Changing the amount of space reserved for notices

The broadcast data set contains messages intended for terminal users. This data set contains two sections:

The mail section contains messages intended for particular users
The notices section contains messages intended for all users.

The amount of space you reserve in the broadcast data set for notices depends upon how frequently your installation uses the SEND subcommand of the OPERATOR command to send notices. After you reserve a certain amount of space for notices, the remainder is used for mail. The amount of space required for mail depends on the following factors:

Whether you use individual user logs to contain mail. If you use user logs for all users, you do not have to reserve any space in the broadcast data set for mail. For information on using individual logs, see Customizing how users send and retrieve messages.
The number of users defined to TSO/E, and how often users request that messages be saved when they are sent.

By default, 100 records are reserved in the notices section of the broadcast data set for messages. You can change the number of records used for notices to suit your installation's processing needs. To change this number, submit a System Modification Program Extended (SMP/E) job that contains the IKJBCAST macro instruction. On the IKJBCAST macro instruction, specify the BCLMT operand to indicate the number of records to be reserved in the notices section.

TSO/E provides a sample job in SYS1.SAMPLIB member IKJBSMPE that shows how to use IKJBCAST. Instructions for using the sample job are included in the SYS1.SAMPLIB member.

For more information on the IKJBCAST macro instruction, see IKJBCAST macro.

As an example, if you want to reserve 250 records in the notices section for messages, you would code IKJBCAST as follows:

IKJBCAST  BCLMT=250