Automator workflow install locations in Leopards

Yes, "~" translates to /Users/jdoe/ directory. The only place I've ever seen /home directory is on Sun Solaris. 🙂

The question is, where do we put custom automator scripts in Leopard? In Tiger we had to put them here:

/Library/Applicaiton\ Support/Apple/Automator/Workflows/Applications/Finder/

In Leopard it looks like (*) we're supposed to put them here:

/Library/Automator/

We want ALL*USERS to have access, so we don't want to put them into any user's home directory (~). So it's one of the first two paths. The first path seems to work - the workflows show up in the Automator contextual menu in Finder. But the actions are not working, so I wanted to first make sure we're putting them in the right place. The second path does not seem to work - they don't show up at all in the Automator contextual menu in Finder.

Where are we supposed to store our custom Automator workflows in Leopard? The URL below doesn't seem to be right.

(*) http://developer.apple.com/macosx/automator.html

Thanks,
Don

spazek wrote:
Hi don montalvo!

My english is not the best … but for me it seems you mix different things.
Storing actions in Library/Automator will give access for all users.
(This is, what is written in the linked URL too)

Storing workflows for e.g. finder contextual menu with access for all users is
*/Library/Application Support/Apple/Automator/Workflows/Applications/Finder*

Don´t know, why it will not work for you. On my Mac it worked in Tiger as well as now in Leopard.

Spażek

Hi Spażek,

Yes, I think I may have confused things. We have *.workflow files supplied to us by one of our vendors. They are designed to work with Finder selections. I'm 99.9% sure they belong in:

/Library/Application\ Support/Apple/Automator/Workflows/Applications/Finder/

We're not concerned with "actions", only *.workflow files. Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks,
Don

red_menace wrote:
The Application Support directories are just that - places for an application to put additional support files for it's use. The contextual workflows look like they would be similar to the Scripts menu, in that the items are defined and only work from the user's library. For a shared library of workflows, you would need to store them in an accessible place, such as Shared (or Library, but an admin will need to create the folder there), and then have each user copy or make an alias and place it in their ~Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/ folder.

Users should no have to do anything if we push the *.workflow files to the correct locations. OSX is designed to be manageable at the local level, user level, etc. We have several *.workflow files that we need to push out to several dozen workstations. Each workstation can potentially have several dozen home directories. It's not possible (or desirable) to manage this deployment in a way that requires user intervention. I'm pretty sure a previous poster was right, that they *.workflow files belong here:

/Library/Application\ Support/Apple/Automator/Workflows/Finder/

We'll do some more testing (I'll keep monitoring this forum). I'll also post to the admin lists to see how other enterprise management folk are handling distribution of *.workflow files in managed environments (where users are non-admin, on workstations bound to AD/OD). Once this is all done I'll follow up with this thread and mark it as closed.

Thanks,
Don