Client-Requested JES3plus® Functions Take Center Stage as IBM Stops Supporting z/OS V2R5
Phoenix Software continues its focus on developing new functions requested by its JES3plus® Client Advisory Council. “No one knows what they need better than our clients do,” said CTO Ed Jaffe. “Satisfying client enhancement requests delivers the functional improvements they need to operate more efficiently.” Dozens of significant enhancements have been delivered in JES3plus since its first release in April 2020.
The company’s work has been split between strategic and tactical enhancements. A strategic example is the new PreConversion JES Policy support introduced this week in JES3plus V1R6. JES policies are increasingly important as assembler language skills become harder to find. This new policy complements the JobConversion JES Policy support introduced last year with JES3plus V1R5, and we have already begun work on implementing support for SYSOUTGroup JES policies.
A tactical example is the product service level information that is now available on the *INQUIRY MAIN command output. It displays which service is applied in every running instance of JES3plus V1R6 in the complex. This is particularly important when communicating with PSI technical support.
We also assisted a great many clients with successful migrations from z/OS V2R5 JES3 to z/OS 3.1 and z/OS 3.2 running JES3plus. This was important because IBM support for z/OS V2R5 ends October 1, 2026.
(E)JES® received new client-requested functions this year as well. The new SVC Table display has already proven useful to our system support staff ahead of the annual release. (E)JES was enhanced to work with JES3plus V1R6, and we widened the interoperability release window to make release-jump upgrades easier for clients.
In addition, CONDOR®, FALCON®, and CYGNET® were refreshed this year for both z/OS and VSE.
Entrypoint® Enhancements
Over the last year we have implemented over 60 product enhancements and bug fixes to Entrypoint. Many of these have been specifically introduced to provide functionality that was unique to Viking Data Entry, which reached end-of-support earlier this year. In particular, the Linear Output Specification has been updated with several new features including Output Registers and Logical Tables, which allow a single Format/Record to generate multiple lines of output data without requiring any custom logic code. Other features from VDE include the MustComplete attribute, Input Character Sets, SkipSets, and logic functions to enable lookup table support against DBF files. In addition to these new features, we have improved usability by introducing new keyboard shortcuts, and have improved performance in several areas though the use of asynchronous background operations.
Phoenix Software Product Releases: September 2026
Product downloads are available to customers via the Phoenix Software International Support portal. Visit https://phoenixsoftware.com/support.htm#downloads
New product releases include:
- (E)JES V6R6
- CONDOR z/OS 26.6 z/VSE 32.6
- CYGNET z/OS 26.6 z/VSE 32.6
- Entrypoint 16.7
- FALCON z/OS 26.6 z/VSE 32.6
- JESplus V1R6