Messages 101

• A message is a communication sent from one point in the 400 to another.

Sources of Messages

• Messages can be sent by human beings, normally to other human beings, or work stations.
• Messages can be sent by software, to other software, to human beings, to message queues waiting on some reponse.
  • We can have software setup, such as in the job scheduler (GO CMDSCDE), to send us standard messages on some calendar rotation.
    • Anyone signed on at 3 pm on Friday is reminded that we do not need to have our PCs etc. powered on for the whole weekend.
    • After we get our Fiscal Calendar setup for the next year, we might want to setup the scheduler so that one week and a day before each end-fiscal (on a Friday morning) a message goes to all users:
      • Reminder ... End Next Week is End Month ____ (whatever month) ... followed by a reminder check list of actions desired to be caught up on by most everyone before we hit that end fiscal deadline.
    • Al has standard stuff supposed to be run on various nites of the week, and gets reminder message what all that is as a check list, which can also help whoever fills in when Al is sick or out of town.
• Messages can come from the 400 itself.
  • For example, the UPS had detected a power outage, switched to battery power, is running low on that, will have to do a safe shutdown, so we all get a message telling us how many minutes we have left to get our interactive jobs to an orderly conclusion.

Where Messages show up

• Bottom of screen has a message line
• A Break message can "pop-up" into the middle of what we were doing
  • This is sometimes called a RUDE interruption message
• We can go to a display listing current messages

Types of Messages

Informational Messages

• They do not require a reply.
• Example, in user profile we can have a setting so that when some report we created finishes printing, we get a message that it got done Ok.
  • This can be helpful when teams of people are creating reports and printing each other's ... we now know that some step got done by our co-workers.
• Example, one user plans to run some major update run, but gives co-workers the opportunity to alter planned schedule.
  • If there are no objections, I plan to run a shop order purge tomorrow night.
• Perhaps several people were waiting on some co-worker to get done with something
  • Hey everybody, we got done entering the engineering changes on part ZXYC ... Y"all can now process orders on it.

Inquiry Messages

• An inquiry message needs a reply. It may also contain information.
• Example ... we might want to ask some co-worker a question
  • Hey Brenda, did that part # 123 get shipped today, and how many went out?
  • Hey Al, when was the last time you ran a standard cost rollup?
• Example ... some software may need human help
  • Hey guys, printer LAWPRTLP has a problem with report ALCOMPILE ... your choices are:
    • ignore that report, and continue with the next one
    • restart that report on page one
    • bunch of other options
  • we can then review the options and take what seems most appropriate

Message Queues

• Some messages do not go immediately to user screen, instead they end up in a message queue.
  • A queue is a line of things waiting their turn for resolution.
  • The 400 has message queues
  • The 400 has job queues ... see JOBQ and Jobs for more info
• We can respond to messages in message queue in any sequence

There are message queues for special 400 functions such as

• DSPMSG QSYSOPR = System Operator Queue
• There are other ones
• We can setup some of our own, such as a message queue to track settings used for some regularly run batch jobs

When we sign onto the 400 we have one message queue for messages sent to our user name, and one for messages sent to our work station. Depending on our user profile settings, and our message queue delivery mode, we will get some indication at bottom of screen when there are new messages for us.

We may have more than one work station sign on session concurrently. The first one we signed on as "owns" our message queue ... that first sign on session when looking at our messages can F6 to get to the system operator messages.