Monitoring Remote Workstations

From: Artemio Llena To: All

We have users at remote sites who dial in to our switched lines on the AS/400. I want to be able to disconnect workstations which are on a menu screen and have not been doing any activity for a specified length of time. Is there any command or tool in OS/400 that would be able to do that? We are going to set up a hunt group in our phone system and I would like to write a CL program that would monitor users who dial in and just leave their stations idle. If it finds no activity in a specified time, it would disconnect the line so that another user can dial in and use that line.

From: John Brown To: Artemio Llena

There should be an inactivity timer on either the line description or the controller description that should do the trick.

From: David Wallen To: Artemio Llena

The Work Management Guide contains a section on Automatically Ending Inactive Interactive Jobs. It has a program that monitors the message queue specified in system value QINACTMSGQ. We use a program that receives the message and checks in a keyed file whether that workstation is eligible for the end function or not. Our program allows generic entries, such as "PAY*" for all payroll devices (we didn't want to sign off a payroll user in the middle of a batch during break, whereas some sites might want to end a live, possibly unattended payroll display).

From: Artemio Llena To: John Brown

I forgot to mention in my question that the remote stations are ASCII display stations that go through an asynchronous line to a protocol converter and then to a port on CTL01. They don't use a line or controller description. But your tip about the Inactivity Timer parameter was a big help. I looked into the device description of the workstation and it also has an Inactivity Timer parameter for ASCII display stations.