Automator Workflow Help

[downingp]

I have always been curious as to how automator works, but have never really had a need to use it until now. What I would like to accomplish is to setup a workflow where as soon as a file gets put into a folder (music, photos, movies, etc) the automator would then automatically connect to my WDTV Live Hub and send the files.
Is this possible and if so, would anyone be willing to offer some assistance?

Thanks a lot in advance.

 

[I3eXa]

a little bump for you since I've been wondering if it's possible to do roughly the same thing with automator opening a program to convert a file once the file is downloaded.....

free bump for you, and me!

 

[downingp]

Any help would be great. Thanks.

 

[xyzzy-xyzzy]

I have always been curious as to how automator works, but have never really had a need to use it until now. What I would like to accomplish is to setup a workflow where as soon as a file gets put into a folder (music, photos, movies, etc) the automator would then automatically connect to my WDTV Live Hub and send the files.
Is this possible and if so, would anyone be willing to offer some assistance?

Thanks a lot in advance.

I would think you could do this by setting up a "Folder Action" with Automator, one folder action for each desired folder.

1. Open Automator.
2. Choose the Folder Action template.
3. After choosing the folder action template, near the top of the window you should see a popup menu with the title "Choose folder". Use that to choose the folder that should activate this action when something is dropped into it.
4. Set up the action to be performed. Below is one example where I use an AppleScript to launch TextEdit to open all the files dropped into the chosen folder (in this example a folder named "xxx").

Note, I used TextEdit in this example since I don't have, and not familiar with WDTV Live Hub. I'm assuming by your wording there's some kind of application that you want launched. If not I hope you can extrapolate from this example.

5. Save the Automator script. It will be placed in ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions. I mention this in case you want to remove it at some future time.

Good luck.

 

[downingp]

Thanks for getting me started, however I am a little confused about step 4 and running AppleScript. What I am trying to accomplish is once a file is placed in a folder it will automatically connect to my WD live TV which is essentially an external hard drive. What kind of an AppleScript do I run?

Thanks.

 

[blevins321]

Thanks for getting me started, however I am a little confused about step 4 and running AppleScript. What I am trying to accomplish is once a file is placed in a folder it will automatically connect to my WD live TV which is essentially an external hard drive. What kind of an AppleScript do I run?

Thanks.

I think you'll want to do the "Ask for servers" and "Connect to servers" steps for this. Request the available shares, connect to the share, then you can do the copy function.

 

[xyzzy-xyzzy]

Thanks for getting me started, however I am a little confused about step 4 and running AppleScript. What I am trying to accomplish is once a file is placed in a folder it will automatically connect to my WD live TV which is essentially an external hard drive. What kind of an AppleScript do I run?

Thanks.

Like I said I am not familiar with WD live TV. So the obvious question is what do you do currently when you move a file into a folder that you want to pass to WD live TV? You then have to write the Applescript to duplicate those operations.

The example script I provided was just to give you a basic starting point and some orientation with using Automator. I can't help you with the precise steps for using WD live TV. Perhaps blevins321 suggestions are what you need to do in the script. Do you do those operations (I guess this is a more detailed form of the general question I asked, i.e., what do you do with the stuff you drop in those folders)?