PI Connectors
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PI Connectors feedback page!
We created this forum to hear your ideas, feature suggestions and feedback on PI Connectors. Please suggest your most important features and design change ideas on this site, and vote for your favorite ideas.
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Support PI tag renaming
Tags created by a PI Connector can be renamed, but these renamed points can be "forgotten" if the Connector's point cache is lost. Updating the Tag Mapping configuration file can avoid this cache loss, but I would like to be able to rename Connector tags without updating this configuration file.
174 votesWe plan to provide users the ability to pick their tag naming convention and not worry about managing a cache file. We are working on implementing this functionality with PI Connector for OPC UA.
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Monitoring Connector health
Support for health tags (similar to UniInt health tags), Windows performance counters, or any other way to bring Connector status and health information into PI tags to put them side-by-side with Interface health monitoring.
133 votesWe understand and acknowledge the importance of this request. We are evaluating how to provide a homogeneous and unified experience for health information across all our connectors.
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Output tags on connectors
Sometimes we need to send data back to our sources. Connectors should support output tags
21 votes -
Allow restarting on a data source basis instead of having to restart the connector
Example 1 - OPC
If a new connection needs to be made to one OPC Server, restarting the connector forces all data sources (and potentially connections to multiple OPC Servers) to be restarted.Example 2 - UFL
If my web service is down and I do not want to connector to keep trying to access to REST Server, I cannot stop/disable only one data source20 votes -
PI Connector for IEC 60870-5-104 bi-directional between SCADA and PI
RWE Power AG
“But one really important feature we need, is the ability to write back from PI into the SCADA system
Until now, we couldn’t find anything about this (important) functionality.
So our question is if we can use this connector bi-directional?
And if not, is this already in the roadmap for this connector?”20 votesCan you share with us any info about your use case for sending data back to the SCADA system? For example, what is the purpose of that data? How many tags and how often will you send?
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Ability for PI Connectors to create future data point
Add the ability for PI Connectors to create future data point. This is especially useful for the PI Connector for UFL. The current workaround is to manually create the point as a StoredValues=FutureData.
18 votes -
Option to remove/edit template prefix
Allow for connectors to create templates without the fixed prefix. E.g. The option to name an AF template "templatename" and not "UFL.templatename"
17 votes -
Merge Two Tags or Copy Tag Data to a New Point
Sometimes, when dealing with APS, a new TAG is generated for an existing point. Data stops going to the old point. It would be nice if there was an easy way, within the gui (not manually dumping and importing) that we could take the values from one tag, and place it into the new tag.
There are other times when we may want to copy all historical values from a tag, and place it into a new tag.
10 votes -
Support Assigning Point Sources for Connectors
Connectors currently assign point sources; this is not user configurable. In addition, all connector of like kind get the same point source. This makes it difficult to determine which tags "belong" to which connector node. Users would like to be able to monitor\count\filter searches based on connector node.
10 votes -
Put a REST endpoint on all connectors
It would be very useful to see the data flowing through a connector at the edge, or even the data buffered in a connector. Every connector could have a rest endpoint with the same methods as PI Web API. Possible uses:
-Diagnose connection/configuration issues
-Attach a dashboard directly to the connector on the node (for example a display on a monitor in a mining truck)
-Attach third party software for local analysis or alarming of equipment status (for example, alerting the driver of a truck of important events)I'm sure there are many others...
8 votes -
Control which PI/AF servers each data source sends data to.
Right now, for one instance of the connector, all configured data sources will send data to all configured PI Data Archives and PI AF Servers. It is all or nothing. Due to the fact that you cannot have multiple instances of the same connector on any given node at a time, if you want this kind of granular control you would need an entirely new node and another connector. In the past, it was trivial to have multiple interfaces instances on the same node to send different data to different PI Data Archives; connectors should allow this capability.
8 votes -
Have option to enable exception on Connectors.
There are use cases where data is sent over networks with latency (satellite link, for example) so being able to filter out noise at the connector is important. This is also important when a connector sends data to a local PI Server in the field (low latency), but then PItoPI is used to send snapshot updates to a central PI Server over a high latency link.
7 votes -
PI Connector Relay support write modes
While writing data to PI through the connector relay there seems to be no option to control the write mode . E.g."[-109] Value at This Time Already Exists" is shown in the logs if the archive already contains an event with the same timestamp. The default update option can be "Replace" instead of NoReplace. Other write options can be made configurable.
7 votes -
PI Point name Illegal character handling in PI Connectors
Currently source points for PI Connectors that contain illegal characters are handled differently depending on the PI Connector. Some will replace the character while others will map an illegal character replacement when creating the PI Point. These illegal characters should be dealt with the same across all PI Connectors. Examples of illegal data source Characters: * ' ? ; { } [ ] | \ ` "
6 votesWe have started implementing a way to handle illegal characters in Wonderware and UFL Connector. If this behavior is desired for a connector besides Wonderware and UFL kindly leave a comment below.
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Exclude Bad values from data collection in PI Connectors
PI connectors such as OPC UA, Wonderware and Cygnet send BAD values from the data source. We would like the option to filter these values out at the connector level such that they do not make the PI Data Archive.
5 votes -
Allow the AF root element name to be configurable
The root element in AF is determined by the Connector code. Allow the name of the root element to be specified by the user.
5 votes -
Make "Cancel" a button, not a link
In the configuration page of any data source, there is a "Save" button and a "Cancel" link. This is unnecessarily inconsistent. Please make "Cancel" a button.
5 votes -
Write an error message to logs when no destination PI Data Archive is specified
Ran into this problem when configuring a new UFL connector. After install, I went straight to configuring my .ini--forgetting to add the PI Data Archive (in fact, the connector was actually installed on the DA node).
I had the text files coming in and being processed by the connector without any errors, but saw nothing being created in my data archive. Eventually, I realized I had forgotten to add my destination server. This is an error you would typically never run into with interfaces since they require you to specify a destination when configuring a new instance. There should at…
5 votes -
Better error handling in DCM UI
For some cases where disallowed or poor configuration causes unexpected behavior, the UI should give a visual indicator and explanation. Two examples:
1. No write access for Relay to AF DB when using the PSC. Result: replication of AF objects fails with many error messages. Digging through log, found a message that indicated permissions issue on target AF DB. In DCM, all was green. Would have been good to have an error or warning symbol on the Relay object with message about missing write permissions on Destination.
2. Added a second destination AF DB with reference to same Data Archive. …4 votes -
Simple, readable, user-friendly names for all downloadable files
OSIsoft's downloadable files are inconsistently named; use hyphens (-), underscores (_), and concatenations instead of spaces; and sometimes contain unnecessary abbreviations.
For users who keep their OSIsoft files in the same folder, this means either grouping files into subfolders that have readable names or renaming the individual files if they want to identify their files by readable names.
Please consider using straightforward, intuitive names for OSIsoft's files.
Some examples (top is the current name, bottom is the proposed name):
OSIsoft.UFL1.1.0.76.exe
PI Connector for UFL 1.1.0.76.exeRDBMSPIx643.23.3.7.exe
PI Interface for RDBMS (x64) 3.23.3.7.exePIDataLink2017.exe
PI…4 votes
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