Endevor

Hello everyone, 
Let me introduce myself, I am Karen Colby and I am one of the UX (User Experience) designers working with the CA AppDev products.

I am wondering if you could tell me when you work with Endevor, how you initiate it at your site? Are you provided a menu selection option?  Do you use a TSO command etc.?

Once you start up Endevor, what is the first panel /screen you see?  

If we were to have a link to direct you to Tech support, Education, Documentation from within a panel, where would you like to see this placed?

Thanks much,
Karen

Hi Karen!

The short answer is that I can start Endevor by entering an "E" or "EN" on the Command line or by drilling down into various ISPF screens and invoking Endevor by selecting it on the ISPF Screen. Those who use Quickedit (we don't yet) likely do the same thing; either enter "QE" or somesuch shortcut command or by drilling down into various ISPF screens.

The first screen for Endevor is always the "Environment Selection List".

I believe Quickedit immediately drops you into a Quickedit session.

IMHO, I think the only place where it makes sense to put those references is in the Help screens....

Thanks John, I appreciate your input!

Hi Karen,  I concur with John's comments.  The tutorial option and the changes options can be a good place to put documentation links.  Documentation links specific to administrators can be placed on the Environment panel.  Thanks, Phil

Thanks Phil!

I also agree with John and Phil.

We display a menu:

Quick-edit

Packages

ACM

PDM

Reports

ENDEVOR

The packages option is actually the p option within quick-edit.  It would be better if we could go directly to the packages menu, but we do not know how.  It would also be nice if we could go directly to the batch actions panel, but again we do not know how, or even better if requested actions could be accumulated for future batch execution.  Lastly, it would be beneficial if the reports menu had options to create CSV reports.

Hi Mathew,
Thanks for your input.  If you select the ENDEVOR option from your menu, what panel are you brought to?
Karen

panel C1SM1100 "Environment Selection List".  We place that last on our startup menu because we prefer that everyone utilize one of the other options.  However, if  a developer wants to batch execute multiple actions without relying on AUTO GEN then ENDEVOR is the option that they must use.  If the batch menu could be accessed from Quick-Edit then maybe we would drop ENDEVOR from our menu, or at least hide it.

So We have a variety of methods as we have multiple instances.

I'd like to standardise on a common approach, but I'm not sure of the best approach. I quite like our menu option which allows different displays for Admins than Users and also has a messages section which can be updated with pertinent information.

There is a hyperlink to "our community" site which is an internal intranet based location built on Sharepoint 2013 which has documentation links, best practice guides, support model / how to raise an incident / contact us, a comprehensive piece of information regarding versions of software and the latest on todays buzzword "DevOps".

The option to call Endevor directly from the primary ISPF menu leads to "our" menu. Beyond that (similar to Mathew) we have options. What I don't see the point of having is the Environment Menu Panel (C1SM1100 it would be nice to bypass this and then just use what you type in as sticky) ie a lot of people may use the starting / ending environment. I realise this is our shop specific, we have a display within ISPF that graphically shows the Environment map (which seems nicer). I would like to have an option within ENDEVOR to bypass this (Environment Selection List) panel as it would save time and adds little value.

Regarding documentation links they are already on the changes (C/Z) Panels but our mainframe emulator needs local configuration to use the hotspot feature.

I don't actually want any external links to CA as we have a large number of users and would potentially drown CA with requests if thousands of users start attempting to create tech support accounts.

If you do consider adding links I would ask that they are customisable (the actual links) and have a switch off capability as we are happy with our own approach. Our internal one-stop website has all the links we need. It even looks like my portal idea is under review now  

As I am now looking to move from CARMA to the CA Eclipse interface, I would be interested to know how you are thinking of integrating links into the web interface aspect also.

We have a secondary panel "E" on ISR@PRIM to provide access to multiple applications. Endevor, et. al., are on that panel (in alpha order):

E EXTENSIONS - CPCW Extensions to ISPF/PDF

Next Panel:

CF - Online CICS forms
DB - DB2
EN - Endevor Software Mgr
FA - File Aid for MVS
HSM - HSM Recall and Recovery

OI - Online Information System 

PFX - Job History System - Prod Fix

PD - Parallel Development Mgr

XP - XPEDITER-Testing - Debugging Tool
QE - Endevor Quick Edit

Most users just do E.EN. Quickedit can be accessed directly using QE command (ISPF Macro I believe).

I agree with the others that the help/tutorial screens are a logical locations for any external links.

KT