Running the Mail Manager sample on z/OS

To start the sample in the CICS Transaction Server for z/OS environment, run transaction MAIL. If we have not already signed on to CICS, the application prompts you to enter a user ID to which it can send your mail.

In TSO

The user's TSO ID

In CICS

The user's CICS sign-on or the user ID entered by the user when prompted when the Mail Manager started

All parts of the queue names that the Mail Manager uses must be uppercase.

• Read incoming mail
• Send mail
• Create nickname

The menu panel also shows you how many messages are waiting on your mail queue. Each of the menu options displays a further panel:

Read incoming mail

The Mail Manager displays a list of the messages that are on your mail queue. (Only the first 99 messages on the queue are displayed.) For an example of this panel, see Figure 1. When you select a message from this list, the contents of the message are displayed (see Figure 2 ).

Send mail

A panel prompts you to enter:

• The name of the user to whom we want to send a message
• The name of the queue manager that owns their mail queue
• The text of our message

In the user name field, we can enter either a user ID or a nickname that you created using the Mail Manager. We can leave the queue manager name field blank if the user's mail queue is owned by the same queue manager that we are using, and we must leave it blank if you entered a nickname in the user name field:

• If you specify only a user name, the program first assumes that the name is a nickname, and sends the message to the object defined by that name. If there is no such nickname, the program attempts to send the message to a local queue of that name.
• If you specify both a user name and a queue manager name, the program sends the message to the mail queue that is defined by those two names.

For example, if we want to send a message to user JONESM on remote queue manager QM12, you could send them a message in either of two ways:

• Use both fields to specify user JONESM at queue manager QM12.
• Define a nickname (for example, MARY) for that user and send them a message by putting MARY in the user name field and nothing in the queue manager name field.

Create nickname

We can define an easy-to-remember name that we can use when you send a message to another user who you contact frequently. You are prompted to enter the user ID of the other user and the name of the queue manager that owns their mail queue.

Nicknames are queues that have names of the form CSQ4SAMP.MAILMGR. userid.nickname, where userid is your own user ID and nickname is the nickname that we want to use. With names structured in this way, users can each have their own set of nicknames.

The type of queue that the program creates depends on how you complete the fields of the Create Nickname panel:

• If you specify only a user name, or the queue manager name is the same as that of the queue manager to which the Mail Manager is connected, the program creates an alias queue.
• If you specify both a user name and a queue manager name (and the queue manager is not the one to which the Mail Manager is connected), the program creates a local definition of a remote queue. The program does not check the existence of the queue to which this definition resolves, or even that the remote queue manager exists.

For example, if your own user ID is SMITHK and you create a nickname called MARY for user JONESM (who uses the remote queue manager QM12), the nickname program creates a local definition of a remote queue named CSQ4SAMP.MAILMGR.SMITHK.MARY. This definition resolves to Mary's mail queue, which is CSQ4SAMP.MAILMGR.JONESM at queue manager QM12. If we are using queue manager QM12 yourself, the program instead creates an alias queue of the same name (CSQ4SAMP.MAILMGR.SMITHK.MARY).

The C version of the TSO application makes greater use of ISPF's message-handling capabilities than does the COBOL version. We might notice that different error messages are displayed by the C and COBOL versions.