I enjoy writing programs that glue recurring tasks together into an automation workflow. And as a programmer, I have lots of automation tools within reach. But those tools often only get me half way to my goal. Once I’ve written a program that automates a task, I’d like to share the task with non-programmers and allow them to use it to build their own automation workflows. Indeed, automation is for all of us.

The goal of ubiquitous automation is one of the reasons I’m excited about Automator: a feature in the soon-to-be-released Mac OS X Tiger. To my mind, it enables automation for the masses. Simply by dragging preloaded Actions onto a Workflow, anyone on your project can automate the tasks of checking out code from version control, building the project, and creating an installation package. That’s a few project chores you can check off the list, but imagine what other chores you might be able to automate when you start creating and sharing your own custom Actions.

Working with Automator, the latest article in James' Tiger Developer Overview Series, gives you a quick overview of Automator, and then shows you how you can build your own Actions and share them with other users.

Automator not only puts another automation tool within your reach, but it also conveniently puts the automation tools you build within the reach of others. When you start playing with Automator, please do write in with your stories. I plan to share any Actions I craft right here, so stay tuned.