This is just a quick post to give the vCO development team some credit for what they did with the latest version of vCO.

At VMworld 2012 I spent quite some time chatting with the vCO people and they explained that this release really focused on the user interface and how to make things easier. Well, they did a good job, I would not want to go back to the older client now that I am enjoying the new and improved one.

One quick example of something that really makes quick work of a task is the foreach workflow execution and the promotion of variables.

The other day I was working on a workflow that shows the vMotion compatibility in a cluster. When I completed the workflow that generates a report for a cluster I thought it would be interesting to see what several of my clusters look like. In less than 4 steps I was able to create a workflow that loops over a list of clusters and runs my report for each one of them. How cool is that?

Step 1 — Create a new workflow.

Step 2 — Drag the foreach workflow object to the designer and select the workflow.

Step 3 — Promote the variables by clicking on the ‘Setup’ button at the top. This is where the magic happens, all you have to do is to click the loop symbol to the left of the variable name for Clusters. By doing that vCO creates a array instead of just a single object and the foreach control loops over the array.

Step 4 — Profit!

Keep up the good work!