Changing the CICS Explorer workspace location

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CICS Explorer® uses a local workspace folder to save its data and configuration files. By default, the workspace folder is stored in your user directory. You can change the location where CICS Explorer saves the workspace.

About this task

By default, the workspace directory of CICS Explorer for Aqua is called .zosexplorer and is located in your local user directory. CICS Explorer on Eclipse Marketplace uses the workspace of the Eclipse it is installed into.

You might want to change the CICS Explorer workspace location in the following situations:

You want to start a new version of CICS Explorer but do not want to upgrade your default workspace.
For some releases, when you upgrade to a new release of CICS Explorer, data stored in your existing workspaces is automatically migrated to the new data format when you use those workspaces with the new release. The workspaces will no longer work with previous releases of CICS Explorer.

If you start the new version of CICS Explorer with a different workspace location, the default workspace remains unchanged.
You want to ensure that only the owning user can access the workspace.
The data and configuration files in the CICS Explorer workspace include connection information and user IDs. Therefore, you might want to change the workspace location from the default.

To change the workspace location when CICS Explorer is already started, see Switching workspaces.

To change the workspace location before you start CICS Explorer, one method is to create a new application launcher, Automator application, or application shortcut, as appropriate for your operating system, and modify the command or target path. To do this, use the following procedure.

Procedure

In the Linux® operating system, modify the command in an application launcher.
1. Create an application launcher for your CICS Explorer.
  For details, see the help for your operating system, or the appropriate steps in For Linux: starting CICS Explorer in a national language:.
2. In the Command field in the Launcher Properties dialog, append the following text to the command, where workspacename is the name for the new workspace folder:
```
 -data ~/workspacename
```
  For example: /home/user/Desktop/zosexplorer/zosexplorer -data ~/new_workspace
3. Save and close the application launcher.
In the macOS operating system, modify the command in an Automator application.
1. Create an Automator application for your CICS Explorer.
  For details, see the help for your operating system, or the appropriate steps in For macOS: starting CICS Explorer in a national language.
2. In the Run Shell Script window, append the following text to the command, where workspacename is the name for the new workspace folder:
```
 --args -data ~/workspacename
```
  For example: open /Users/user_name/zosexplorer/zosexplorer.app --args -data ~/new_workspace
3. Save and close the Automator application.
In the Windows operating system, modify the target path in an application shortcut.
1. Create a shortcut to your CICS Explorer executable file, for example zosexplorer.exe.
2. Right-click the shortcut and click Properties.
3. In the Target field on the Shortcut tab in the Properties dialog, append the following text to the path, where newdirectorypath is the directory path to the location of the new workspace and workspacename is the name for the new workspace folder:
```
 -data "newdirectorypath\workspacename"
```
  For example: C:\Explorer\zosexplorer\zosexplorer.exe -data "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\new_workspace"
4. Save and close the shortcut.

Results

When you next start CICS Explorer by using the application launcher, Automator application, or application shortcut that you created, the CICS Explorer workspace is created in the new location.