One of the most useful apps in my litigation practice is TranscriptPad. It is nice to be able to annotate a deposition as I read it with different issue codes, and then later create a report for all of the depositions in a case so that I can determine the key testimony from each witness on the key issues in the case. It helps me to remember the important testimony when many months have passed since I took and/or first read the deposition, and it is incredibly useful when I am drafting a motion for summary judgment or preparing for trial and I need to have easy access to the most relevant testimony.
However, I used to have a gripe with the app. Once you create a report, there is no direct way to open the PDF version of the report in another app. You can upload the report to cloud storage (such as Dropbox, Transporter, Box, Citrix ShareFile) and then get the report from storage and open it in another app. Or you can email the report to yourself, and then open the email and then open the attachment in another app. But those methods involve extra steps that seem unnecessary. And if you are on a plane or somewhere else that you do not have Internet access, those options won’t work at all.
I shared my gripe with Ian O’Flaherty, the creator of TranscriptPad, and he explained to me that there are technical reasons that it does not make sense to add this option directly to the app, but he suggested a workaround using the Workflow app. I tweaked his suggested workflow somewhat, and came up with something that has been working great for me for many weeks now. Hopefully many of you will also find this tip useful.
As I said, you need the Workflow app to do this. The app is normally $4.99 but is currently on sale for $2.99. The sale is to celebrate the fact that, earlier this week, Apple honored the app with an Apple Design Award, as reported by TechCrunch. The fact that the app was one of the few to win this award demonstrates that this is a great app that you might want to own anyway. (And I highly recommend California attorney David Spark’s Workflow Video Field Guide to learn how to get the most out of this app; my review is here.)
There are two simple steps to this workflow. First, use the command to make a PDF. Second, use the command to open the PDF that you just created in GoodReader. (GoodReader is my app of choice for reading and annotating PDF files, but if you have another favorite app, just identify it instead.) And that’s it. It will take you less than a minute to create this workflow. Here is what it looks like in the Workflow app:
To use the workflow after you make it, create a report in TranscriptPad and then tap the Share button at the top right (the square with the arrow pointing up). This is where you would normally save the report to a cloud service or email the report, but thanks to this workflow you no longer need that step. Instead, just tap the Run Workflow button.
The very first time that you use a workflow, you may need to scroll to the end of the bottom line, tap More, and turn on Run Workflow, but you’ll never have to do that step again. For every subsequent time, the next step is simply to tap the Run Workflow button.
Then tap the name of the report that you created, which in my case I called TranscriptPad Report.
That’s it. Almost instantly, your report opens up in GoodReader (or your PDF reader of choice).
So in other words, after tapping the Share button, you simply tap two buttons and you are done. Even if you have Internet access, this workflow is far, far faster than emailing the file to yourself and then opening up the file from that email, or saving the file to a cloud service and then getting the file out of that cloud service and into GoodReader.
I’ve known Ian O’Flaherty for many years, and his company has been a sponsor of iPhone J.D., so you might think that it was no surprise that he so quickly responded to my question and came up with a solution. But from what I have heard from many other users of his TranscriptPad and TrialPad apps, he is just as helpful when other attorneys reach out to him. Thanks to Ian for suggesting this workflow to solve my problem, and thanks also for creating, and supporting the users of, these great apps.
Click here to get TranscriptPad ($89.99): 
Click here to get Workflow ($2.99):
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