Color dialog

This dialog allows you to assign the colors shown in the configuration diagram to the features they represent. It is called by the View, Colors... menu item. This dialog allows you to allocate your own colors for warnings and status.

If the user has selected the Show status on diagram checkbox in the Colors dialog, then the Refresh, Status menu option can be used to color objects to reflect status information with respect to the focus host. The following objects on the HCM diagram will be affected by the coloring:

CHPIDs - Color will be determined by the status of the CHPID itself plus the SCP status of all CTC (or BCTC) devices that represent the CHPID in CTC connections to the focus host.
Switches - Color will be determined by the operating status of the switch plus the SCP status of the switch's device.
Integrated controllers - Color will be determined by the SCP status of the devices that the controller contains.
Units within strings - Color will be determined by the SCP status of the devices that the unit contains.

Where more than one state or visual warning needs to be presented, the single most important state will be shown. Furthermore, for units and integrated controllers there will usually be more than one IODF object contained in the physical object. In such cases, the color displayed will reflect the status of the contained object with the most important state.

The status colors remain in effect on the diagram as long as the view contains only objects that were visible at the time of the last status refresh. The status time stamp in the status bar reflects this time. However, as soon as the view changes to include objects that were not visible when the time stamp was updated, then the coloring (and the time stamp) will be cleared.

This means that you can filter the diagram to show a large set of objects (e.g. all DASD in the active sysplex), invoke Refresh, Status once, and then switch back and forth between this larger view and views that show only subsets (e.g. use F4 to crop to one controller, and then F3 to go back to the larger view) without invalidating the status information. As soon as another object is shown in the view (e.g. a tape controller), then the colors and the status time stamp will be cleared, and "Refresh Status" would have to be issued again to show the status colors.