OLE automation allows an application to expose its function for programmatic use by another application. An application that makes its function available is called an OLE automation server. An application that uses that function is called an OLE automation controller (or client).

OLE automation provides the mechanisms for servers to group their function into objects, called automation objects, which can then be exposed and used in a standard way. Automation objects provide access to their function through methods and access to their attributes or variables through properties (equivalent to accessor methods for instance variables in Smalltalk). An OLE automation server exposes its objects for use by registering them in the system registry. If an automation server provides multiple objects, each one must be registered separately.

Objects exposed by an OLE automation server can be accessed in Smalltalk through the OleAutomationObject class. Each automation object provided by a server is accessed through an instance of OleAutomationObject. Methods of an OleAutomationObject let you invoke methods and get or set properties of the automation object.

The steps for creating an OLE automation controller are as follows: