XCF status monitoring services provide a way for members to actively participate in determining their own operational status, and to notify other members of their group when that operational status changes. To accomplish this, XCF provides the following:

• The ability to identify an installation-written status user routine, which determines whether a member is operating normally.
• The ability to identify an installation-written group user routine, which allows a member to maintain current information about other members in the group, and systems in the sysplex.

The status user routine and the group user routine work together with XCF in the following sense:

• Specifying a status user routine, status field, and status checking interval on the IXCJOIN macro causes XCF to begin monitoring a specific field that the member identifies. When the member fails to update the field within the specified time interval, or resumes updating after a failure, XCF schedules the status user routine to check on the member.
• When the status user routine confirms that the member's status changed (either it failed to update its status field or resumed updating), XCF notifies the group user routines of other members in the group about the change in the member's status. The group user routines can then take the appropriate actions.