When you have come up with a useful sequence of actions, you may want to reuse it. Here are several methods, in increasing levels of sophistication.
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Action Lists
Let's take the example of a couple of actions used to log to an external log file with a date and time stamp. Before writing to the log with the Get Date Time action.
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Here, the log actions have been copied. This is not ideal, as if we improve the logic later on, we'll have to edit all those actions. Instead, create a new TargetAction List, called Log:
Move the actions to the new TargetAction List. Now, create a parameter to contain the log message, by right clicking on the Target Action List title.
Replace the hard-coded message in the "Write to Text File" action. Target Action List parameters behave just like normal variables.
The Target Action List now looks like this:
The final step is to replace the original calls with Run TargetAction List actions.
The result is this:
External
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Action Lists
The next step in reusing action logic is to group these utility Targets Action Lists into one project:
You can now call these Targets Action Lists from any project.