#1

Things I have tried

What I’m trying to do

I’m wondering if there is a way that I might be able to have documents that already exist, with linked mentions be linked to another source via an alias. The scenario I have is that I’m working on some automations whereby my calendar meetings are automatically scraped and created as new notes. In that scrape, sometimes email address will be in my “attendees” list but don’t correlate to a person specifically. However, I may very well have a Person file created, with an alias that matches that email address. Or perhaps I see it and add that email to the Person file as an alias. Unfortunately the links to the email address are not mapping to the Person file, which is my end goal.

Example:
New meeting file created with content:

# Attendees
[[first.last@domain.com]]
blah blah

I already have or create a file name: First Last
The contents of that file:

---
aliases: first.last@domain.com
---

Some info about this person

What I’d like is to be able to have the link in the first file, automatically map to the Person file. Is there any way this could happen? Or will I need to do some sort of global find/replace looking for instances of [[first.last@domain.com]] and change it to [[First Last]]?

1 Like
#2

Just going to re-up this as I was also running into a similar situation where I may have a company name that gets created later that I then alias also. It has a similar drawback here to the name vs email alias info.

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#3

i don’t have an exact solution, but since i also don’t want your problem to remain totally unsolved (after 2 weeks), perhaps this workaround might help you a bit.

obsidian can detect “unlinked mentions” based on alias as long as it is not already a link – meaning it will detect first.last@domain.com but not [[first.last@domain.com]]. you can remove the double square brackets, and when you go to ur Person/Company file, you’ll see the potential links under “Unlinked mentions”

i you have too many of these links created already and feel a hassle to do global search in obsidian, you may refer to the post below for bulk search and replace using vscode or atom.

also, to avoid creating “duplicate” links like this in the future without realising it, i highly suggest using various complements plugin and enable “Internal link complement”

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#4

Thank you for the input, much appreciated. Obviously I’d love it to operate how I want, but I didn’t think that was possible currently. I like your idea though thinking through it. In addition, it’s quite plausible I have a meeting with people I never speak to again, and thus not really a value to making them a link - so perhaps I can set the default action to not bother adding the link brackets to them, and just leave them blank as you said. Then I can use unlinked mentions as a way to co-ordinate if I’ve had them on calls where only their email showed up vs a full name that is NOT the alias.

And additionally, I’m excited about that various complements plugin. That’s a pretty awesome little piece of kit to add in to my setup. Though jury is out if I’ll get annoyed by TOO many suggestions all over as typing like I see in the demo snippet on the GH. Either way - lot of good info here - thank you so much!

#5

Just thought about another possible solution to your problem:

what if you name your person files first.last@domain.com and use First Last as alias (instead of the other way round)? In this case, in your meeting notes, the Email adresses that are bracketed (I think that’s what you mean by “scraped”?) form a valid link to your person file - no matter if it already exists or will be created later on.

#6

Thanks for the thinking - I had been down that track too. The issue I have is that sometimes, the calendar will show a full name, and NOT insert an email as the entry. Others will be just the email. Additionally, it becomes quite difficult to find out if I’ve aliased an email where say the email is flast@domain.com which maps to First Last - if I don’t do it right when I create that note, I may never be able to know to match that alias. Which in a way is a broader problem I have anyway. It’s a bit of a wonky issue dealing with resolving real names and emails, and then linking/aliasing properly. I’m just trying to hopefully link as best I can since in most cases the usefulness comes when I will have linked their actual name as First Last vs their email, and finding such backlinks as necessary (aka adding their email to the person file).

Bonus, it gets even more complicated when you work with people who leave one company and go to another! Or when you get the occasional overlap in name, which I’ve had a few of in my time already in sales.

It’s a good thought though, and another idea to keep in mind as I play with it in reality to day to day use.