App Review: If This Then That - the automation service you require

If you want to be informed when the International Space Station crosses right above you, then IFTTT is the app for you

If This Then That (IFTTT) is a software connecting apps, services and devices together from different developers, and creating trigger prompts amongst them.

The triggers are called Applets and can vary massively, such as the International Space Station passing over your house, which then sends a smartphone notification about it, or if you make a call on your Android phone, then a log of that call is added to a Google spreadsheet. The app essentially triggers automated actions when prompted by a certain circumstance.

Launched in 2011, the platform reports that they are currently 90 million activated applet connections. IFTT has even created a YouTube guide on how to create, use and edit complicated tasks to an applet.

The services can be accessed through the website or its mobile application which is available on Android and iOS. The platform features a few readily-available applets, while also letting users create their custom ones themselves.

Developers like BMW and Ring are required to pay an annual fee to provide applets on the IFTTT platform, while the community on the platform builds up the applet services according to their needs. IFTTT applets can use JavaScript, advanced filtering, and other tools to create new interactions within apps.

Despite the easy-to-navigate interface design, the service takes time to settle in on a user, as he slowly begins to grasp the simple concept behind the idea. Right in the beginning, users might feel lost as to which applet they need or should create, but as they get used to the services, IFTTT becomes an essential need for automation you wished you always had.

Users can browse through the Explore page, to get ideas on what kind of applets they can create with service developers from more than 650 partner services like Facebook and Domino's Pizza. The application will integrate home devices and voice assistants with mobile phone devices seamlessly.

Users will only have limited access to the app's free basic version, especially a limit to how many applets they can use and create. The premium version, priced at Rs1500/month or Rs14,900/year will offer unlimited applets, with access to queries and filter codes, multi-action for applets and multiple account support.

IFTTT brings a unique and essential automation service that we all probably have been pondering over, but never knew could be possible. Applet services will help make life easy to manage and organize with triggered actions using input information of something occurring.