Creating menu actions in Menu Manager
Menu Manager is a tool for adding new menu commands to pop-up menus for projects, subprojects, data sets, files, and JES jobs. The commands can range in complexity from simple local executable files to complex commands that prompt for user input and run multiple commands and scripts on a remote system.
What you can do
By using Menu Manager, you can customize pop-up menus in the following ways:
- Create actions that are added to the pop-up menus for these views and resources:
- Remote Systems and Remote System Details views: data sets, partitioned data set members, JES jobs and job spool files, and z/OS® UNIX System Services files
- Remote z/OS Search view: All files listed in the view
- MVS subprojects in the z/OS Projects view: Remote data sets and data set members, and local files
- COBOL, JCL, PL/I, or z Systems LPEX Editors: A local or remote file that is open in the editor
- z/OS Projects: A z/OS UNIX subproject in the view
- Integrate z/OS resources such as TSO/E commands, CLISTs, REXX execs, and ISPF edit macros into the IBM® Developer for z/OS
client user interface.
- Redefine existing actions to override or supplement their function: when a user requests the original action, the redefined action is called instead.
- Create actions that prompt users for input.
- Use substitution variables in command strings.
- Create menus and submenus, and reorganize items within a menu, to group functions.
How it works
A Menu Manager action sends a command from your workstation to the ISPF Gateway on z/OS, which then executes the command and returns the command output to your workstation. Commands can be constructed to run on any remote system to which you are connected.
Opening Menu Manager
To access the Menu Manager tools, open the workbench Preferences window, and
expand Menu Manager. The tools consist of three pages of preferences:
- Menu Manager: Use this page to set tool-wide options.
- Actions and Menus: Use this page to create, organize, and deploy actions.
- Menu Selection: Use this page to set default menu locations for the various folder and file types that you can create menu actions for.
Terminology
These terms are used to describe the Menu Manager functions and results:
- action
- The menu item that you select from a menu, such as Cut,
Copy, and Paste in this illustration.
- command
- The function that an action performs, such as running a build or executing a TSO command with specific parameters.
- command processor
- The product-supplied engine that processes a command that is defined for an action, such as the com.ibm.ftt.dbbz.integration.actions.dbbaction class that processes Dependency Based Build user builds, or the com.ibm.ftt.ui.menumanager.tsoaction class that processes TSO commands.
- context
- The specific resource and location that a menu action is associated with, such as an MVS file in the Remote Systems view, or a JES job in the Remote System Details view.
- menu
- A pop-up menu. In Menu Manager, all actions that you create are added to pop-up menus.
- menu action
- Another term for action.
- menu file
- An .xml file that stores menu and menu action definitions. The product provides several menu files that you can add to, or you can create your own menu files.
- pop-up menu
- The menu that opens at the location of the cursor when you right-click a mouse button or keyboard touchpad button.
- target resource
- The object that an action acts on. These types of resources can be targets for Menu Manager actions:
- Files, including local files and remote data sets and data set members
- Projects and subprojects, which are specialized folders
- JES jobs and job data sets, which are specialized types of folders and files