The SAS GUI provides an easy way of running tasks without having to memorize commands. The GUI is specially intended for interactive analysis of XMM-Newton data, and can be started by typing sas on the command line. This should display a main window similar to the one shown on figure 1.
The upper half of the window is what is called task browser, which allows the user to select and run tasks. The lower half of the window is called log panel, and is used to show messages when the selected task is ran, including warnings and error messages. At the very bottom of the window is a message panel which shows transient messages.