Option W – Work List/Search for Tasks

Option W, the Work List, is a useful way to view ISPW Work in Progress. The Work List can be invoked from the ISPW Main Menu or with the WORK command line command from within Option P. As described in Main Menu Option P: Container and Task Lists, the W line command produces a similar list, though it bypasses the input panel shown below and goes directly to the Work List display. 

Purpose

Typically, Task List components are organized in Assignments and Releases. But sometimes developers, project managers, or QA staff may want to see work displayed another way, such as all work in the Change Cycle for a specific Application, for example.

The useful WORK command gives another logical view of both Work in Progress and the historical Audit Trail.

Example

Type WORK on the Command line and press Enter. The Confirm Work List Selection Criteria screen shown in the following figure is displayed.

Option W

The Last Update field is prefilled with the User’s userID. The only other criteria specified is the In Progress field, which is set to Y to display currently active versions that aren’t in Production.

Selecting Online or Batch

This search facility runs online by default, so use it wisely. The more selection criteria you can specify, the more efficiently the request will be processed. It is possible to return nearly all of the Tasks in the entire system! For this reason, if you are performing a search that will return a large number of entries, set the Batch Mode flag to Y to run the search in batch.

Finding All Tasks at a Level

To find all tasks at a particular level, blank out the Last Update field and specify values for Application, Stream, and Level as shown in the following figure.

Find All Tasks at a Level

Setting Default Values

Default values for this selection criteria screen can be specified in User Preference option U.F.4. For more information, see Option U.F.4. It is recommended that, as a minimum, you specify the Application and Stream.

Find All Tasks Last Updated by USER15

To display a list of all active Work in Progress last updated by user USER15, type the userID in the Last Update field and clear the other input fields. Make sure the In Progress field is set to Y. Press Enter to display the Work List of Tasks. Further filtering can be performed as shown in the following figure, by overtyping the pink filter input fields.

Find All Tasks Example

Finding Deploy Parts

To view the Deploy Parts for a Task, use the DP or DT operations from the Work List to jump to the Deploy Request Queue screen shown in the following figure.

Find Deploy Parts

Searching for a Substring Within Tasks

Specify a text substring in the Search Str field to find text within modules. If the text contains a space, use quotes to contain it. If the text contains a quote, use two quotes at the beginning and end of the string.

The selection criteria shown in the following figure, will find all COPY modules at Production in Application PLAY and Stream PLAY that contain the text STAR.

Search for a Substring Within Tasks

The results shown in the following figure are displayed.

Search Results

Valid Line Commands

Operations available from this list are B, CM, H, Q, PR, V, =A, and =R.

For more information about ISPW’s fast invocation mode, see W – Work List/Searching for Tasks.