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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/33497
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Our tech comm team has a wide variety of time-consuming, repetitive tasks they we need to automate. We are mainly using [Sphinx](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/index.html), [reStructuredText](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html), Adobe Illustrator, and Visio.

Specific things we need to automate and make accessible via either a GUI or the command line are:

- Creating reSructuredText files and their associated index entries in the `:toctree:` with a set of parameters that the author can specify that will be used to fill in fields such as the `:ref:` name, Title of the page, file name, index tags, and location of the page within the navigation hierarchy.
- Moving sections of the documentation to a new position in the TOC.
- Opening a Visio and/or Illustrator template and linking it appropriately in the `.rst` file with a specified directive, such as a figure or image with the correct width/height dimensions and caption.

We wish to keep the tooling to a minimum. It must be a solution that can be taught to the entire team who mostly don't have programming backgrounds, but are willing to learn.

Would a macro-type program such as Automator (we are using Macs) be most appropriate? Would we need to consider a programming language? Again, we would like to choose a single technology/tool, not multiple ones.

Original score: 3