates it within my meetings folder. So I'm gonna go ahead and select that and hit Add. You should see the meetings one here. And I've been called out by this in the past because I thought that it was enough to just select it here, but no, you've actually gotta go and click Add. Scrolling down here. I'm thinking that usually when I add a meeting note, that's because I want it open. So I'm going to enable this, open the created file here, and I want it created in a new tab so I don't necessarily want to lose whatever note I'm working on. So I just wanted to open like in a separate pane. So I'm going to enable that. And I like the vertical one personally, but you can select horizontal if you'd like for the meeting to appear below the note that you're currently working on. So let's go and try that out. So now I'm going to exit out of this and I'm also going to hit this little lightning symbol, which means that QuickAdd is going to add a command for this template that I've just created. But let me show you what it looks like when you don't do that first. So going back to the vault, hit Command + P in your Command pane or Control + P on Windows, and then start typing QuickAdd. Now you'll see this Run QuickAdd here. And I already put a hotkey. I've got one because I use it all the time, but you can also just open up the Command pane and look for it like I did. And then when I hit Enter, now you'll see the templates that we created. From here, I can click on Add New Default Meeting and that's going to prompt me for the meeting that I would like to create. So let's say this is a demo meeting, and you'll see because I didn't have a note open, it still created a separate pane and it automatically applied the meeting template that I've selected. And if we have a look here in the file explorer, you'll see that it was created under the meetings folder, which is exactly what we wanted. So I'm going to delete this one because I want to show you what it looks like when there is a command for it. Now, if I select this lightning bolt here and exit that. Now going to the Command pane, I'll now see that the Add New Default Meeting is its own choice. So it kind of just saves you a few clicks because instead of going into Run QuickAdd, you can just immediately find this in your notes. And now that it's a command, you can go into Settings and Hotkeys and then do default meeting. And then you can even set a hotkey for this command. So using the type template is really handy for creating notes according to a certain format. So that could be like in the context of a role playing game. Maybe you have a template for NPC, that could be a good candidate for templates or you could have one for people. Every time you meet someone, maybe you just want to be able to create a note and apply a template in the same step. So we've gone over multi and template. Let's go over Capture. Capture's what you use when you want to add something to a file without opening it or leaving the current note that you're on. I'm going to show you two examples for how I use it. The first is for logging. I use daily notes, pretty heavily. It's what starts up when I load Obsidian and everything that I'm working on during the day gets linked to from the Daily Notes Page. But what if I've already gone off and opened another note and then I want to still add something to the daily note? Well, I could just open it, right? And then type in whatever I wanted to say and then go back to what I was working on. But I find that QuickAdd provides a much more seamless experience. Let me show you. Going to create a new choice here called Capture - Log in Daily Note. Going to add that choice and go into settings here. I always want this to be in the same format as my daily notes. For me, this is date, the year, month, day. I do want it to create the file if it doesn't exist, chances are it already does exist. I'm going to enable that anyway. And in that case, I will also specify the template, which is daily. I'll add that. In this case, I'm logging things that aren't necessarily tasks. So I don't want to do that. So then I want to show you what my daily note template looks like. This is what it is. I'm trying to decide where I want to add this log entry to. If I just depend it to the end of this file, that's not going to be really useful because I've got this tomorrow link here. Where I really wanted to go is in this log section which is a heading too. So I'm going to go back to those settings in QuickAdd, log daily note, and I will scroll down. Instead of having it right to the bottom of the file, I'm going to enable this insert after, and I'm going to type in the log section with the heading. And I'll say, I want it at the end of the section. So not at the beginning. It makes sense to me to have something chronological. So we'll start with the earliest, and then go down from there. So I'll enable this one as well. Now for this one, I specifically don't want the file opened that the file is captured too, because the whole point is not to disrupt my flow. I am going to set a capture format here this time. I don't want it to be a task, but I do want it to be some sort of bullet and with a timestamp. So I'm going to use date with HH minute and then the value. So let's see how that goes. I'm going to enable the lightning bolt so that I have a command. And then in hot keys, I'm going to search for it. And this is my Log in Daily Note. And you can really put whatever you want here, but I'm going to use command option, shift, K. This should be something that makes sense to you. It's just I have a lot of hot keys set up already. So I need this to not have any collisions with something else I've chosen. And I would actually want it to be created under reviews and daily. So I'm going to go back to QuickAdd options, and here in the file name, I'm going to put reviews and then daily. Hey, Editor Nicole here. Now I'm typing this out as if I were on a Mac because I do use a Mac. Luckily one of my patreons, Soti C., mentioned that this didn't work for them because they were on Windows. Now maybe if you're a Windows or Linux, try doing it without a slash. So instead of /reviews..., try just doing review/daily... and so forth. So just without that initial slash. Back to the video. So now let's try that. Let's say I'm working on, I don't know my core principles, and I want to do command option, shift, K. How to use QuickAdd plugin? Okay, now it doesn't look like anything happened but when we go into reviews and then daily, there's a daily note that's been created for today. And in log, there's that thing that we just did. Another use case for this is agendas for people. So I have some people like my manager that I meet up with regularly. Now, I already do have a person template. Let me show you what that looks like. So it's going to have the name of the person here, and I always have an agenda section. So let's create one for my manager. Let's call him, Pepe. As you can see, because I created it within the people folder, it's automatically applying the person template. So here's my note for Pepe. But I meet up with Pepe every week. So I often, during the week like to add things to this agenda section, but I don't necessarily want to always bring up this note. So I'm going to close that and I'll create a new QuickAdd