Five More Cool Things You Can Do With OpsNav

by Shannon O'Donnell

In the last issue, I showed you how you can harness the power of Operations Navigator to wring the most out of your iSeries ("Five Cool Things You Can Do With OpsNav"). Now I'm going to show you five more nifty things you can do with OpsNav. Let's take a look!

Propagate User Profiles

If you have more than a single iSeries in your shop or network, chances are you'll need to create the same user profile on more than one system. For example, you might create a special user profile named CONSULTANT on the primary iSeries. This user profile would have access to only a limited set of objects on the iSeries and would be used only by your company's consultants. There may come a time when you realize that this user profile would also be handy to have on the backup iSeries.

You could recreate the user profile manually on the backup iSeries, but you don't need to if you have V4R5 or V5R1 of Operations Navigator. Instead, propagating a user profile to the target iSeries from the source is as simple as dragging and dropping. Here's how you do it (Note that you must have an active connection to both iSeries systems from the Ops Nav GUI):

1. In the OpsNav GUI, locate the Users and Groups tree item on the source iSeries and click to expand it.
2. Expand the All Users tree item.
3. Locate the user profile you wish to copy to another iSeries and right click on it.
4. Select Copy from the pop-up menu.
5. In the OpsNav GUI of the target system, repeat steps 1 and 2.
6. Right-click on the All Users tree item and select Paste from the pop-up menu.
7. You'll be prompted with the New User Based On screen. From there, you can modify any of the user profile settings.
8. Click on the Add button to add the user to the target system.

View Disk Units Graphically

Did you know that you can view the actual location of your DASD with OpsNav? Here's how to do it using V4R5 of OpsNav. (The process for V5R1 is a bit more involved, so I'll cover that at the end of this tip.)

1. Right-click on the system name of the V4R5 iSeries you want to view the DASD for.
2. Select Application Administration.
3. Click on the Host Applications tab.
4. Expand the Operating System/400 tree item.
5. Expand the Service tree item.
6. Check the box under the Default Access column for Disk Units.
7. Close the Application Administration window.
8. In the OpsNav tree, expand the Configuration and Service tree item.
9. Expand the Hardware tree item.
10. Expand the Disk Units tree item.
11. Click on the All Disk Units tree item.
12. Select a disk unit from the list in the right-hand pane of the OpsNav GUI by double-clicking on it.
13. You should now see the properties panel for that disk unit. Click on the Location tab. You'll be presented with a graphical view of the location of the disk unit in the iSeries tower:

To achieve the same result for a V5R1 iSeries is quite a bit more difficult. This is mostly because V5R1 security now prevents easy access to the Dedicated Service Tools, which the OpsNav function uses to graphically display disk units. In fact, in V5R1 you must now specifically define access to Dedicated Service Tools and System Service Tools for each user, and their level of access, before users can even get into the tools. In the past, as long as the user profile had *IOSYSCFG special authority, that user profile could get into either set of tools.

Run iSeries Commands

You can run iSeries commands from Operations Navigator. For example, you might want to submit an iSeries job from the OpsNav GUI. With V5R1 of OpsNav, you can run any iSeries batch command. Interactive commands don't work from this process, so keep that in mind when you try this.

1. Right-click on the V5R1 system name in the OpsNav GUI.
2. Select Run Command from the pop-up menu.
3. Enter the OS/400 Batch command in the Run Command prompt. This can be any OS/400 command that runs in batch, including commands that you create.
4. If you need to get the command parameters, you can click on the Prompt button. If you do so, when you return from the Prompt panel, the command string will be filled in with the selections you made.
5. You can also click on the Options tab to schedule this command to run at a later date and time.
6. Click on the OK button to submit your command to batch.

Create a Shortcut to iSeries Printers

If you remember my last OpsNav article, you probably remember the tip in which I showed you how to create a shortcut to OpsNav functions. I'll expand on that tip just a bit here to show you how to create a short cut on your Windows desktop to iSeries printers. This tip works for both V4R5 and V5R1 of OpsNav.

1. Expand the Printers option in the OpsNav GUI.
2. Click once on a printer to select it.
3. Click and hold the left mouse button and drag the printer to the PC desktop.
4. When you let go of the mouse button, you'll be prompted to create a shortcut. Select this menu option, and a shortcut will be created on the Windows desktop.

Work with Active Jobs

One of the more useful items added to V5R1 of OpsNav was the capability to work with active jobs. This is the first time OpsNav users have had access to this functionality--something most OpsNav users have been clamoring for for a long time. With this feature, OpsNav has truly become a system operator's iSeries management tool.

Here's how to access the Work with Active Jobs panel from OpsNav:

1. Expand the Work Management tree item.
2. Click on the Active Jobs tree item.

Pretty simple, huh? You can also control what items and features you see from this panel. To do so, click on the OpsNav GUI's menu item Options, then select the Include menu item, and finally select the features you want to see.

Now It's Your Turn

As you've seen, there are many nifty features tucked away within OpsNav. Now it's your turn. Start exploring the OpsNav client and see what's there. Don't be afraid to click on something to see what it does. It's sort of like playing the old text game Adventure. (Some of you older IT folks might remember that one!) You may have to enter the OpsNav many times before you find all the hidden treasures.

Shannon O'Donnell is co-editor of Midrange Programmer, OS/400 Edition, and director of new technologies at Jano Justice Systems.