Using CICS Explorer perspectives

A perspective is a modifiable screen layout that allows you to view information relating to a system or product. Different perspectives contain different sets of views, which are displays of specific CICS® data that relates to the current context or scope. You can customize your perspective by adding, removing, or moving the views in it. CICS Explorer® provides some default perspectives, including CICS Cloud, CICS SM, and SM Administration.

Available perspectives

CICS Explorer has a set of default perspectives, including some that provide CICS functions (CICS Cloud, CICS SM, and SM Administration) and others (Resource, z/OS, and Remote System Explorer) that derive from z/OS® Explorer, based on which CICS Explorer is built. Different perspectives offer different sets of views.
Table 1. Default CICS Explorer perspectives
Perspectives Descriptions
The CICS Cloud perspective To manage your applications, platforms, and policies on the cloud.
The CICS SM perspective To manage your CICS systems.
The SM Administration perspective To manage your systems and workloads for administration.
The z/OS perspective Derived from z/OS Explorer, which you can use to manage your z/OS® artifacts.
The Resource perspective Derived from z/OS Explorer, which you can use to manage projects and their resources.
The Remote System Explorer perspective Derived from z/OS Explorer, which you can use to manage artifacts of your remote systems.

Get started with CICS Explorer perspectives by completing the following tasks.

Opening a perspective for the first time

CICS Explorer displays a Welcome screen when it starts for the first time. Click the Workbench icon Workbench icon in the upper-right corner to go to the workbench.
Welcome view

You are then presented with the default perspective.

Switching to another perspective

To switch to a different perspective, click the Open Perspective icon The Open Perspective icon on the workbench toolbar and select one perspective.

For more ways to switch between perspectives, see Switching between perspectives.

Navigating to connected regions in a perspective

The CICS SM perspective contains the CICSplex Explorer view on the left, which shows all the regions and CICSplexes that CICS Explorer is connected to. You can click a CICS region or CICSplex to see the information about its resources in corresponding views.

Customizing the perspective layout

You can customize the perspective to suit your business needs; for example, you can open and close views, or move and resize views by dragging the view tabs or their borders. Changes to the perspective remain after you reopen CICS Explorer. If you want to save a customized perspective to which you can revert later, save it to the view configuration by clicking Window > Save Perspective As on the main menu. For detailed instructions, see Customizing and saving perspectives. If you want to distribute custom perspectives among multiple end users in your enterprise, see Example: creating and distributing custom perspectives.

To restore the perspective to the last saved layout, click Window > Reset Perspective on the main menu. To reset a perspective to its default layout, click Restore Defaults on the Perspectives pane in the Preferences window. For detailed instructions, see Resetting perspectives.