Overview of New Navigator for i

The NEW Navigator for i is a great improvement on the present Navigator.  It is modern (just look at the screen shots), responsive (3 seconds vs 10 seconds), and fairly comprehensive (Active Job columns 126 vs 31).

Click the icon top left (looks like a stack of books) and you get a list view.  Notice the icon changes to squares to take you back to the dashboard view

The four menus are ‘Custom Charts’, ‘Add New Node’, ‘About’ and ‘Serviceability’.  There is a default Custom Chart which opens in a new browser tab.  The refresh rate defaults to 2 minutes.  You can add new charts using SQL statements.  You can have multiple numeric results for a single node or a single numeric result for multiple nodes.

Add New Nwwode is the equivalent of Add Target System, if you have more than one partition.  Once you have double clicked or right click and choose Manage Node, the node name shows in the top bar and on returning to the node dashboard, the current node will be highlighted.  The symbol next to Active, on the right, shows Navigator is using a secure connection.

‘About’ shows a summary of licensed programs and PTFs required for New Navigator and ‘Serviceability’ contains some configuration and logs.

Choose your node and the screen changes completely.

The icons are Home, Work Management, Configuration and Service, System, Monitors, My Work, Network, Security, Users and Groups, Performance, Files System, Bookmarks and Serviceability.  The X at the bottom has text ‘View IBM Navigator for i alerts’ and shows QSYSOPR messages.  In addition, there is a small grey arrow at the bottom of the screen which shows a list of nodes when hovered or remains if clicked.

There are many similarities between the 2 versions.  Nearly all the screens have an Actions button at the top, like present Navigator.  instead of the options changing with context they are greyed out if not applicable.  In lists many lines can be selected, but the whole line is highlighted, there is a count at the bottom and there are ‘Select all’ and ‘Deselect all’ options in ‘Actions’.

There are many improvements.  For instance, under ‘My Work’, while ‘My Messages’ and ‘My Printer Output’ are the same, ‘My Jobs’ now show 23 server jobs, whereas the present Navigator show no jobs until I add a 5250 job.  New options are ‘My Objects’ and ‘My IFS Objects’.

Finally, I personally really like the new Performance screens, there are 470 different screens to choose from.  Here is a taster.

There is so much more to cover in New Nav4i , so watch out for more articles on this great new interface.

Here are some links to IBM documentation

Custom Charts

Performance Data Investigator in Navigator for i

Managing Multiple IBM i Endpoint Nodes

Access Authorization Options

Product Install Requirements

PTF Information

Service Availability (Troubleshooting)

i-UG next event is In Person Only and will be held at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park on the 7^th October.  Number are seriously being limited and I suspect it will be a sold out soon so act now.  For more details check out  www.i-ug.co.uk