Exploring iSeries Navigator Application Administration

by Shannon O'Donnell

Application Administration

One of the more useful functions available to you as an iSeries Navigator administrator is the Application Administration feature. And, by the way, you don't need the V5R2 of OS/400 or Client Access Express to use the features discussed in this article. Everything you'll read about here also works with both V4R5 and V5R1 of Client Access Express and Operations navigator

Using Application Administration, you can control what the other users of iSeries Navigator can see and do from both the client and the iSeries itself. Of course, this all assumes that you sign on to the iSeries via iSeries Navigator with a user profile that has Security Administrator privileges to the functions you want to customize.

To get to the Application Administration properties panel, open a connection to your V5R1 iSeries system (this also works on V4R5, but we'll use a V5R1 system for this article). Once you have established a connection to your iSeries from iSeries Navigator, right-click the system name and select Application Administration from the pop-up context menu.

Application Administration is divided into three sections: AS/400 Operations Navigator, Client Applications, and Host Applications.

AS/400 Operations Navigator

From the AS/400 Operations Navigator property panel, you can control what functions all "normal" (i.e., those without security administrator privileges) will see and do. For example, if you don't want everyone who has the iSeries Navigator client to be able to work with and display the Active Jobs tree item of iSeries Navigator, you can disable that feature. Simply uncheck the box next to the Active Jobs tree item in the Default Access column. And, of course, this process works the same for any of the iSeries Navigator functions you see on this property panel.

Client Applications

Use the Client Applications property panel to control access to those pieces of Client Access Express and iSeries Navigator that run on the client PC.

If, for example, you wanted to prevent all of your Client Access Express users from being able to upload or download files to your iSeries, you could remove the Default Access for the Data Transfer feature of Client Access Express by unchecking the box next to that item. If you need a more granular approach to what your users can do via Data Transfer, simply expand the Data Transfer tree items to gain access to a much broader set of access controls.

Other features you might disable or enable include ODBC access, 5250 Display and Printer emulation, and remote command line access.

Host Applications

If you want to control access to certain iSeries host applications, such as File Transfer Protocol or LPAR management/administration, among other things, then you'll need to set that access via the Host Applications property panel.

For example, if you wish to prevent all FTP users from displaying the contents of an iSeries directory, you would need to expand the AS/400 TCP/IP Utilities tree item, expand the File Transfer Prototcol (FTP) tree item, expand the FTP Server tree item, and then expand the Specific Operations tree item. Now you can enable or disable the FTP commands that FTP users can run on your iSeries system.

Explore

Spend some time exploring the iSeries Navigator GUI on your own. The features I discussed in this article apply to the system level. However, you can also apply those same features, and more, at the individual user profile level. Explore the GUI. See if you can find where those options can be set for individual users. See what else you can find! In future articles in this series, I'll point out some other nifty things you can see and do via iSeries Navigator.