On current PI Builder 2018 there is no option to select the RecNo attribute for a PI point by default.

For instance, this would be helpful to recover deleted points such as we do with piconfig command. I would like to see if it would be possible to include this option on a future version of PI Builder.

Note: I know we can enable the "recno" object type by typing it out on the header as explained on "KB01413 - Importing Attributes for a Given List of Tags Using PI Builder" but it would be good to have this option by default.

The excel plugin is very useful for making bulk edits and changes.  Unfortunately, all customers either do not have the excel software plugin or flat out do not allow the installation of excel on their machines thus eliminating the ability to utilize the excel plugin.

In these cases, it would be incredibly useful to have the ability to perform the exact same function that PI Builder provides but built into the System Management Tools, System Explorer, etc. so that it is not necessary to have excel installed.  This way, I can export data in a pi builder format, move the file onto a system with excel, make necessary changes, and use that file to "Publish" the changes to the system in question.

The .xml export and import function has too many layers and too much complexity for useful and quick bulk editing.

When I import data using PI Builder, I usually want to filter the data and create calculated columns, but these prove to be more painful than necessary.

If I put filters on the columns containing PI Builder data and then click on the filter dropdown arrow, every column will contain "(Blanks)" as an entry because the 2 blank rows underneath the PI Builder data are included as part of the PI Builder data. This happens because PI Builder modified these rows during the import.

Calculated columns are useful to modify the values in an existing column. For the fill-down to work when you double-click on the fill handle (bottom right corner of a selected cell), the calculated column must be directly beside the PI Builder data. However, this doesn't work because the 2 columns to the right of the PI Builder data are formatted as text, so any formula that you write in them will be treated as text. It is a pain to always eliminate the text formatting or delete the columns.

In both cases, please ensure that PI Builder does not modify more cells than it needs to.

Add Tag Import feature like old "PI Tag Configurator":  PI Builder cannot import attributes of a list of tags pasted into the spreadsheet from another source like "PI Tag Configurator" could.  With PI Builder, if you have want to work on tags that don't group together well by name or description, you have to either make multiple, varied searches or pull in an extra large pack of tags and pair them down.  Also, its tag search is inferior, limited to Name, Source, type, class, units, and description.  There is no way to search by Location1, creation date, etc.  Please review the import and search capabilities of PI Tag Configurator and make equivalent features available in PI Builder.

Currently, PI Builder data is imported row by row. Each imported row causes all volatile cells in all open workbooks and any cells downstream of them in the dependency tree to recalculate. PI Builder will not import a new row until this calculation is complete. If there are too many slow-calculating downstream cells, the entire import can be slowed to a crawl.

Please consider importing data in a way that does not trigger the recalculation of volatile cells as often. One option is to switch to manual calculation before the import and restore the previous calculation mode after the import. Another option is to store the retrieved rows in memory and then write all of the rows at once to the sheet after the import is complete.

Currently, if you publish a PI Point configuration that contains both excdev and excdevpercent or both compdev and compdevpercent, the "percent" versions silently take priority. This means that if a user imports excdev and excdevpercent, edits only excdev, and clicks on Publish, PI Builder will give no indication that the excdev edit was not made.

Please do not make PI Builder silently make decisions for the user. Please throw an error to let the user know that an edit to both excdev and excdevpercent or both compdev and compdevpercent at the same time does not make sense, and let the user change their PI Point configuration to what they intended.

Currently, if there is a problem in the user's PI Builder sheet, the user will not know until they click on "Publish" and see the error messages.

To help avoid this, consider having PI Builder apply Excel's data validation feature to columns that do not have to connect to the PI Data Archive or the PI Asset Framework to be validated. For example, set up data validation to ensure that certain columns contain only numerical values, integers, dates, or numbers in a certain range. For columns with a fixed number of choices (e.g. the point type attribute of PI Points, the "Selected(x)" column), use a data validation dropdown list.