- Locating Actions to Do What You Want
- Inserting Actions into a Workflow
- Viewing an Action's Description
- Action Settings
- Action Options
- Deleting Actions
- Disabling Actions
- Moving Actions
- Copying Actions
- Renaming Actions
- Collapsing Actions
- Working with Input and Output Values
- Viewing Action Results as a Workflow Runs
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Action Settings
Many actions have settings you can change to control the action's behavior when you run the workflow. Take the New iCal Events action, for example (Figure 4.17). This action allows you to specify a calendar and title for the event along with a start and end time, an alarm, and more. When run within a workflow, this action behaves according to the settings you've specified.
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Figure 4.17 The New iCal Events action has settings that can modify its behavior.
Whenever you add an action to a workflow, you should check to see whether the action contains any modifiable settings, and if so, adjust them accordingly.
Actions with settings
It's difficult to talk about individual action settings. Because every action performs a different task, each action's settings are different. When you begin working with a new action, you need to become familiar with its settings so you can make it do what you want.
To understand how modifying the settings on an action affects how it behaves when run, experiment with some examples:
- The Create Archive action's settings allow you to specify the name and location of the archive and whether any unreadable items should be ignored (Figure 4.18).
Figure 4.18 Modifiable settings for the Create Archive action.
- The Burn a Disc action's settings enable you to specify the name of the disc, whether it should be erased first, whether it should be verified, and whether it should be ejected or mounted on the desktop after burning (Figure 4.19).
Figure 4.19 Modifiable settings for the Burn a Disc action.
- The New Mail Message action's settings allow you to specify the To, Cc, and Bcc recipients, the subject, the message content, and the account for the message (Figure 4.20).
Figure 4.20 Modifiable settings for the New Mail Message action.
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Tip
- Don't be afraid to try new things. If you're unsure of what an action setting does, try running the action in a test workflow to find out. Just be careful. If the action deletes or changes something, make sure you test it with data you don't mind deleting or changing.
Actions without settings
Some actions don't have modifiable settings. The interface for such an action is simply a title bar and a footer area—rather plain, as you can see (Figure 4.21).
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Figure 4.21 The Get Selected Finder Items action does not contain modifiable settings.
Tip
- Looking for an action setting that doesn't exist? Developers try to provide action settings that users will need to change on a regular basis. But they often don't think of everything. If you need a specific action setting that doesn't exist, let the action's developer know about it, and perhaps it will be added in a future release.