Sharing Automator Actions?

I created a simple automator action. For those with VirusBarrier Plus, you'll note that it cannot watch folders, just scan them or do schedule scans. This means it can't scan everything you download.
Until... I made a simple automator action. When a file is added to your downloads folder (Folder Action), it runs the command line scanner for VirusBarrier, and repairs anything that's found.
It's incredibly simple, here's the command that gets called from the folder action:
/Applications/VirusBarrier\ Plus.app/Contents/MacOS/escanner -r ~/Downloads/
My question is: is it safe to upload the workflow to a site for sharing? Does an action contain any personal information? WIll someone be able to just download it and save it and have it work, or would they have to move it to their workflow folder themselves?

There isn't any personal information in an Automator workflow or application, unless you put something in one of the actions, for example a comment in a Run AppleScript action.
You would need to use something like an installer script with the download in order to have it just work, since the workflow will need to be moved to the user's ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions folder, and the Folder Action will need to be enabled and attached to the desired folder. These things are done automatically by Automator when creating and saving a Folder Action workflow, so since there is just the one action, it might be just as easy to post your script somewhere with instructions on how to build the rest of the workflow.

Similar Messages

Cannot add content to iTunes U using Woolamloo Automator Action

We cannot use the Woolamloo Automator action to add any content to our iTunes U site recently. Ex: We created a workflow using “Get iTunes U XML” , “Find Sections in iTunes U XML” and “Add divisions into iTunes U” actions, the returned result was the section handle to which the division was expected to be added and the the log said “ Get iTunes U XML completed, Find Sections in iTunes U XML completed, Add Divisions into iTunes U completed, Workflow completed”, however, no division was added to the section actually. It’s the same with other adding content actions. But we had no problem with deleting actions.
Meanwhile, we cannot access the iTunesU webservices, either. When we try “curl https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/API/ShowTree/nd.edu.roothandle?credentials=(administrator credential)&identity=(identity)&time=(time)&signature=(signature)&x=true”, the result is : “Forbidden. You don’t have permission to access this document on this server”. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Yes, we still have this problem.
We believe the shared secret and credentials are correct because we can get the site XML via Woolamaloo Automator action.
We also attached the debug suffix in the script and the result was "Because the received signature and time were valid, the received identity and credentials were accepted by iTunes U." And we can use the same signature to log in to our iTunes U site. But when performing the HTTP GET request, we got the "request is forbidden" error.
Thanks for your help, we do appreciate.

More Automator Actions ... Happy Monday ... again!

Sorry, I was too tired to write documentation and sample workflows (I will do that soon!), but I wanted to post more iTunes U Automator actions. There are now nine actions in total ... with more on the way!
You can find a (Mac OS X) disk image here:
http://itunes.uic.edu/woolamalo-automator-actions.dmg.zip
The new actions are:
Find Tracks in iTunes U XML
Find Groups in iTunes U XML
Find Courses in iTunes U XML
These take iTunes U XML (handily provided by the action posted earlier, Get iTunes U XML). You can search in different ways ... by name or artist, etc.
In addition, you get:
Delete Tracks from iTunes U
Delete Courses from iTunes U
Delete Groups from iTunes U
Given a set of handles, one per line, these delete the targets from iTunes U. You can get a list of handles by using one of the "Find" actions. How handy is that?
I'll work on the adds or merges next ... whichever seems simpler. Also I will probably do an action to find all permissions (with delete, add, and merge to go with).

That's pretty cool! Thanks!
Any idea why I might be getting the following output from my Get XML action? I am using the exact same information (shared secret, Admin credential, and Site URL) as for the other actions (that work just fine)...
<html>
<head>
<title>403 Forbidden</title>
<meta name="generator" content="Indigo">
</head>
<body>
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access this document on this server.
</body>
</html>

Automator Actions for Photos

As you may know, Apple has not (yet, anyway) included any Automator actions for the new Photos app. However, there is a set available from the Mac OS X Automation web site that some may find useful, & there may be others available from other third party sources too.
If you are interested in such things, the Mac OS X Automation web site is a good place to start -- not only can you download the action set, the site includes descriptions & example workflows that should make it easy to see how they can be used.
If anybody knows of any other third party sets for Photos, I would appreciate it if you would post a reply about them here.
TIA!

