Dealing with messages in the Endevor ISPF interfaces

Products

• Endevor

Issue/Introduction

Endevor actions performed in foreground via the ISPF dialogs (classic Endevor or Quickedit) produce messages which are exactly like those produced by the batch action utility C1BM3000 into C1MSGS1 DD. These messages are of interest for the user, especially when the action fails, but may also be of use when the action succeeds.

The messages are kept in the so called 'Endevor message dataset', which is kept for the duration of the Endevor session. This article explains:

• How to adjust the automatic browse of the message dataset at the completion of Endevor actions
• How to manually browse the dataset at any time

 

Resolution

Adjusting the automatic browse of the message dataset

At the completion of each action, Endevor has logic to browse the message dataset to the user screen. Each user may have Endevor skip the browse of the message dataset depending on the return code of the action just performed.

For Endevor, this is done in the 'user defaults' panel (option 0 from the main menu) via field "DISPLAY MSGS WHEN RC GE"

For Quickedit, this is done in the 'dialog defaults' panel (option D from the entry panel), via field "Show messages when RC is greater than or equal to".

In both cases, the value entered may be:

• 0 - Display all messages, even informative ones
• 4 - Messages of severity W (warning) and higher
• 8 - Messages of severity C (Caution) and higher
• 12 - Messages with severity E (Error) and higher
• 16 - Messages with severity S (Severe) and higher

The value is stored in the ISPF profile for each user, so each user has to adjust it for his/her preference. For users that start using Endevor (or users that have erased its endevor ISPF profile), the default is 12

Browsing the message dataset

During the session, the user may browse the message dataset by entering a command in the command line

• EMSGS - Browse the Endevor message dataset
• QMSGS - Browse the Quickedit message dataset

Note that the message dataset is created the first time that an action has written a message. When there are no messages to display, the command responds with error message MESSAGE DATASET ('dataset_name') EMPTY OR NOT FOUND