Zowe CLI: How to Quickly Bring Value to Your Customers
{Ecosystem} The Open Mainframe Project’s Zowe Command Line Interface (CLI) is relatively easy to implement, and very easy to install and use, even for users with no deep programming knowledge. It is also very easy to create scripts using the Zowe CLI commands to automate many tasks that are performed frequently by system administrators and business users. That’s why our clients are showing a lot of interest in using it with our tools. Our output management product teams saw a big opportunity to leverage the Zowe CLI and with minimal effort bring added value to our customers. In this article you can read more about the two approaches we took.
How it all started
I work for Broadcom as a product owner of the teams developing mainframe output management products CA Spool, CA View and CA Deliver. And our development team of the product CA Spool planned the first Zowe CLI implementation after we received a request from one of our customers, who really liked working with Zowe and wanted to be able to use CA Spool native commands through the Zowe CLI. They did not want to use the CA Spool panels but just the terminal, and to create scripts to automate certain tasks. The Broadcom Zowe Hackathon 2019 seemed a good place to test the concept and the customer agreed to join the team during those 2 days and help with both creating the requirements and also the development and testing itself.
On the other hand, the Zowe CLI for, one of our other output management products, CA View was initiated by the team’s Product Manager, who saw a big potential for customers to create automatic scripts for their daily jobs without the need to go to the product UI. Also the Zowe Hackathon was coming and as the Rest API for the product already existed most of the work for the plugin could be done within the hackathon. There was some skepticism about the business value from our management and field team when this was first planned in, but that was about to change.
Zowe Hackathon Experience
During the Zowe Hackathon the first version of the CA Spool Zowe plugin was created. It could not be published as a finished Zowe plugin, but could be usable for our customer to help them with their daily tasks. One of the customer’s employees, was part of the CA Spool Zowe Hackathon team and helped with defining and testing the deliverables, and also participated in the development. The conversion of the prototype into a full plugin was planned for the subsequent quarterly development cycle.
The Zowe CLI plugin for CA View was in a better position from a development perspective as the Rest API already existed, so the hackathon team was able to fully develop the Zowe CLI plugin and test it within the 2 days of the hackathon. All that was needed was to create some additional automated tests, create the documentation and publish the plugin, which was done within the same Product Increment in which the hackathon was held.
The effort of both teams in the Zowe Hackathon was very well received and the CA Spool team won the Prague round of the hackathon and also the final “all Broadcom” round. The CA View team also received a special prize and acknowledgment in the Prague round.
Use Cases
CA Spool Zowe CLI plugin
The following use cases were proposed by the client and were then expanded for more general use:
Native command support — use of CA Spool native commands through the Zowe CLI, so that tasks can be performed through the console or scripts can be created to automate frequent tasks
Monitoring/troubleshooting — ability to create scripts for monitoring environments and to find blocked or offline printers
Reporting — creation of comma separated reports with the number of printed files/pages on each NODE (chargeback or utilization reports)
NODE maintenance — use of scripts to add, modify or delete NODES
CA View Zowe CLI plugin
For CA View, the following use cases were created by the field team after working with the first version of the CA View Zowe CLI plugin:
Offline/Offsite report access — scheduled download of the newest versions of reports for use offline or offsite
Reporting — automated rule based collection of specific data from a report, conversion of the collected text data to CSV format and combining data from multiple reports into one summary Excel report
Troubleshooting — scripts that can send an email to the SYSPROG when offsite, with information about batch jobs that ended with errors
Conclusion
Involving the client in the specification of requirements and also in the development process was an instant winner. This did not just make the client happy, but demonstrated the real value of the Zowe CLI plugin to management as well as other clients.
In the case of the Zowe CLI plugin for CA View, once the potential was recognized, the ability to create a working plugin within the timeframe of the Zowe Hackathon meant that it could be delivered very quickly to both the field team and customers. As no deep technical knowledge is required to use the Zowe CLI and it is very easy to access and use directly from the console, they could immediately start thinking about potential use cases and creating various scripts.
After just a few weeks, the Field Team had already created a number of automated scripts with concrete use cases that they are planning to offer to our customers to both increase customer retention and to win new customers for our Output Management products.
Finding out more
To find out more about Zowe at Broadcom visit this site.
If you enjoyed this blog checkout more medium.com/zowe blogs here. Or, ask a question and join the conversation on the Open Mainframe Project Slack Channel #Zowe-dev, #Zowe-user or #Zowe-onboarding. If this is your first time using the OMP slack channel register here.
