Access Solutions - Use Description for system selection

The arrow next to the System dropdown box can be used to select the system within a group of systems and also by Description. The drop-down box will continue to show the configured System name not the Description. 1.1.9.0 is now available.

IBM Power Systems Development

I hope the final implementation will still change from the current beta as it is far from perfect and/or user-friendly (as the dropdown itself keeps on showing the system name, not the description).

These are the two comments I provided to the team related to how the groups currently work;

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The arrow next to the System dropdown box is an improvement… but it doesn’t change the behavior of the dropdown itself (it keeps on listing systems that don’t belong to the group I indicate).

Instead of “Select system from group” it should be “Change active group”.

Why not label the group (above / in front of the System) and limit the displayed systems to that group.

The Group view is also completely different as the normal view so this is only annoying/confusing.

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In that case you might consider following proposal;

• Provide an “enable groups” like you currently have (via CTRL-G) – for me personally this can even be hidden in the properties file

• If enabled, act as documented in my previous post

• If not enabled, hide the group label and arrow above the current System dropdown.

This way everything remains the same for the normal user (as he normally has no benefit in enabling groups) while an administrator managing multiple groups (ie. sites/customers) can enable groups and be limited to that group only (and switch easily by the arrow). Even if a normal user would enable it by accident he still would see all his systems as he probably doesn’t have systems in different groups.

We have added an alternate way to select the system next to the existing drop-down box on the main GUI which includes the Description. This will be in our next update available in April 2022.

IBM Power Systems Development

IBM understands this request and will consider it for a future code update, though no commitment is made or implied.

The /plugin=cfg /gui indeed works but we consider it just a workaround.

We therefore hope that the normal main window will be modified so that it allows selection by description.

The command-line way of launching just that panel is documented here:
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-i-access-acs-getting-started#9.1.4
For example: Start_Programs\Windows_x86-64\acslaunch_win-64.exe /plugin=cfg /gui
You could also modify one of the existing desktop icons to include "/plugin=cfg /gui" if your users are not comfortable with the command-line.

It might be a possible workaround if there would be an option to launch the "Systems Configuration" window directly but to my knowlegde there's no command line option for it. This means that normal startup is required after which the user needs to navigate to the Systems Confguration himself which is not logical, neither user friendly.

I don't understand that there's so much resistance to this proposal which should be easy to implement. Either make a configuration setting to use the system name or description, or always use the description (and someone who really needs a system name can put it in the description).

Fact is that system names are useless to the majority of the users.

Here is another option for you to consider. The System Configurations panel contains the Description and is capable of launching all ACS features. You previously stated this was not an option because most users do not have access to the System Configurations panel. However, instead of restricting your users from the entire panel, just restrict them from seeing the New/Edit/Copy/Delete buttons on this panel by setting the property com.ibm.iaccess.CfgActionsRestricted=true in AcsConfig.properties. Does that satisfy the requirement?

Hi,

Systems are defined by hostname (using an IP-address is never a good idea) so the suggested workaround doesn't help.

Unfortunately the hostname is not always clear so it is important that we see the description instead of the system name.

The description is free to enter so it offers all flexibility for everybody.

Kind regards,
Paul

Thank you for submitting your Request For Enhancement. It sounds like you are configuring most of your systems by IP address. That being the case, there is already a way to accomplish what you want. Here are the steps:
1. Select System Configuration (from main GUI)
2. Create a New or Edit an existing system entry.
3. On the Connections tab, go to the Performance section. For "IP address lookup frequency", select "Never - Specify IP address". Then fill in the IP address for the system.
4. Then on the General tab, you can fill in whatever description you want for System name. Since you specified "Never..." on the Connections tab, the description you fill in here will not be used for a DNS lookup.
On the main GUI, whatever description you entered for System name will be displayed for the dropdown list of systems.

Does that satisfy the requirement?

Hi Stephen,

Normal users don't have the "System Configuration" option so I can hardly call it a workaround.

Normal users also don't know what a system name is... they want to see the description (what else is the purpose of a description if it can't be seen anywhere unless you hoover of the system name which is not really useful).

The system drop down should be replace with the descriptions (or they make an additional "friendly system name" field)... or at least there should be an option in the properties file to do so for people who wish (and I hardly can imaging people wishing otherwise).

Hi Stephen

I suffer from the same problem and hope that one day IBM will address this but I think there is a workaround that I wanted to make sure you were aware of.

If you open the System Configuration Window (in the Management Section of Main ACS interface)
The resulting window can be sorted into System Name Sequence by clicking on the Column Heading.
You can then right click the system in question and select the function you require.

Hope this helps, either way you got my vote.

Regards Brad,
Steve Bradshaw
IBM Champion, Member of CEAC, TD of i_UG.co.uk
and Friendly Techie Bloke at RowtonIT.com

This is a duplicate of mine which was refused... https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=viewRfe&CR_ID=126938

I hope you have more luck as this still daily frustrates me and my co-workers ! I guess no one understands IBM choice.