Configuring Settings for the Bot

Follow these steps to configure settings for The Bot:

1. In the Templater panel, click Preferences to launch Templater Preferences.
2. In the Templater preference dialog, in Bot Settings, decide what actions you want Bot to perform by enabling or disabling the checkboxes for Render, Replicate, or Spot Check. If enabled, Bot will execute the enabled action upon finding new, ready, data in the data source.
3. In the Templater preferences dialog, in Bot Settings, enter a name for your Bot in the Bot Name field only if you will use more than one Bot to process the same data source.

   NOTE  You do not need to name your Bot nor have a corresponding bot column in your data source if you use a single Bot to process your data source.

4. In the Check every ___ minutes for new data in Google Sheets or Check every ___ minutes for new data in JSON sources field, enter how often you want Templater to check its connected data source for ready data. Set this preference to allow The Bot to check for new data more or less frequently. The default value is 0.5 minutes (30 seconds).
   

   NOTE  The minimum value for polling Google Sheets is 0.3 minutes (18 seconds) while the minimum value for polling JSON sources is 0.2 minutes (12 seconds). Setting the value too low may cause After Effects to behave irregularly.

5. In the Allow up to ___ rows to be queued at one time field, enter the number of rows The Bot can queue at a time. The Bot will queue and process up to this many rows of new data at any given time. The default value is 20, and the maximum allowed value is 20.

   TIP Use the max queue value to efficiently process extremely large data sources. For example, you can set the render-status value for 10,000 rows in a spreadsheet to ready, then have The Bot process 20 rows at a time. This reduces the memory needed by Templater to process all 10,000 rows.

6. Click Setup Shell Commands to register Shell Scripts that you write with Templater events.
7. Click Setup ExtendScripts to register ExtendScripts that you write with Templater events.

   WARNING  If Templater sends compositions to Adobe Media Encoder (AME) for rendering, shell scripts are executed after the target composition is versioned in AE, not after AME finishes rendering.

8. Enable or disable event script execution upon previewing data with Templater. By default, Templater executes registered event scripts each time a Preview is performed, enable the Prevent event script execution on Preview preference to skip script execution while previewing data in the project.