Menu Manager is a framework that extends the IBM Developer for z Systems context menu system. It provides access to TSO/ISPF mainframe resources through custom menu actions that invoke TSO commands. The Menu Manager facility is included in the IBM Developer for z Systems, needing to add-on or third-party tooling to create custom functionality that can integrate the user’s existing ISPF tools and workflows into an Eclipse-based, Graphical User Interface workbench. This tutorial with describe the process by which a user can create a custom context-menu action within the IBM Developer for z Systems workbench. In this example, a LISTC LEVEL action will be used to demonstrate the functionality of Menu Manager.
Prerequisites:
To take advantage of this feature, the user needs:
Estimated time:
This process should take about 10 minutes from start to finish, starting from your desktop.
Steps:
1. Open IDz and specify a workspace. A workspace is a folder or directory on your computer that contains metadata (or data about data) around any customizations you have made to the IDz workbench.
2. Navigate to the Window > Preferences menu. This menu is where the user will access the Menu Manager facility.
3. From the Window > Preferences menu, Navigate to Menu Manager on the left side, click the expand arrow to expand the submenus, then click on Actions and Menus.
4. At the top of the right side of the Menu Manager menu, under File Selection, click the New button. This will cause a pop-up wizard window to appear.
5. From the wizard, click the radio button for File, then enter a file spec (in this example, c:\test2.xml). Ensure that you have write-authorization to the directory in which you are creating the new Menu Manager file. Then click Finish. This will close out the pop-up wizard window.
6. Back to the Menu Manager > Actions and Menus menu, click on New Local/Remote Action. This will cause another wizard window to appear. Give the action a name, enter a comment to describe the action if applicable, and the click Next.
7. On the next page of the wizard, scroll down and find *.jcl within the Available File Types list. Click on *.jcl, then click Add. This will move *.jcl to the Chosen File Types list. Click Next twice.
8. On the Run Options page of the wizard, enter in the TSO LISTC command as follows: listc level($userid)
a. Enter the command without additional carriage returns (caused by hitting the Enter key), and without any additional spaces.
9. Under Action Properties, check the check boxes for Show on generic menu and Use Existing action. Click Select to associate an action, then under com.ibm.ftt.ui.menumanager, select com.ibm.ftt.ui.menumanager.tsoaction to associate the appropriate action for this function. Then click OK.
10. Back at Action Properties, check the checkbox for Show output in dialog. This will cause a pop-up window to display the output of the LISTC action when activated using Menu Manager. Click Finish.
11. Click Apply and Close to close the Window > Preferences menu.
12. From the z/OS Projects perspective, navigate to the Remote Systems Explorer view, then right-click on an MVS LPAR, and choose Connect.
13. Enter an ID and password, and click OK to connect.
14. From the connected LPAR, navigate to a JCL dataset. Expand the dataset and right-click on a JCL member. From the context-menu, find the newly created LISTC Level menu action and click to perform the action.
a. This should cause a pop-up window to appear displaying the output of the Menu Manager action.
At this point, you have the option to click OK dismiss the pop-up dialog after viewing, Save Message… to save off the information in the pop-up dialog, or Open in Editor to open a file in the editor which is auto-populated with the information in the pop-up dialog.
Summary
In this tutorial, you opened the IDz workbench, created a custom context-menu action that accessed TSO functionality using the Menu Manager facility, and accessed the action via the context-menu on a JCL library member. Learn more about the capabilities of Menu Manager at the DevOps Distance Learning.