How to be a good friend with IFTTT

Do you have a list of friends who you’re wanting to connect with more? Life happens and you look up and notice you haven’t spoken to this person in months. Well, I’ve got an automation for you. It’s called GoodFriend because it makes you a good friend.

It automatically texts someone randomly from a list of numbers you have on a spreadsheet. You can set how often it texts someone from this list and you’re the one who manages all the phone numbers so you can add or remove people whenever you want.

It comes in two Applets, one to text numbers from the list and the other to update the spreadsheet, which randomized the phone numbers from your spreadsheet.

Step 1. Create a Spreadsheet on Google Spreadsheets that lists out all of the phone numbers of people you want to connect with.

Create a Google Sheet

In this spreadsheet, you will add all the phone numbers in one column. In a single cell (A1) add the following formula: =INDEX(FILTER($C3:$C,$C3:$C<>""), RANDBETWEEN(1, COUNTA($C3:$C)))

That formula grabs a random phone number from that column and publishes it in a single cell. Then in a separate cell call the value of that cell.

Applet 1. Update Your Spreadsheet Daily

Now that you have a spreadsheet with all of your friend’s phone numbers, that randomization formula needs to be updated as often as you want to text someone off of that list. Create an Applet that updates a cell in that spreadsheet with a specific date. This causes the formula inside of the spreadsheet to run, giving you a random phone number variable.

Applet 2. GoodFriend Text Message

Now we can get to the good part. Create another Applet that takes a consistent time and date variable as our Trigger. The Action will be sending a message to a specific number. We need to add a query that calls the value of a specific cell (Choose the random number cell). Use that as the value in your phone number section in the messaging action.

You can now spontaneously reach out to friends and start a conversation on a consistent basis. Now good luck and go be a good friend.