That's pretty cool! Thanks!
Any idea why I might be getting the following output from my Get XML action? I am using the exact same information (shared secret, Admin credential, and Site URL) as for the other actions (that work just fine)...
<html>
<head>
<title>403 Forbidden</title>
<meta name="generator" content="Indigo">
</head>
<body>
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access this document on this server.
</body>
</html>

Automator Actions for iTunes U ... Happy Monday Everyone!

I was inspired by Apple's Steve Hayman (the other, other Steve) to create a set of Automator actions for iTunes U. The first three are done and I have posted them:
http://itunes.uic.edu/woolamaloo-automator-actions.dmg.zip
The three actions are:
Upload Items to iTunes U -- takes a set of files from a previous action, uploads the content to iTunes U, given a target URL in which to place the content ("Copy iTunes URL" in iTunes and paste in to say where you want stuff to go).
Get iTunes U Daily Report Logs -- yes, now you can script logs!
Get iTunes U XML -- returns site XML, minimally, mostly, and maximally ... or just the XML from a handle. Send the results to a file, explore it at your leisure ... or modify the results to change your site.
More to come (promises, promises) ... but I wanted to get this out there for those who might find this useful. Oh yeah, I did include the briefest of brief manuals plus some sample workflows to give you an idea of how to use the actions.
Enjoy!

That's pretty cool! Thanks!
Any idea why I might be getting the following output from my Get XML action? I am using the exact same information (shared secret, Admin credential, and Site URL) as for the other actions (that work just fine)...
<html>
<head>
<title>403 Forbidden</title>
<meta name="generator" content="Indigo">
</head>
<body>
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access this document on this server.
</body>
</html>

Shutdown a remote iMac using Apple Remote Desktop and Automator action

Hi,
I have my iMac and my wife's iMac connected to the same UPS. There is only one USB connector for the UPS that notifies my iMac when its time to shutdown due to a power cut out.
Is there a way for my iMac to then send a command to my wife's iMac (which may be asleep; the iMac not my wife!) and instruct it to shutdown (forcefully)?
The Belkin UPS software enables me to launch an automator action before it shuts down my computer.
Your help would be appreciated,
Tony

Unless you already have Apple Remote Desktop, it will almost certainly be cheaper to just buy a second UPS for your wife's iMac than it will be to purchase ARD.
If you do have ARD 3 already, then it looks like it would be possible to create an Automator workflow that would select your wife's iMac and then send the Unix command "shutdown" (look at the man page for shutdown for the usage). I haven't tried doing this, though, so I can't say for sure, but it looks like it would work.

How can I edit an Automator action for Word?

I'm running Word 2008 on a Macbook Pro, Mac OS 10.5.
Word comes with a selection of Automator actions, including one to find and replace text in Word. I often want to convert standard numerals to old-style numerals, which are part of the extended glyphs set in fonts I use. Automator will allow me to set up ten find/replace actions (for the numbers 0-9) that successfully replace all the numerals with old-style numerals. But it only does it for the main body of the document, not for the footnotes. I need to be able to do it for all the footnotes.
I thought I might find a workaround by adding an AppleScript to my workflow, which would shift the focus in Word to the footnotes and rerun the find/replace actions. I mapped the menu item View/Footnotes to the keystroke command-) and inserted this AppleScript into the Automator workflow:
tell application "Microsoft Word"
tell application "Microsoft Word" to activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Microsoft Word"
keystroke ")" using command down
end tell
end tell
end tell
But the find/replace actions simply repeat what they'd done before, converting the numerals in the main body but not in the footnotes. I then thought that perhaps I should have an AppleScript to do the find/replace itself, once the footnotes have been selected, so I created the following (command-H accesses the find/replace dialog box in Word 2008):
tell application "Microsoft Word"
tell application "Microsoft Word" to activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Microsoft Word"
keystroke "H" using command down
keystroke "1"
keystroke tab
keystroke ""
end tell
end tell
end tell
The character after the fourth keystroke command is the glyph for old-style numeral 1. For some reason Word reinterprets this as the letter a. So using AppleScript I can only replace the numerals 1-9 with the letters a-i.
I'm pretty hopeless at even this very basic level of programming, but I presume that there's something in the Automator action 'Find and replace in Word' that specifically tells it not to look anywhere but the footnotes. I also presume it's possible to insert a command to tell it to operate on the footnotes (and headers and footers: everywhere!) too.
Does anyone know a way to edit an Automator action? I'm willing to experiment and fiddle with one until I find a way that works, if nobody knows the exact changes that I'd need to make, but I just don't know how to edit an Automator action in the first place. A bit of googling suggests that I could do it in XCode, and that that is bundled with my Mac, but I don't have it.
This all used to work when Office used to allow VBA (and I was using a horrible Windoze machine). Maybe someone would prefer just to find a way of creating a solution our of the old code, so here's one part of what I used (to change the number 1):
For Each aStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
With aStory.Find
.ClearFormatting
With .Replacement
.ClearFormatting
End With
.Execute FindText:="1", ReplaceWith:=ChrW(63281), _
Format:=True, MatchCase:=True, Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
Next aStory
Thanks in advance for any help.

