Views overview
Each perspective contains one or more views. A view is a visual component in the workbench that provides a way to navigate the information in your workbench. Related views are grouped into tab groups, and each tab group is contained in a pane in the workbench window.
The title of each view is displayed in a tab in the view. When multiple views are present in a pane, they are stacked behind each other. To activate a view, click its tab to bring the view to the front of the stack. The tab is highlighted to indicate the active view.
In CICS Explorer®, the CICSplex Explorer view is always open in a fixed location. For all other views, you can open, close, or move them to a different tab group. You can resize a tab group or reposition it in the workbench.
You can open and close views and move them in the workbench to change the layout of a perspective. For information about saving the layout, see Creating and saving perspectives and Resetting perspectives.
Refreshing view contents
When you open a view for the first time, CICS Explorer downloads the view data from your CICSplex. Any subsequent changes to resources in your CICSplex are not displayed in the view until you refresh the content.
To refresh the view contents, click the Refresh icon 
in the toolbar of the view. The view is refreshed
immediately. If the information in the CICS region
is unchanged, the view content does not change, but the time stamp
in the view updates.
Configuring and changing views
- Configure the view to change it permanently. For example, you
might configure a copy of the Tasks view to show only suspended tasks
and name the view Suspended Tasks.
- You can specify which resource attributes are displayed as columns and the order of those columns.
- You can filter the resources in the view by one or more resource attributes.
- You can sort the content by one or more resource attributes.
For most CICS resource table views, you can configure an existing view, copy a view then configure it, or create a new view then configure it. Any new views are listed on the Operations or Definitions menus on the main menu for the workbench. You can customize these menus to show only the views that you require.
- Make temporary or flexible changes in the open view to refine
the results in your view. For example, you might change a view of
suspended tasks to show the tasks that are related to a specific transaction.
- You can move or resize columns, specify which resource attributes are displayed as columns, and specify the order of those columns.
- You can filter the resources in the view by one or more resource attributes. For most CICS resource table views, you use quick filters; in a small number of older-style views, you use a filter field.
- You can sort the resources by any column in the view, and change the sort order.
For a small number of older-style views, as listed in Changing specific resource views, you change the columns, filtering and sorting in the same way as in CICS Explorer Version 5.2. You cannot configure these views or use quick filters.
Example perspective
The following example perspective shows a number of views in four tab groups. When the view tab is not wide enough to display the complete view title, the title is truncated.
Pane 1 shows a tab group that contains the CICSplex Explorer and CICSplex Repositories views, which are tree views.
Pane 2 shows a tab group that contains the Regions, Tasks, ISC/MRO Connections, Terminals, Local Files, and Local Transactions views, which are tabular views.
Pane 3 shows a tab group that contains the Properties and Error Log views, which are tabular views.
Pane 4 shows the dynamic Help view.
Navigating to files and folders via hyperlinks
Resources view columns that contain zFS Unix File System paths to files or folders, are presented as a hyperlink. Click on a hyperlink to open files directly in a text editor and folders in the z/OS UNIX Files view.
When a connection is made, the hyperlink is opened.