3. Workflow Basics

So far, you’ve created a few simple Automator workflows. You should now be somewhat familiar with Automator’s interface and how to use it. There’s still more to learn, however. In this chapter, you’ll begin exploring workflows in a bit more detail.

When building a workflow, figuring out what you want to automate is the easy part. Figuring out how to create the workflow takes more effort. You’ll learn how to plan a workflow’s tasks and then how to locate actions that can perform those tasks. You’ll also learn more about creating, running, saving, and opening workflows.

For this chapter’s examples, I’ve used the Add Spotlight Comments to Photos workflow from Chapter 2, “Building Simple Workflows.” To follow along, create this ...

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