Accessing documents in IFS with Excel from the iSeries

We are creating some PDF files and Excel files on our iSeries and placing
them in the IFS. 

I would like to give the users the ability to access these from their green
screen application.

I have tried STRPCCMD ('START Y:/REPORTS/ITDEPT/SALESRPT.PDF')

Which works fine but requires all users to map their drive Y the same.

And also requires that the user already be logged on to the Y drive (does
not prompt for user id and password)

 

I want to display these files from an iSeries application and give the user
the option to view the pdf and excel files without starting a program on
their PC

 

My questions are (bear with me if these are dumb questions, Running PC
commands from the iSeries is new to me): 

1) Is there another way to do this without a socket program?

2) I can create a share from the iSeries, can I map a drive from the
iSeries?

3) Can I check to see if a drive is mapped (from an iSeries using RPG or CL)

4) The users may put their PDF and Excel files into different directories in
the IFS, The program knows exactly where the PDF and Excel files are (has
the complete IFS path name) I do not want to create a share of the IFS root,
is there a better way to run the STRPCCMD to allow this (without making the
user key in the directory path)

Example I have a database with /REPORTS/ITDEPT/SALES.PDF in it, The easiest
thing would be to have all users map drive Y to the root then the STRPCCMD
at the beginning of this email would work for them all, however since I do
not want the Y drive mapped to the root, I am looking for other
possibilities. Has anyone done anything like this and if so how did you
implement?

 

 

Thanks

 

John