Adding a custom search for FogBugz to Alfred

At JAKT we love using FogBugz by FogCreek Software, the same team that brought Trello to life. Our every-day usage is explained in more detail in our onboarding documentation.

We also highly recommend everyone use Alfred, the Quicksilver replacement for application launching and so much more. Alfred has a configurable set of default searches one can configure. It also has powerful workflows but that’s for a later time.

Setting up a default search for FogBugz is simple.

Step #1: Open Alfred’s Preferences

You can open Alfred’s preferences by typing “alfred” into the query bar or by hitting Command+, when the Alfred is toggled.

Step #2: Adding A Custom Web Search

Click on the Features tab — Click on the “Features” tab

Features are additional features for Alfred. Here you configure the default fallback and web searches among other things.

Go to the Web Search section — Go to the “Web Search” section

Before adding a default fallback you need to add it as a custom web search.

Step #3: Adding A Custom Search

Click Add Custom Search in the lower right corner — Click “Add Custom Search” in the lower right corner

Click “Add Custom Search” to open the dialog for adding a new custom search to Alfred.

Fill in details for FogBugz replacing YOURDOMAIN with your server address or FogBugz On-Demand address

I grabbed the FogBugz icon from the FogBugz website. Looks better that way. The query url should look like:

https://YOURDOMAIN/f/search/?sSearchFor={query}

For FogBugz On-Demand. If you’re using FogBugz for Your Server the url might be different. The important thing here is the {query} argument that pipes whatever you type into Alfred into the search string.

Step #4: Adding A Fallback Search

Click on the Default Results tab — Click on the “Default Results” tab

Open up the “Default Results” tab. This is for configuring a lot of Alfred’s default actions and behavior.

Click the Setup fallback results button on the lower left of the panel — Click the “Setup fallback results” button on the lower left of the panel

Fallback results are default searches Alfred can perform if no keyword or action is being triggered.

Click the + button, then Custom Search, then Search FogBugz — Click the “+” button, then “Custom Search”, then “Search FogBugz”

Add FogBugz as a fallback option here. I’ve removed Amazon and Wikipedia and left only Google and Fogbugz.

Step #5: Try It Out

Type something in and give it a shot. It will use FogBugz’s search axis query so becoming familiar with that will help.