Take Control of your MOM 2005 Operator Console Experience with .omc Files

The MOM 2005 Operator Console has a great hidden feature most people don't know about - .omc files!  A .omc file is a file which stores your personalization settings for the console session.  You can do a File/Save As at any time to start a new .omc file.  From then on, while you have the file "open" your personalization settings will be stored in the .omc file.  You can then put the .omc file on your desktop and open the console to a personalized view of the console.

Things that are stored in the .omc file:

• Connection settings such as which Management Server to connect to.
• Column hide/show settings per view
• Column size settings per view
• Column order settings per view
• Column sort order per view
• Number of panes - if you use the multipane view feature
• Last view (or views in multipane) that you were looking at
• Other stuff - open a .omc file in notepad to browse the XML and see what other stuff is stored in there
  

How is this useful?  Here are some ideas how to take advantage of this feature:

• Save a .omc file for each of the Management Groups that you connect to on your desktop.  Then you can connect directly to the Management Group you need to without having to go to File/Console Settings to change it.
• Save a .omc file for a particular layout of a multipane console
• Use a single .omc file that all of your operators launch the console from so that they all get a consistent experience
• Save a .omc file for a favorite view that you like to start in.  That way when you launch the console you can always start there instead of the last view that you looked at.
• Launch the console from the command line or Start/Run by pointing to the .omc file
• Store your .omc file in a location that you normally backup files in to preserve your customizations in case of a disk failure.
  

Give it a try!  Here are the steps:

• Open the console
• Go the main menu and choose File/Save As
• Choose a location where you want to save your .omc file
• Get the console configured the way that you want - the changes you make will be written to the .omc file while you work
• File/Save at any time or close the console which will save the .omc file before exiting
• Open the console by launching the .omc file instead of the usual Start/Program Files method
   

Leave a comment to tell me if you think this is a useful feature or not!