Using Munki to install and activate an Automator workflow service?

[John Lockwood]

I have an Automator workflow I wrote some time ago but it still works fine even in macOS Sonoma. It provides a Finder service via the 'Quick Actions' option in the Finder when you right-lick on a file or folder.

It used to be (back in the good old days 😁) that installing an Automator workflow was literally a simple matter of copying it to either -

/Library/Services/ (to make it available to all users)

or

~/Library/Services/ (for an individual user)

These days it is a lot more complicated.

You still need to copy it to /Library/Services/ but you then apparently need to open it in Automator, re-save it in the same /Library/Services/ location which appears to cause Automator to register it in the list of available services - this of course requires using an Administrator authentication, then you have to go to -

System Settings… -> Privacy & Security -> Others -> Extensions -> Finder Quick Actions, Preview -> Select Quick Actions to show in Finder:

(It did not show up in the above until I told Automator to re-save it.)

You then 'tick' the Quick Action aka 'workflow' to enable it.

Then and only then will it show up in the Services menu in the Finder.

This is way too complicated for the average user even ignoring the fact they may not have Administrator privileges.

Note: If I was to use Munki for this then as I want it would be best to deploy it to /Library/Services/ and not in to each users home directory equivalent.

I would therefore like to automate all this for users. Automating copying the file to the desired location i.e. /Library/Services/ is easy, it is all the rest I am stuck on.

I cannot seen any obvious way to do this via e.g. a PPPC profile, or defaults write or other method.

Does anyone else have suggestions?

 

Note: For anyone interested my workflow is available free via the following link.

https://github.com/jelockwood/Make_Password_Protected_ZIP_Service

Whilst there are numerous full-blown GUI apps to make password protected ZIP files on Mac e.g. Keka, my script also uses additional options provided by the built-in ZIP tool to automatically exclude unwanted files such as the infamous .DS_Store files and also (normally invisible) Microsoft Office temporary files which begin with ~$