Help with folder actions

Automator is still a little confusing to me, I have virtually no experience, but wish to have automated emails sent when the contents of certain folders in my idisk/public folder are updated.
First thing that confuses me is I thought automator worked with folder actions, it doesn't seem to for me and am left running an applescript to detect the changes and tell automator to send the email. This seems rather long winded and not what I'd expected.
Second thing I can get what I've done to send emails when items are added to the folder, but not when they are modified/updated which is what I wanted. This is due to my lack of experience with scripting so any help would be appreciated.
What I've got so far is
'....on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
try
tell application "Automator".....'
how do I change this to do what I want ?

Winston,
You need to save the Automator workflow as a folder action plug-in with it attached to the folder of interest. You start this process by selecting the "Save as Plug-in..." command under the File menu. You will then have to enter the name you want to use for the plug-in and select the "folder action" from the "Plug in for:" drop-down menu. An "Attached to Folder:" drop-down menu will appear and you can select one of those presented or navigate to something else by selecting the "Other..." choice (which you will have to do to get to your idisk/public folder).
Once this is done then every time something is added or modified within the watched folder the Automator workflow will be triggered and run. In your case, because the folder is on iDisk, it will only be triggered when you are logged into your iDisk account.

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