choice, and let's call it Capture - Add to agenda with Pepe. And I'll choose capture. I'll add that choice and I'll hit options here. And this time, instead of using the date, I wanted to always add to the same Pepe file. The file already exists so I don't want it created. I do wanna format it as a task, because I wanna be able to take it off when it's done, when we've talked about it. And I want it to be in the agenda section. Oops, agenda. And I want it to be at the end. I don't want it to open the file that I've captured it to, and I won't bother with the capture format. Now I'm going to add this lightning bolt just to make it easier to find. So back to the core principles page, I'm going to open up the command pane and just type Pepe. The first result is already add to agenda with Pepe. So I just have to hit enter. And I'll say, remind him to ask Mark about project X. And if we go back to the note with Pepe then it just has that in the agenda. This way, whenever I have a meeting with Pepe, I can just bring up his note and see exactly all the things that I wanted to ask him about or needed to discuss with him. This is a great way to make meetings actually relevant and efficient so you don't end up twiddling your thumbs and forgetting everything that you wanted to ask. Going back to the last QuickAdd choice that is macro. This is definitely a little bit more advanced. What a macro is is multiple steps with combinations of template and capture, and even other things like Obsidian commands. You don't have to go this far. I would suggest that you play around with template and capture first, and then go into macro if you want to build something a little bit more complicated. But I think just template and capture are like majority of the ones that I use. But let me show you one cool use case that I have for it. So this is my personal vault. And the reason that I'm showing it to you on this one is because this macro is very specific to how I like to work. So I didn't think that it was appropriate to put it in the other vault. And by the way, this vault and everything that I've done in it is available to patrons on my Patreon. Thank you for supporting me. If you already are a patron, then you get access to everything that I did. All of these templates will already be made for you. But back to this macro. First, let me show you what I want to do. This is my content creation Kanban board. Using the Kanban plugin, usually how it works is when I have an idea, I go to this content board, I click add a card and I put, This is my cool new idea. And then I click on options here and create new note from card, and then I'm going to apply a template depending on what kind of video it is. So let's say it is a video for me. I'd apply this template, then I'd exit this. And then back here, I like to have these emojis. So if it's like a person and video, that means it's a video, and that means it's for me. As opposed to something that's for work, which has my company's logo there instead. So I would then edit the card again, and then I have a shortcut for adding the emoji there. And then I have it in the state that I wanted to be in. This process wasn't so bad, right? Like I was able to do it in like less than a minute, but still I was able to create a macro for it that just means I don't have to do any of this anymore. Here's how I did it. In my QuickAdd, here are all the things that I've been doing. With everything else, we've created things by just selecting it here, adding a name and then hitting add choice. When you create a macro, you have to click manage macros first, and then you add a macro name here, and then click, add macro. So here's what my Add New NVDH video looks like. Let me configure it. First, I have one step that is to add the new idea to the Kanban board. This works just as the capture one did. So if I open up the configuration for it, you'll see that I'm specifying the file that I wanted to add something to. And then I wanted to insert it in the raw section. Now you may be wondering how this works with Kanban. Unique to the Kanban plugin is the fact that all of these are actually in markdown. So if you open it up as markdown, you'll see that the raw column is just a section in a markdown file. So let me go back to the Kanban board and back to the QuickAdd settings, configure and configure again. So that's why I can just put the raw section here, say that I wanted to be the end of the section. And then I set a capture format for it. Remember that I wanted the emoji to be pulled in already? And then I have value, and I'm naming that value this time. I wanted to show title when it prompts me for what task I want to add. And then the second step is to add the new note. So at that stage, I've added the new idea to the Kanban. But remember I had to still add a new note for that task? I don't wanna have to do that manually. So I added a new step to create a new note, and this is using the template type where it adds, a new note and applies the NVDH template. So we can see that I'm specifying which template it should use. Another cool thing is, because I named this value title in the previous step, I'm able to reuse that here. So I'm only going to need to type it out once, and whatever I type there will be the name of the task and also the name of the file name. Then I specifically want it to be created in a certain folder so it doesn't get mixed in with everything else. And then after that, once you have that macro, you can create a new macro, and you do that by typing your new macro here, hitting macro and then adding the choice. But I've already done that here in new NVDH video idea. And then when you go into the configuration, all you do is select the macro that you would like it to use. So then I selected add new NVDH video, and of course I hit the little lightning bolt and I assigned it a hot key as well which is command shift option N. So let's see how that works. Now, in this case, I'm leaving content board open, but remember that I can do this from anywhere in the vault. Content board doesn't have to be open. That's a cool thing about it. I could be doing something else and then still have this recorded exactly where I needed and exactly the format that I wanted. So going to hit that shortcut now and I'll say, this is the demo video I'm creating. And that did exactly the same thing that I did earlier, that I showed you manually. So if I opened this up, it applied the right format with the right template and it's ready to go. Now I can move it to wherever I want. You can use QuickAdd with other plugins like data view, and buttons, and templater to create more and more complex macros that match your workflow exactly. If you like to hear more about that, check out this video on how I set up my new TTRPG worlds and how I automate the creation of new sessions, both as a DM and as a player. I really love plugins like QuickAdd that are so open ended cuz you can start with something really modular. And then also additionally, if you'd like to, build something that's more complex but also very tailored to your specific use cases. I would really recommend that everyone take a look at this plugin and thanks for watching. (Hindi) See you next week!, Using the Obsidian Quick Add Plugin, Nicole van der Hoeven, 01hktbacc8axesdwjqcmxcph5p.