Zowe Chat

Zowe Chat is a chatting application for you to operate z/OS itself including job, dataset, USS file, error code, console command etc. from channels of 3 popular chat tools including Mattermost, Slack, Microsoft Teams. Extendibility also is provided for users to create their own plugins to extend capabilities of Zowe Chat as plugins.

Features

Operate z/OS job
Operate z/OS dataset
Operate z/OS USS file
Query z/OS error code
Issue z/OS console command
Extendibility with plugin

Projects

There are four projects below under Zowe Chat repository.

Documentation

For detailed information about how to install, configure, and use Zowe Chat, see Zowe Chat Documentation.

Contribution guidelines

The following information is critical to working with the code, running/writing/maintaining automated tests, developing consistent syntax in your plug-in, and ensuring that your plug-in integrates with Zowe CLI properly:

For more information about ...	See:
General guidelines that apply to contributing to Zowe Chat	Contribution Guidelines
Documentation that describes the features of the Common Bot Framework	About Common Bot Framework

Steps to build Zowe Chat

Environment variables
- NODE_ENV
Specifies the building environment for your mono-repo
- RELEASE_TYPE
Specifies the release type of your building result
- RELEASE_VERSION
Specifies the release version of your building result
Build steps
- Clone the repo
- Go to the directory where Zowe Chat repo is cloned
- Run the command below to build the whole workspaces
```
npm run installAll
npm run buildAll
```
  Note: You can also to build single project by specifying the detailed project name. e.g. use the command npm run build --workspace=@zowe/chat to build only chat project.

Steps to run Zowe Chat server

Prerequisite: the connection with your chat tool and related bot app are ready
Run from local laptop for development

Note: Depending on chat tool requirement and your laptop network environment, not all chat clients will work when running the project locally (i.e. MSTeams)
- Execute npm run buildAll to build all projects
- Execute npm run startLocal to set up a local environment in the folder $PROJECT_ROOT/.build based on the previous build result
  
  Note: This will fail on first invocation.
- Configure your local environment in the $PROJECT_ROOT/.build/zoweChat/config folder
- Re-execute npm run startLocal command to start Zowe Chat server locally
  
  Note: This will not over-write changes to your configuration
- Launch your chat tool client and chat with your bot
Run from your xLinux or zLinux server for production
- Execute npm run packagingAll to build and package the project
  
  Note: Your must set the three required environment variables (NODE_ENV, RELEASE_TYPE, RELEASE_VERSION) for packaging first
- Upload your building result $PROJECT_ROOT/release/zowe-chat-v<version>-.tar.gz to your Linux server
- Logon your Linux server, create one folder and unpack the building result there
- Set and update required environment variables
```
export ZOWE_CHAT_HOME=<your created folder>/zoweChat
export ZOWE_CHAT_PLUGIN_HOME=<your created folder>/plugins
export PATH=$PATH:$ZOWE_CHAT_HOME/bin
```
- Update the plugin configuration file $ZOWE_CHAT_PLUGIN_HOME/plugin.yaml if necessary
- Execute the commands below to install local dependencies
```
cd $ZOWE_CHAT_HOME/node_modules/i18next
npm link
cd  $ZOWE_CHAT_PLUGIN_HOME/@zowe/clicmd
npm link $ZOWE_CHAT_HOME
npm link i18next
cd  $ZOWE_CHAT_PLUGIN_HOME/@zowe/zos
npm link $ZOWE_CHAT_HOME
npm link i18next
```
- Update Zowe Chat, chat tool and z/OSMF server configuration per your environment
```
$ZOWE_CHAT_HOME/config/chatServer.yaml
$ZOWE_CHAT_HOME/config/zosmfServer.yaml
$ZOWE_CHAT_HOME/config/chatTools/<mattermost | msteams | slack>.yaml
```
- Execute chatsvr start to start your Zowe Chat server
- chatsvr status - Check your Zowe Chat server status
- chatsvr stop - Stop your Zowe Chat server
- chatsvr restart - Restart your Zowe Chat server
- Launch your chat tool client and chat with your bot

Hosting infrastructure for this project is supported by:

zowe / zowe-chat

readme