A profile function for Tool Containers

[CiaranA]

Hi Team,

I couldn't find much on enhancing the Tool Container tool searching.

I am doing some work on a large workflow today and have replaced three tool containers with multiple containers within them with macros in order to simplify the overall workflow. Doing this work, I need to document the purpose of this simplification to my stakeholders within the business in terms of business value, and one aspect I thought of would be how much time is saved by wrapping all of these tools within a macro, another is how many tools are visible on the canvas, and therefore how by modulising (creating macros rather than tool containers) sections of the workflow it is much easier to see what's happening to the data

My macro replaces 50 tools with one and therefore this is quite a key quantifiable piece of business value that I can communicate.

In order to count the tools within the old container I had to do this manually. I was wondering - rather than manually count all of the tools within the old container - Could there be some functionality built into Tool containers such as a profiling tool similar to the browse? So that when you clicked on the tool container you would get some simple profiling, summary of the tools used?

Any thoughts welcome!

Ciaran

[SeanAdams]

Hey @CiaranA,

I've not heard of this capability but you can do exactly what you're looking for by inspecting the underlying XML.    You can pull that apart to count tools per container.

@JoshKushner has done this and may be able to guide you.

[RachelW]

@CiaranA I'd love to chat with you about the documentation you are doing regarding your workflows. I'm looking for ways that we could make this easier for you. Understanding what you are trying to communicate would be very helpful. I'll reach out via email to see if you are available for a call. 

[Joe_Lipski]

I like this idea @CiaranA and isn't something that I'd thought of before, but I'm often guessing and saying how many tools are in a workflow or part of a workflow.

I like the tool container idea, but think the idea should be more broad and have an indicator like that in Excel (in the bottom right) or how many tools are in the workflow or how many tools are in the highlighted area:

(And even better have some kind of customisable option for this like below)

Whilst typing this, I've just discovered that the new ctrl+F functionality does display a total count of tools (see below) but doesn't update when highlighting tools and doesn't help identify tools in containers AND also isn't always displayed or obvious as is via the hidden ctrl+F menu.