Designing Screens › Screens and Templates Design › Define Special Fields

Define Special Fields

Special fields implement special attributes that are appropriate for placement on a screen.

The following lists details the special fields that are available when using the Screen Design tool:

• Current Date—The system date at the time the procedure associated with the screen is executed.
• Current Time—The system time at which the procedure associated with the screen is executed.
• Transaction Code—The field required by transaction-oriented teleprocessing monitors (such as IMS and CICS) to identify the programs required to execute the procedure step.

  CA Gen's screen generation, a construction facility, requires that Transaction Code appear as the first item (that is, in the upper-left) on each screen.

• Command Area—Where a terminal user may specify a value for the Command special attribute.

  System Error Message—Where messages associated with exit states are displayed.

• Program Function Keys—Where a list of the function keys available for the procedure step can be displayed on a single line as a reminder to the user.
• Terminal ID—Displays the system terminal identification of the terminal on which the screen is displayed.
• User ID—Displays the User ID by which the terminal user is known to the teleprocessing monitor.
• Printer ID—lets a user specify the system terminal identification of a printer on which the screen will print, should the user request it.
• Local System ID—Displays the identity given to the processor and possibly the service under which the procedure step is executing (for instance, the kind of teleprocessing monitor, for example, IMS, CICS, TSO).
• Panel ID—Displays the mapname associated with the screen. Mapnames are assigned during construction. For more information, see the Toolset Help.
• Scroll Indicator Message—Used for automatically scrolled repeating groups. If there are more items in the repeating group than appear on the screen, it displays as MORE: followed by a minus sign (“-”) to indicate there are items preceding the first occurrence displayed, a plus sign (“+”) to indicate that there are items following the last occurrence displayed, or both.
• Scroll Amount Message—Prompts the user to specify the scrolling interval desired. Options are:
  • CURS

    (for cursor, or single line scrolling)

  • HALF
  • PAGE
• Scroll Location Message—Used for automatically scrolled repeating groups. It displays a message in the form:

  LINES aaa to bbb of ccc
  

  where:

  • aaa is the occurrence number, within the repeating group view, of the first occurrence displayed on the screen.
  • bbb is the occurrence number of the last occurrence displayed on the screen.
  • ccc is the occurrence number of the last populated occurrence in the repeating group view.
• Next Transaction—Where the terminal user can specify a transaction code and formatted input to invoke a transaction. This is usually one not generated by CA Gen. The information placed in this field is processed as though the user had cleared the screen and entered Clear Screen Input to invoke the transaction.

The properties of special fields are the same as for fields, with the following exceptions:

• Do not require import or export data views.
• May not be implemented as hidden fields.
• May not have edit patterns.