Skip to Main Content
IBM Power Ideas Portal


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM Power Systems products, including IBM i. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas
  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Status Future consideration
Workspace IBM i
Created by Guest
Created on Apr 4, 2021

Correct Date format in Temp Keys (Remove separators)

*ALL Temp keys come with the expiration date formatted as:

EXPDATE(2022-04-01)

I do NOT care that my system uses *MDY s I can easily change my job to *YMD. And, true, I can change the DATSEP to '-' simply enough. Unfortunately ANY separator in there requires that the date must be entered as

EXPDATE('2022-04-01')

That is, single quotes required. As a consequence one cannot simply copy/paste these keys and every single one of them must be edited.

PLEASE Remove the separator characters. They provide no value and only set up a roadblock.

ALTERNATE SOLUTION: enclose the dates in single quotes making the date thus:

EXPDATE('2022-04-01')

(I am told by the key center that their LMS is incapable of changing the date format. I informed them that "after careful consideration I have determined that their system [behaves in the manner of a vibrant vacuum cleaner]!")


Use Case:

With customers using CBUs and multiple partitions these keys must be applied repeatedly.

Yes I understand there is 'in theory' a button to apply the keys to the system directly from ESS. But it uses Java and, well, need I say more? ItNoWorkie.


Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Dec 1, 2021

    Thanks for bringing the difficulties of the date format to our attention. We would like to improve this design, so we are changing the status of this RFE to Uncommitted Candidate as we look into potential solutions.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Apr 6, 2021

    In order to avoid doing this much manually, I hope the workaround described below will help you until the RFE is delivered.

    When working with CBU keys I download them in a document
    1. Open the document
    2. Cut and paste every thing to ACS RSS
    3. Scan and replace ADD in CL:ADD
    4. Scan and replace VNDDTA(*NONE) in VNDDTA(*NONE);
    5. Scan and replace 2022-11-25 in '2022-11-25'

    In most cases the keys need to be downloaded to other LPARS with RSS that is easy.

    If the CBU system is a "COLD" target LPAR, I do one thing extra.

    I scan and replace SERIAL(*LOCAL) by SERIAL()
    Afterwards I add the keys to my "WARM" source LPAR.

    Hope this helps you through that time ;-)

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Apr 5, 2021

    Couldn't agree more. The implementation of *ISO with the keys means I always need to cut/paste and then carefully go into each ADDLICKEY command and correct the date to *JOB format.
    Perhaps another solution would be to change the CL command paramater TYPE(*DATE) to accept both *JOB an *ISO formats?

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Apr 5, 2021

    If ESS could output the keys in *LICKEYFILE format, or a CVS format that could be easily uploaded from a Mac or PC to a *LICKEYFILE, then one can apply the keys in one fell swoop with ADDLICKEY LICKEYINP(*LICKEYFILE), and not depend on the ItNoWorkie Java app to download directly to the system.