Pipeline Essentials: Stand-alone user-friendly Batcher

From my experience in pipeline development I learned a very important lesson which is :
Make as fast as possible a dynamic external batch system in your pipeline for putting actions on multiple files.

Why?
The goal of the tool is to be able to make artists happy and to give them power to raise the quality of multiple assets at the same time. And it will take away your work pressure as developer.

Opening files, editing something, save , close... doing this for +10 files is boring  for your artists and even for you.

Why for Artists ?
This tool should provides access to the key actions of your pipeline tools.
Since the artist knows your tools, they know what each button will do that you give and how it will affect the scene that they want to batch.

Why for developers?
Even for a developer this tool is an essential element for working. Batching over files will be always on your todo list. To ask information of multiple 3d scenes, reconstructing content of files, providing reports etc. And if you need to make a script for each of those actions your scripts directory will get messy.

As developer you can even add hidden features in this tool that make your life easier. Like scene debugging, running custom scripts on scenes etc.

Multiple actions
Important with the batch tool is that you can send multiple actions to batch. So for example that the artist can easily send a following action :
Rebuild all geometry of the assets, just rebuild the shaders of one specific character, save incremental, render.

No visuals, so make it feel safe
When you give such great power to artists it is really important that they feel safe using it. Give enough feedback what is going to happen in a report. Be able to show the start state of the scene, the end state of the scene. Give them a way for reverting the actions that they do. So that they can always go back to the previous state.( Using version system or easy access to backups.)

Make 'Comment' obligatory
When creating a batch tool always place a comment text field. And oblige your users to give clarity to there actions. This way it will be much easier to track what is going on in the pipeline for others and makes it more easy for the user to take steps forward or backwards in your pipeline.

External
Make the batcher as an external tool. So that it works stand alone. It prevents that the tool need to start up the program that they will batch on. This will save licenses for the company, make it more accessible for people without the software knowledge.

Conclusion
Creating a stand-alone batch system is essential tool, even tough it comes with great responsibility. It needs to be very clear, logical and make it feel safe for the artist. It will save you tons of time in scripting so you can focus on other cool tools. :)