Managing Trace Scenarios
Message Analyzer provides facilities for managing your local Trace Scenarios Library. This means you can create and modify Trace Scenarios, set them as Favorites (by clicking the star to the left of a scenario in the Trace Scenarios Library), and share them with others. The Message Analyzer Sharing Infrastructure enables you to choose Trace Scenario items in your local Library and share them with others, and you can also add Trace Scenario items to your local Library from others. To do this, Message Analyzer enables you to Export your Trace Scenarios to a designated location to make them accessible to other users on your team or to the larger Message Analyzer community; or you can Import Trace Scenarios from other users who make their scenarios available to you in the same manner. This includes any custom Trace Scenario templates that you or others have created. Designated share locations can include a user-defined SMB share, a Web server resource, or a custom subscriber feed in the Message Analyzer Sharing Infrastructure that you configure from the Settings tab in the Asset Manager dialog, which is accessible from the Message Analyzer global Tools menu. When you export one or more Trace Scenarios, they are saved to a designated location as an asset collection file (*.asset) so that others can import one or more items in the collection.
Manage Trace Scenarios Dialog
You can manage Trace Scenarios from the Manage Trace Scenario dialog, which displays when you click the Manage Trace Scenarios item in the Select Scenario drop-down list on the ETW Providers toolbar of the New Session dialog. From the Manage Trace Scenario dialog, you can export and import Trace Scenarios, in addition to performing other scenario management tasks, as described in the subtopics that follow.
Exporting Trace Scenarios
The Manage Trace Scenarios dialog enables you to select the items you want to export in an asset collection for sharing or backup. After you select one or more Trace Scenarios that you want to share with others, click the Export button on the toolbar of the Manage Trace Scenario dialog to display the Save Library dialog, from where you can specify Title, Description, and Organization information. After you click Save in the Save Library dialog, the Select Library Location dialog displays and enables you to navigate to the location where you want to save your Trace Scenario asset file, which is typically a remote share or other feed that you configure from the Settings tab of the Asset Manager dialog.
Note
In a future Message Analyzer release, the Sharing Infrastructure may support the full publishing process for Message Analyzer asset collections that are shared on user-configured feeds. Currently, you can download Trace Scenario asset collections from user feeds, but you cannot yet configure them to automatically synchronize with periodic updates, unless you perform the manual configuration process described in Manual Item Update Synchronization. Also, you can always synchronize to and download asset collection updates from the Message Analyzer feed on the Downloads tab of the Asset Manager dialog to obtain the latest asset collections, such as Trace Scenarios, Filters, Color Rules, View Layouts, and so on.
Importing Trace Scenarios
The Manage Trace Scenarios dialog enables you to import asset collections that others have shared to some predefined location. To perform this task, click the Import button on the toolbar of the Manage Trace Scenarios dialog to display the Select Library to Open dialog. From this dialog, you can navigate to the local or network location where asset files are stored for sharing. After you select a *.asset file, click the Open button in the Select Library to Open dialog to display the Select Items to Import dialog. From this dialog, you can specify the items from the asset collection that you want to import, along with the Category in which to place the imported scenarios in your local Trace Scenarios Library, or you can accept the default Category location. Click OK to exit the dialog and post the Trace Scenarios to the Library Category that you specified.
Note
Trace Scenario items that you import will appear under the My Items top-level category in the subcategory name that you specified, after a Message Analyzer restart.
Other Management Tasks
The Manage Trace Scenario dialog also enables you to open the Edit Trace Scenario dialog by right-clicking any Trace Scenario in the My Items category of the Trace Scenarios library and then selecting the Edit item from the context menu that displays. From the Edit Trace Scenario dialog, you can modify certain metadata that is associated with any scenario before exporting it as an asset file, as follows:
Name — change the name of a Trace Scenario.
Description — modify the Trace Scenario description.
Category — select a different Category in which to place the scenario, or you can create a new Category.
Note
You cannot edit or delete any of the predefined Trace Scenarios that are provided by default in your Message Analyzer installation. You can edit scenario information or delete scenarios under the top-level My Items category only. The My Items category is reserved as user space in the Trace Scenarios library.
You can also create a copy of any Trace Scenario in any category, for example to move a copy to the My Items Category, by right-clicking any Trace Scenario in the Manage Trace Scenario dialog and selecting the Create a Copy item in the context menu that displays. When you do this, the Edit Trace Scenario dialog displays, from where you can modify any of the previously indicated parameters associated with the scenario and then Save it. Lastly, if you want to remove a Trace Scenario from the My Items category of the Library, you can right-click the scenario and select the Delete item in the same context menu. Note that the Delete command in the right-click context menu is disabled for all of the predefined Trace Scenarios, which prevents the removal of any of the predefined scenarios in your Message Analyzer installation.
More Information
To learn more about the Message Analyzer Sharing Infrastructure and the common Manage <AssetType> dialog format that is used to manage various Message Analyzer Library asset collections, see the Sharing Infrastructure topic.