If you have SkyDrive you should check “If this then that”

By Robert Brand
last updated

As Windows Phone users, we are blessed with a handsome, dare we say it, world class cloud storage service slotted right in, SkyDrive.

SkyDrive is baked into Windows Phone, allowing all sorts of wonderful uses, uploading the camera roll automatically, storing your OneNote files or just storing good old Office documents. The team at SkyDrive have been opeing up the service and encouraging developers to take advantage of the space with new applications and services. IFTTT is just such an application and it might well be exactly what you’re looking for.

The IFTTT service aims to give people a flexible system of siphoning off content from other services and with conditions pop them over to your SkyDrive storage.

A few examples of this are as follows

  • Save my public Flickr Photos to my SkyDrive
  • Every time you are tagged in a photo on Facebook, it will be sent to Skydrive
  • Save my Facebook photo uploads to my SkyDrive

There is a whole channel of pre-made conditions to get you started on your road to data manipulation, some of them are genuinely useful, but your mileage may vary. This service really has nothing to do with Windows Phone per se but has everything to do with that SkyDrive storage your likely not using properly. If you were lucky enough to have grabbed the 25GB of free space while it was available, bought into the 100GB paid plan or just cant think what to do with your few gigs this could really help.

SkyDrive is secure unlike some other cloud storage solutions and everything that you put there is available on your Windows Phone. The more data you put there the more useful the service becomes, by using some selective filtering, triggers and actions you could craft the perfect system for your needs.

Are you a current user of this service, we’d like to hear from you. Using all your SkyDrive storage? Looking forward to using even more when Windows Phone 8 arrives? Let us know in the spaces below..

Source: IFTTT

31 Comments
  • This is like data mining but at the consumer level. More like take back your power.
  • Are there any concerns with using this service?
  • A bit off topic but is downloading video to your WP device off skydrive still not possible? 
  • With supported formats.
  • Don't you have to be super careful what you have as people have had accounts blocked for daft reasons and lost their SkyDrive account
  • Was just thinking this, if someone posts something dodgy elsewhere and it gets uploaded to your Skydrive automatically and it gets closed you're stuffed. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
  • If you keep the folders private, how then will Microsoft be able to detect questionable material?
  • Microsoft still has access to private content.  Everything on your SkyDrive account is accessible to them.  It's like this with every similar service.  And yes, they will shut you down for storing anything that violates their terms of service, even if it's private.
  • If tits = detected
    Then Skydrive = terminated 
  • Porn cleanup? ;) lol
  • What? Really???
  • Wow, this sounds like something really useful... my sister is often posting pics of my niece and tagging me, and I would love to have IFTTT grab those images and save them to SkyDrive for me (among other uses). I will definitely be checking this out.
  • Was thinking the same until someone mentioned the account cleanup
  • Thanks for the reminder on this. I totally forgot about this. I tried it out back in Alpha but now that I am switching from iOS to Windows Phone this may help ease the transition.
  • I love my SkyDrive and use it all the time. I have shared folders with my family. I have the SkyDrive app on my PC as well. So I can save something on my PC to my SkyDrive and bring it up on my phone without any effort.
  • I already use this to upload photos taken with Instagram to my Dropbox. Works really well. I was hoping to use this service to help with my thesis research to send me an email containing the tweet that a specific person sends out everytime they send a tweet, but twitter changed their API and now you IFTTT can't hook in like that... frustrating as all hell twitter. 
  • Microsoft should really let up on the level of censorship they apply to this service. I can see keeping porn out but not every picture of a nude or partiall nude human body is porn and certainly not pictures of artwork that wouldn't even offend a nun with her 7 year old. A lot of people are going to get their accounts removed if they use these automated services.
  • A nun and her 7 year old? Immaculately conceived then... :-)
  • That's what I was thinking
  • OMG, you mean nuns cannot have sex either. I thought it was only the poor priests impossibly burdened with that insanity.
  • I agree to this. The terms of the service are way too harsh. As a paying customer of the service, I see no reason not to be allowed to store adult material on my SkyDrive, even porn. When it comes to illegal content, I'm 100% behind it. Scan whatever you need, make sure it's not illegal, but let me store my wife's topless photos, ffs.
  • What??? I have 1 nude pic in my account and what happens now...? I don't see how can anybody tell me what pics I should have, as long as they're not of a certain criminal nature... PORN is not a crime... ;)
  • Someone will tag you in a nude picture or accidentally upload one and your Skydrive will be deleted...remember that.
  • The whole account or the files. How to get SkyDrive back after it gets deleted? Just to be on the safe side
  • Such a shame. MS stumbling on the finishline again.
  • I'm not so sure that I want that going to my skydrive I do have it so photos i take on my phone upload to it but that is where I want it to end.
  • I have been using the IFTTT for a year now and love it.
    Sky drive filters? I have taken some interesting pics at questionable places and never lost them
  • Is it supposed to say "opeing" or "opening"
  • Accounts could be automatically blocked because of this. If we get tagged in something that shouldnt be there, then we are in trouble.
  • Interestingly I stumbled upon IFTTT just a couple of days ago, and find it quite awesome.
  • where do i select this option?