Thanks to all three contributors for their generous help so far. Mac people are lovely.
BDAqua's suggestion wouldn't work, I think, because copying footnote text into another application and then back into Word would lose all the associations between footnote references in the body and the footnotes themselves. I wish I could do what Klaus1 says, but Word 2008 won't allow the creation of Macros any more. They've shut off support for their creation. Nice MS. red_menace's suggestion seems very plausible and I'll look into a way of mapping the old style numerals to specific keystrokes. That might do it.
Reflecting on what you all said, I looked again through Word's help menus and eventually got pointed towards this page of 'help': <http://tinyurl.com/6398l6>. This is completely impenetrable for me, though it does compare a VBA script for Word 2004 to an AppleScript. This encourages me to hope that it should be possible to translate my original VBA script (part of which I included in my first message) into AppleScript, though I don't know how to do it because I don't really understand the language in the first place (the VBA script was put together by someone else).

Using Automator action/workflow to create a poster in iPhoto

I'm using Jim Heid's Mac iLife 'lifeposter' idea [which comes from Mike Matas] and I keep getting a message taht says "the workflow was saved with an older version of 'get Selected items' some behavior may have changed. and also another ref. 'import files into iPhoto" -- I didn't find a more recent Automator action 'Create Thumbnail Poster" online nor updated information at Matas's blog or Heid's book...any suggestions for how to fix this? I last used it a few years ago and would like to use it again.

Unless you got a message about it, the original Create Thumbnail Poster may work with the version of iPhoto that you have. As for the other actions, they sound like standard actions that have just been updated - you can open the older application and recompile it using the newer actions.

How can I add a picture to the Automator Action "Watermark PDF Documents.action"

Looks like a bug: under 10.7.2 i cannot add a picture to the Automator Action "Watermark PDF Documents.action".
Works perfectly under 10.6.8.

Its a verified bug (Automator - Watermark PDF Documents).
Please report to http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
As a workaround, if you saved the Action in SL, option-click the action, navigate to the file "document.wflow", open in TextEdit, search for the key "fileNames" and replace your old image with the new

Trouble Cleaning Up At The End of an Automator Action

So my automator action currently downloads a file (a .dmg), mounts it, copies its contents to Applications, and then... I then want to unmount the dmg and throw the dmg away. However, by this point I no longer have the references to these two items:
download file -> mount file -> copy items
I'd like to be able to get back to the downloaded file so I can trash it, but there's no way to "store" its name or reference or anything. Any ideas? Unfortunately I can't just do a search for it since its name is often different.
Thanks in advance!

ineedadifferent...
Try adding the following steps at the end of your current workflow. Steps 1-4 are Finder actions; step 5 is an Auomator action:
1) *Get Specified Finder Items* -- in the Open dialog navigate to your Macintosh HD > Users > +your name+ > Desktop. Select the Desktop folder and hit Open. Leave the Options unchecked.
2) *Get Folder Contents* -- Leave both "Repeat for each subfolder found" and the Options unchecked.
3) *Filter Finder Items* -- Whose: Name Extension - Is equal to - dmg. Leave the Options unchecked.
4) *Move to Trash*
5) *Run AppleScript* -- your script might look like this:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Finder" to eject (every disk whose local volume is true)
return input
end run
Good luck!
Andrew99

Automator action to move a specific file type to a folder..

