I'm new to Automator, but I've had a Mac for quite some time, and I'm not a total noob. 🙂
Here is my problem:
Users need to make a backup (to desktop) of a folder located on a network drive. The folder name on the network drive is the same as the user's short username.
This is no problem if the user selects the folder themselves; I´ve made a workflow that does this. But I need this script to automatically find the folder on the network drive, based on the username and copy it to the desktop.
Any ideas how to find that folder and pass it on as my inputfolder variable? I assume I need to use a bash shell or applescript command in my workflow?
Best Answer
With the information provided, I think the following should work (screenshot follows):
Run Shell Script
echo "afp://192.168.0.115/foto/"Ignore input
Get Specified Servers
Connect to Servers
New Folder
Name: Backup
Ignore input
Set Value of Variable
Variable: Destination
Run Shell Script
echo "/Volumes/foto/$USER"Ignore input
Copy Finder Items
To: Destination variable (drag the "Destination" variable from the variable list to the "To" menu)
Check "Replacing existing files" if needed.
Variation for Incremental Backups
If you want incremental backups, you could replace Copy Finder Items with New Dated Folder, also setting its Destination to the Destination variable, and setting the "Action with passed items" option to "Duplicate passed items to the new folder". Make sure to enter something in the "Name" field, otherwise it won't work. To keep the backups listed in chronological order, you can set the Format to be Year-Month-Day and check the following options: "Leading zero for day", "Leading zero month", and "Month as number".