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User profile for user: Thinking_Different
Thinking_Different Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

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?

Posted on May 2, 2011 8:59 AM

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User profile for user: red_menace
red_menace
User level: Level 6
17,054 points

Posted on May 2, 2011 5:18 PM

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.

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User profile for user: red_menace
red_menace
User level: Level 6
17,054 points

May 2, 2011 5:18 PM in response to Thinking_Different

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.

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Sharing Automator Actions?

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