Your Ideas for OPS/MVS OPSLOG Training

[Amy Flanagan]

Hello OPS/MVS Community

I'm working with the OPS/MVS team to prepare brief, web-based training on OPSLOG navigation. We're considering including the following topics:

-Describe the types of information provided in OPSLOG Browse.
-Filter the types of data displayed in OPSLOG by modifying your OPSLOG profile. As an example, set up profiles for specific types of data. . . ie rule personas
-Identify the information provided in the OPSLOG header.
-Identify the OPSLOG primary commands
-Use the following commonly-used primary commands: (DISPLAY, FIND, LOCATE (other commands?))
-Label data for easier retrieval
-Print lines or blocks of data to a data set.
-Extract data for testing.


What do you think of these? What have we missed? What would you have liked to have known when you first started using OPSLOG? Please reply to this thread with your suggestions.

Thank you!

Amy

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Instructional Designer
Broadcom
Lisle, IL
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[Brian.R.Young]

1. Updating Timeformat on profile screen to C so I can see the clock move (top right) every time I hit enter when testing time-dependent automation
2. Turn on ASID column on DISPLAY so I can correlate all activity for a specific OPS server - whether it has OPSSasid or OPSOSF as jobname.
3. Think you already touched on this but saving named profiles for quick use later.  Example:  all commands/messages related to a system dump.
4. 4) Point and shoot fields panel when you click on a specific msg. in the log.  Specifically, I use this to see what ROUTE or DESC codes a msg. has.

[Amy Flanagan]

Brian, this is so cool! Thank you so much for your response. I'll make sure the rest of the team sees this.

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Instructional Designer
Broadcom
Lisle, IL
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[Marcel van Ek]

In 14.0, use the new UTC timestamp option, to correlate events between lpars running different timezones.
How to get into archived opslogs  (restore, browse) (The AR command e.g.)

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[Amy Flanagan]

Hi Marcel,

Thank you for taking the time to share your suggestions! Regarding the archived opslogs, we are talking about creating a small, separate course for that topic. I'll let the team know that it came up as part of our discussion here.  I'll also pass along the suggestion about the new UTC timestamp option. 

Thanks again!

Amy

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Instructional Designer
Broadcom
Lisle, IL
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[Dave Gorisek]

Definitely adding and having more 'real life' visual usages will be a positive approach specifically in the area of using the OPSLOG to begin writing automation as well as debugging the automation. Showing how to begin writing rules - you will start in the OPSLOG with displaying the EVENT ,MSGID,and OPSFLAGS columns to determine what is needed for the rule event specifier ()MSG IE450I MLWTO, etc) . Setting CONSNAME,TIME, and OPSFLAGS for command responses in which you are going to be trapping in an Address OPER coding within an OPS/REXX pgm. Discuss how those column values are used to ensure you use the most effective command trapping parms.  Agree that a 'series' of videos is better. Perhaps 2 or 3 courses:
1) Understanding OPSLOG basics ( all the primary stuff Profile, Display, Find, Sys, POS, etc). Include some info on how much it holds and parms,allocations used to set it up or refer 'go here in the doc to set it up'. 
2) Utilizing the OPSLOG to write and debug automation - determining the event specifier and Address Oper trapping parms as mentioned above for writing. Debugging OSF server activity as Brian noted above.  Perhaps a filter on OPS118* to see all commands issued by OPS automation, Filter on OPS79* with a 2nd level profile set on some SSM resource to quickly obtain all SSM activity for a particular SSM resource, etc,etc
3) OPSLOG archiving and other OPSLOG techniques - archiving, saving profiles, etc

[Amy Flanagan]

Dave, thank you for taking the time to share these ideas! 

I've passed this on to the team.  And I agree with you, the more we illustrate the concepts with examples, the better. This team already does a nice job with that in the library of 13.5 and 14.0 YouTube videos they've created over the years; hopefully this course can capitalize on some of that work too.

Thinking aloud here. . .we have a good opportunity to reiterate writing rules by starting in the OPSLOG, and then we can refer students to the AOF rules courses we released earlier this year.

Thanks again Dave! 

Amy

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Instructional Designer
Broadcom
Lisle, IL
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