Are you aware that IBM has technology preview for a mobile solution to access and manage your IBM i? The Navigator for i Web console is optimized for a desktop browser and isn’t a general interface for mobile device access. The mobile technology preview provides a browser-based interface that uses IBM i Access for Web and is optimized for small-screen mobile devices.
While this blog was written when the technology preview came out, the information here is applicable to using this product today.
It’s very easy to get started. You need to ensure you have installed the required PTFs and have the IBM i Access for Web product (5770-XH2) installed and configured. I won’t go into the details here as all the information is documented on the i Access – Mobile web page.
With this mobile support, you can do many management tasks from your mobile devices, including managing jobs, messages, output, view installed products, PTFs and PTF Groups, system values and so much more—including a 5250 emulator in case you have to check on something from your beloved green screen!
The main navigation menu is a simple categorization of topics—expand a section to see the functions in that category. In my example, I have expanded the “System” category and you can see the options available there.
Active jobs are found in the “Jobs” category; you can also view user jobs and server jobs. The jobs are displayed in one long list so you don’t have to page through the list. You can customize the jobs view with filters to limit what you see in the list and you can sort on a column, as you would expect. You can then do basic drill-down into job information as well as hold/release jobs, end a job, view the job log, and view printer output as well as job properties. Some of actions are accessed via the icons on the right side of the table. What impresses me is how fast this interface is.
System values are accessed from the “System” category, and you have options to display the system values by category as you can with Navigator. However, this mobile interface has one additional category of “All,” which lets you display ALL the system values in one list—a super easy way to check on the settings very quickly.
And finally, 5250. Yes, you can get a 5250 session on your mobile device. I wouldn’t use this for much more than a quick check on things that I cannot get to from the GUI.
As more and more of us have mobile phones or tablets, having a management interface that works nicely on these devices is essential.
Give it a try, you might like it.
This blog post was edited to fix broken links on April 12, 2020.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.