Customizing the Operations Console window

Operations Console has been enhanced in this release to allow users more flexibility when interacting with Operations Console through its GUI. With these new features you can customize the Operations Console window, allowing you to view and interact with the information most important to you.

On the initial startup of Operations Console you may notice some small changes. The first change is that there is a new drop-down menu item available, Options. The changes made in V5R3 also are listed here to assist the new user with some of the capabilities of the Operations Console window.

• Show Warnings This option can be used to prevent many of the common dialog windows from showing. For example, the confirming a delete function dialog window will not be displayed if this is not selected.
• Prerequisite Warning The dialog presented during the configuration wizard concerning the requirements can be turned off using this option.
• Use Single Sign-on This option provides the ability to share common signon data when connecting multiple configurations at the same time. This allows the use of a single signon dialog window instead of one for each connection.
• Double-Click This option has two items associated with it. The first is for expanding or collapsing the tree structure, the + (plus sign) control. Instead of a single click to expand or collapse you can change the function to use a double-click. The second item requires the user to use another method for starting a connection instead of double-clicking on the configuration name.

The second button on the toolbar has changed functionality. If you are familiar with the older releases of Operations Console, you might have used the second button to change a configuration. Now, the second button takes you to the Properties page of the selected configuration. All changes to the configuration of Operations Console are now made through the Properties page.

You may notice that the icon for configured connections is different. The use of a red or a green indicator makes it easier for you to see which configurations are connected and which are not connected. Another visible change made to Operations Console is that each configured connection has a + (plus sign) to the left of the icon. The + is a standard Windows expand and collapse function. Each configured connection expands out into separate functions associated with that connection. If, for example, the connections to the first partition of an LPAR multi-partitioned system you might also see separate entries for a remote control panel for each partition. This should added functionality should make it easier to administer your connections.

When you expand the configured connection and right-click on a remote control panel configuration, you will see that a new option has been made available. The SRC history option allows you to retrieve all or part of the recorded SRCs issued by the server. This information can be very useful when debugging certain problems from IPLs to control panel activity.

Drag and Drop functions have been added to configured connections to facilitate ease of management. You now have the ability to customize the list to appear the way you want it to appear. This will allow you to group configurations together so a common function can be performed on multiple connections at the same time. In addition to drag and drop, the standard Windows tagging methods for selecting more than one connection apply here. Connections most likely to share functions can be grouped at the top of the list, for example.

Additional functions now allow you to place selected data columns in the order in which you want them to appear. Using the drag and drop method, you can place any column in the position most useful to you. You even have the ability to select which columns appear in the display. The exception to this is the iSeries Connection column which maintains its fixed position. From the View menu, select the Choose Columns pull-down menu. Then, select the columns you would like to appear and click on the column title to include it or not include it. A check next to the column title includes it on the display. Only one column can be selected or deselected each time. Repeat this procedure to add or delete additional columns.