've started shooting pictures in raw and jpg format. After I grab the pics from my camera, I'd like to put the raw files in a separate folder.
I've played around a little but can't figure it out-- so I dunno if it's possible. Is there a way I can make an automator action where I enter or select the folder and run the action. It then makes a folder named RAW and moves all of a certain file type to the RAW folder. Is this possible with automator?
I'd like it to make a folder named RAW inside the current folder I'm in or have selected.
I think I figured this out using filter finder items, and move to specific folder, but I think I need to learn how to use variables for this to work how I want it. Do I need variables or is there another way?

the following script should do it provided your Raw image files have extensions "raw" (do they?). If they have another extension, modify next to the last line accordingly.
tell application "Finder"
set theFolderName to "Raw"
set curFolder to (folder of the front window as alias)
-- Determine whether the specified folder exists
if folder theFolderName of curFolder exists then
set theFolder to folder theFolderName of curFolder
-- Create a new folder, if it doesn't exist
else
set theFolder to make new folder at curFolder with properties {name:theFolderName}
end if
move (every file of curFolder whose name extension is "raw") to theFolder
end tell
Save the above script as an application using Script editor. To use it, select the folder you want to work on and run the script.

It once worked but now a simple automator action won't :-(

I am trying to highlight songs in tunes and then copy the file into a folder. I've just got an empty folder on my desktop titled "Music". The automator action consists of: Get Selected Items (with itunes icon), and Copy Finder Items (to the Music folder). After I hit the Run button it proceeds to copy what appears to be my whole itunes library folder to the Music folder. I used to do this all the time and it worked perfectly taking little time. Now, not so lucky.
Here is a link a picture of how automator looks while I run it. http://web.me.com/caseyheyer/Site/Blank.html

Sometimes putting another action in between (even if it doesn't do anything) can get things going. It looks like iTunes Songs are easier to convert than iTunes Items, so give this a try:
1) Get Selected iTunes Items
2) Set Options of iTunes Songs (leave everything unselected)
3) Copy Finder Items {To: Music}

LMS 4.2.5 Syslog/Automated Action/Config mgmt issue

LMS 4.2.5 on Windows
We use the server as it's own Syslog server. The Syslog collector status is fine. I see syslogs coming into the server. However, I just made some changes on a router so ran a syslog report on it, but nothing was returned. I Tested the Collector Subscription and everything was fine.
We also have Automated Actions configured on certain syslog messages (duplex mismatch for example). There is an AA configured to send my team e-mails when this event occurs. There was a device that had two days worth of syslog messages complaining about this issue. Yet, we only received about 10 e-mails from the LMS system on it.
Another issue is with Configuration Mgmt. I fixed the duplex mismatch listed above and went to check the config tree to see if or when something changed. The last config archive was pretty old and I know changes were made on the device since then. This tells me that the LMS server didn't get notified of the config change or it would have gone out and checked it.
The one thing in common on all of the above is Syslog messages. LMS will take actions based on receiving these messages and those actions don't seem to be firing.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike S.

To confirm if the device is sending the syslogs and they are being received by LMS server properly, check the $NMSROOT/log/syslog.log and see it has the syslog from the device.
Unless syslog is there on syslog.log, we don't expect LMS to react on any AA.
For configuration backup, try to sync the device config by initiating a manual job to update the latest configuration from device. Even if there is no Automated Action working, you should still have a reoccurring/scheduled job configured to archive configuration backup periodically.
Following is a document I created for Syslog troubleshooting :
Ciscoworks LMS : Syslog in a Nutshell!
-Thanks
Vinod
**Encourage Contributors. RATE Them.**

"Import Files into iTunes" automator action not working

I'm having an issue with a simple automator action, "Import Files into iTunes". It's the only thing I have in the workflow but when I drop audio files onto the application, the action encounters an error. In trying to figure out what was amiss, I read that there was a version number conflict after iTunes 10, so I followed the instructions here but they did not fix the issue. Does anyone have a suggestion on what to try or how to diagnose the issue? I'm running Yosemite (10.10.2) and iTunes 12.1.0.50. Thanks for the help!

Yeah, I'd happy provide details if I saw them. The message itself just says, "The action “Import Files into iTunes” encountered an error." Is there a way to get more information on the error?
Thanks!

Using external database as source for Quicktime annotation automator action

Hi
I have approximately 1500 quicktime files which require annotations added to them (title, author etc).
I've been provided a spreadsheet with all the neccessary data. And I know there is an automator action that can add annotations to quicktime files but was wondering if either of the following was possible:
1) Can I get the an automator script to use this spreadsheet as a source for the values it is to enter.
OR
2) If I can get automator to add the files name to the annotations section (under title)
Greatly appreciate any help you can provide.
Regards

HI
Make sure you select the Initialize or Run methods, depending on where you try to define the database connection it will not let you do it.
Good practice would be to define the database and the connection in the initialize section, the SQL and execute in the Run section and the disconnect in the Finish section, however that could change depending on your needs.
Regards
Alex

Sharing Automator Actions?

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