3-2-1: Notion!

The weekly newsletter that keeps you up to date with Notion’s latest features, tips, tutorials, & resources.

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In this week’s issue of 3-2-1:

• Transform any block easily

• Count your number of subitems

• Search is 55% faster

• Scan Your Books Barcodes To Notion

• All Native Notion Automations

• House Icon

Hey — it's Rames

That's it — I'm back in France. I'll be spending the entire summer here, navigating between friends and family. It's always nice to come back home, and it always reminds me how much I love France, especially during the summer.

I also retrieved a functional electric skateboard (my first one's battery had broken in Morocco) — and what a blast it is to cruise all over at lightning speed. Plus, it's quite fun to see people's faces when they see me pass by at 50km/h without giving a single push ⚡

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3 Tips

1/ Transform any block easily

There's a hack I use ALL the time to transform any block super easily. Let's say you want to transform your Heading 2 into a Heading 3. All you have to do is type /into3 and press enter (your cursor needs to be on the initial Heading 2). It works with everything: /into + new block name. Another example: /intoquote

Give it a try and share your favorite use cases!

2/ Count your number of subitems

Ben from Notion Mastery has whipped up a quick guide on a cool trick he likes to call “Recursive totalling with nested sub-items”. It's a fancy way of saying: “How to count the number of sub-items a parent-item has?” He doesn't stop there, though. He dives even deeper by adding a “cost” to sub-items to tally up the total per parent-item. Plus, he uses filters to zero in on the cost of certain sub-items only.

I've always been curious about how to do this, and now, thanks to Ben, I've got it down! 😎

3/ Tab Search 55% Faster

2 Resources

1/ Scan books barcodes → Notion

Thomas Frank strikes again with a new project: scanning a book's barcode to add it to a Notion database with all its information (cover image, author, description, etc.) Here's the workflow of his automation:

1. Search Google Books:

   • If the Google Books API key is set, search for the book using the ISBN.

   • If a match is found, fetch detailed book information from Google Books.

2. Fallback to Open Library:

   • If no match is found in Google Books or API key is not set, search for the book in Open Library.

   • If found, use the Open Library data or search again using other ISBNs in Google Books.

3. Fetch Cover Image:

   • Try to fetch the highest resolution cover image from Open Library.

4. Construct and Return Final Book Record:

   • Combine the fetched data into a final book record, removing any empty fields.

This approach ensures robust data fetching by utilizing retries and fallback mechanisms between Google Books and Open Library APIs.

2/ All Native Notion Automations

Want even more Notion automations? Check out this great video from August Bradley, another Notion pioneer, who goes over 10 types of Notion automations. What's interesting is that he explains all the different ways you can automate your workspace using only native automations. So, no need for third-party tools like Make, Zapier, or Pipedream.

Enjoy!

1 Tweek: Tweet of the Week

Rames Quinerie

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