AutoMate, taken as a whole, is a platform for building, managing and launching automated tasks within Windows. AutoMate is comprised of several distinct components but is managed centrally from the Task Administrator.
A Task is the primary and most important object in AutoMate. Tasks are responsible for monitoring the system for a trigger event (such as a schedule or hotkey) and, once triggered, executing the steps that represent the actions to carry out automatically. An unlimited number of tasks may be created and organized on a single AutoMate installation. A task is comprised of the following:
The Event(s) or condition) that cause the task to run. Triggers are attached to tasks via the Task Administrator component. More information on triggers.
The actions to carry out once the task is triggered. AutoMate has over 100 available actions from which to build tasks. These actions are assembled visually (no code) via drag-and-drop in the Task Builder component. More information on actions.
(This is an advanced topic and is not a requirement to use AutoMate, novice users should simply follow the instructions in the section: Creating a New Task) A Task is considered a "managed task" when it is present in the Task Administrator, this occurs automatically when a task is created by selecting "new" from within the Task Administrator - most tasks should be created this way. However, it is also possible to create an external task by starting the Task Builder application directly (Start | Programs | AutoMate 5 | AutoMate 5 Task Builder) and saving the created task to an arbitrary location on the hard disk. When a task is created in this manner, it will not trigger (start) automatically unless it is added (via import) to the Task Administrator application and assigned at least one trigger. Tasks that are saved on the hard disk through the Task Builder have an ".aml" extension and are referred to as "External Tasks". External Tasks are useful as "sub-tasks", that is a task that is not designed to trigger directly, but rather are started by another task (probably a "managed" task).