VMware vCAC Dynamic Property Dictionaries

 

Hello, Its been a long time since I have blogged about some thing, so I thought, I would make up for it with a small goodie. If you have used vCAC, I am sure you have used property dictionaries. Now for the un-initiated, property dictionaries in vCAC (version 5.1 – 6.0.1) have all a single purpose, in order to get an input from the user while requesting a machine.

This is by far one of the most helpful OOB (Out of Box features) for customizing the front end form. I wouldn’t take much time by explaining what this is – There have been enough blogs for that

Please read

http://www.virtualjad.com/2013/05/vcac-property-dictionary-customize.html to understand what I am talking about.

When you get to the part of creating an XML, continue reading the blog

However, I have written a quick utility for you to download and generate the XML using a CSV file. I am sure the CSV file will be much easier to understand, manage, etc.

Download the XML Generator from HERE

Once you have downloaded, and started the software (You will need .Net 4.0 – No features are being used of .Net, however, my VS defaulted to that :) – In a planned upgrade, I will let you connect to your vCAC instance and even apply the configuration – This will then be upgraded to .NET 4.5 for vCAC 5.2 and vCAC 6.0)

For now, here is how you would use it.

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Create an CSV file (You could use Excel to do that)

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The if you don’t have a format of the CSV, you could click on the tools Download Sample CSV to get the file. Off course, for the values, you can either put them one per line or use a pipe (“|”) as a delimiter to put in more than one values (The pipe will be considered as a delimiter), thus giving you the freedom, the XML will however be generated.

Once you have saved your CSV

Select the Input file and give a name for the Output. (Please remember the output file will be saved in the same location as the input file)

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Once you click on Generate, you will get the XML file. Please remember you cannot use this XML file directly – This is only for you to see. (And potentially backup)

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In order to generate a XML file directly, Please check the “Single Line” Checkbox and generate. Voila … You get a single line XML, which you can use in vCAC system directly

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This is a quick tool i wrote, and is not extensively bug checked. If you face any issues, Please let me know in comments.

If you have any more comments / questions, do let me know

Till next time – Be Curious.

 

Comments

  1. vmguruSeptember 23, 2014 at 9:17 PM

    I actually came up with a similar tool not knowing this one exist till I got pointed to it by one of my readers. I guess now there is two flavors for achieving the same result where is mind is for those who like to do it directly from Excel: http://www.virtualizationteam.com/cloud/vcac-6-property-dictionary-relationship-builder.html

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