There is no ability to easily expand all of the nodes of an AF element hierarchy and print or export for offline viewing by people who do not have PI System Explorer installed.

So in an attempt to view the element hierarchy outside of System Explorer I export the database, or even small portions of the element hierarchy, to try to view in Tree form in XML viewers such as XSD Diagram and many others, and keep getting the following error: There is an error in XML document (2, 2). <AF xmlns=''> was not expected

We have a large group of people who aren't PI users that we need their input into the structure of the hierarchy and templates. Therefore, we don't want to put PSE on all their computers for a variety of reasons, but we still want them to be about to view and drill down.

As an administrator I require a better mechanism to manager AF Library objects across multiple AF servers.

I would suggest extending the current library functionality in AF to include the following:
* library can be versioned
* Objects created in AF from a library are read-only and linked to the library. e.g. a user is unable to alter an element template that is created from a library. If the library is updated the linked object in AF is updated. If the object is removed from the library the equivalent object is removed from AF.
* Powershell based interface for the management of libraries on AF servers. This will facilitate automation of the library management. Management would include deploying, updating and removing a library from an AF Server and AF Database.
* Library dependency. A library should allow for dependencies. e.g. A smelter library depends on the core equipment library.

I'm of the opinion that this is an essential element (pun intended) to making AF a truly enterprise solution.

If I have two AF databases, I would like to pull the value of an attribute from one database to another. The string builder path for the other database's attribute requires a value substitution from a non PI point DR from in the target AF DB (which where I want to bring the value). However, AF does not allow me to do this and the value of my string builder DR is the exact path (including the substituted values) I require, but does not bring in the value I need.

For example, I have two AF databases with data of interest:
//Electric City/Meters/Meter_12345678|Data Archive

The attribute Data Archive indicates the name of the Data Archive which contains the PI point DRs for the asset Meter _12345678

I have another database where I need this string value of Data Archive within:
//Electric City/Billing/Accounts/0123|Data Archive

The following is another attribute and its value:
//Electric City/Billing/Accounts/0123|Meter ID
and Meter ID is a string of value Meter_12345678

For the following string builder DR for the attribute //Electric City/Billing/Accounts/0123|Data Archive, I would like to use following configurations to pull the value for Data Archive in:

//Electric City/Meters/'Meter ID'|Data Archive

However, the final value is observed in PSE is the expected path(//Electric City/Meters/Meter_12345678|Data Archive), but does not actually pull in the value from the other database.

I am trying to pull control limits for many different types of measurements from a single table. Some control limits do not have a high limit and others do not have a low limit but I do not want a blank to be recognized as zero because that is misleading. The only solution I am aware of currently is to assign the values in the table as strings but read them as singles at the attribute. Values that are not a number are then read as "No Data".

Although, this creates another issue in that these strings that are read as singles cannot be assigned a source unit of measure and therefore the table lookup cannot convert the units automatically.

Possible solutions could include:
- allowing you to assign a source unit of measure to a value that is converted from a string
- allow null values in tables for data types like single
- a variant data type for tables

Currently it is impossible to create AF Element Template that has dynamic number of Attributes. Example scenarios I have been struggling with are focused on monitoring:
- monitoring many virtual servers with checking available free storage on each disk - each server may have from 2 up to 10 disks
- monitoring of PI OPC Interfaces - some are single interfaces, some in failover which affects a number of machines, heartbeat points etc.

Alternative solution would be to allow Element Template to be created with a group of sub elements in number depending on certain conditions. For one of my described scenarios I would have an Element Template with Attribut which number reflects the number of disks and thus a number of sub elements to be created where one element is considered to be one disk. Each of sub elements in such case follow the same Element Template.

As an AF designer I often have attributes indicating whether an element is enabled or disabled, this could be referring to a piece of equipment taken out of service, or a configuration element indicating a process is deactivated. The attribute is typically a boolean attribute, and I spent a lot of time going from one element to the next in order to disable or enable it, during operation and testing. It would be really helpful if I could tie this "Enabled" status attribute value to the icon PSE shows for an element, in order to quickly identify the elements which are enabled or disabled.

For normal AF databases I could create a PI Builder worksheet preloaded with the configs, but we normally put these configs in the Configuration database and this is not visible through PI Builder.

I envision the normal element icon to be grayed out if the status is disabled, or perhaps a cross/X over the icon. See attached image!