The workbench
The workbench is a single window that consists of views and perspectives.
- Views
- A view is a visual component in the Workbench, which displays related information about the CICSplex. For example, the Tasks view displays information about all the CICS® tasks in the CICSplex or a single CICS region in the CICSplex. You can add, delete, move, and size views in the workbench.
- Perspectives
A perspective is a layout of one or more views in the workbench. CICS Explorer® comes with four perspectives: CICS SM, Resource, SM Administration, and z/OS®. For more information about the perspectives, see the related links later in this topic.
The first time CICS Explorer is started, the Welcome view is displayed. Click the Go to Explorer icon
to minimize the Welcome view and display the default CICS SM perspective. You can open a different perspective by clicking the Open Perspective icon
on the menu bar and clicking a different perspective. You can restore the Welcome view at any time by clicking the Restore Workplace icon
, or by clicking Help > Welcome from the Menu bar.
You can change the layout of the views in a perspective but can always restore the perspective to the last saved configuration by clicking Window > Reset Perspective from the menu bar.
An example Workbench view is shown in the following screen capture.
A shortcut bar appears in the Workbench toolbar. Use the shortcut to open new perspectives and switch between ones already open. The name of the active perspective, in this example CICS SM, is shown in the shortcut bar.

- Shortcut bar
- The shortcut bar
is the place where Fast views are docked. See the Fast views topic for more information.
- Status bar
- The status bar
displays either status messages, error messages, or short descriptions of attributes, depending on the current action.
- Connection status bar
- The connection status bar
displays information about the system connection:
- The connection icon indicating the state of the connection. See Workbench icons for further information.
- A pop-up menu icon to display a list of all defined connections. Click a name in the list to activate the connection.
- A field displaying the current connection. Hover over the name to show the full description or click the name to edit the details.