KB00868 recommends Asset Analytics as the right job, but there are some major limitations that inhibit ease of use and deployment, specifically around operations on >1 attribute or tag simultaneously.

To improve this, AF analyses functions that take in data of type "attribute attname" should be able to process an expression that returns type attribute. Perhaps limited to periodic analyses other toggleable somehow, as there is potential to use a lot of CPU cycles.

== Example 1: Totalized Mass Flow ==
Given FIT-001 and DIT-002, return the totalized mass flow (say, kg) over an interval. The current process:
1. Create short-interval periodic, or event-based analyses to write the product of flow & density to a tag-linked attribute WIT-003 (I don't think you can use an attribute as we care about the history).
2. TagTot(WIT-003, '*'. '*-1w')
Better solution:
AF should be able to see that I'm asking for a 1-week total of an expression, so run the expression and totalize the result.
TagTot((FIT-001 * DIT-002), '*'. '*-1w')
This is basically what the SUMPRODUCT function in Excel does, and we haven't found a better way to do it in AF yet.

== 2. Conditional Expressions ==
We monitor processes and create KPIs for utilization and value delivered. PIAF makes it cumbersome to compute utilization or value based on multiple conditions. Utilization of an application APP-001 might depend on x=1, y=2, z=3.
Current process:
1. Create short-interval periodic, or event-based analyses to write the result of ('x' = 1) AND ('y' = 2) AND ('z' = 3) to a tag-based attribute, MYTAG-001.
2. Create an analysis to run TimeEq('MYTAG-001', '*', '*-1w', 'true')
Better solution:
AF should be able to process something like this:
TimeEq((('x' = 1) AND ('y' = 2) AND ('z' = 3)), '*', '*-1w', 'true')

The current process is inefficient and a bad use of tags (both a waste of a tag license and adding a low-value intermediary calculated result to the data archive). There are also complexities around scheduling the preliminary analytics to ensure the results are ready for the insight-generating analytics.

Thanks for your feedback. I'd also be overjoyed to hear there's an easy solution we're overlooking.

When the PI Analysis service determines an Analysis should be Suspended, it should also set any output Attributes to be Excluded. As the Analysis is Suspended, it will not output any results and if it has always been Suspended, the output Tags will never get created. Excluding the output Attributes will keep the Element looking clean and also allow dependent Analyses to go into a Suspended state instead of throwing an error when they can't find the Tags. Similarly it will prevent other applications (OSIsoft and third parties) from querying the Attributes and also throwing errors, causing performance issues.

Automatically suspended Analyses when the inputs are excluded was an extremely useful feature and has made supporting and maintaining an AF database easier. Automatically excluding the output attributes is a natural progression of this feature and will make AF database even more easier to maintain.

Originally posted on PI Square at https://pisquare.osisoft.com/ideas/5538-easily-deploying-and-maintaining-af-objects-in-multiple-remote-af-databases

Today, one of the method that can be used to selectively reconcile object changes (including templates, analyses, UOM, etc.) between source and destination servers is using Excel (in order to keep track of object changes and/or object deletions). However, it is very time-consuming and prone to errors.
 
Inspired in the current project I am working on (containing a central AF server and remote AF servers), it would be great to have a tool that allowed us to deploy and maintain all types of AF objects in a selective way in multiple remote AF servers.
 
Here is a use case:
 
The user selects the desired source objects (templates, elements, analyses, enumerations, UOMs, etc.) and export (or "publish") them to several destinations, at once, after of the press of a button (instead of “live” sync). The user selects what to be exported or synchronized to each destination, and not necessarily the same group of objects would be exported/sync to all destinations: each destination may contain different set of elements and templates.The synchronization would support name changes, object additions and deletions (similar to what is available in PI System Connector today)The user should be warned if he tries to export an element that depends on an enumeration or UOM (*) that is not included in the object set being exported.The user should be optionally warned about the attributes, analyses, etc. that will be deleted from the destination databases, if the corresponding ones have been deleted from the source templates or elements.The user should be able reconcile tag name changes: if the tag name convention is changed in the source attribute set with auto-tag creation, the tags created at the destination should be renamed as per new substitution parameters string.User should be able to save/load different export scenarios. 
(*) You may ask: why not export the entire UOM? The answer is because the source server may be a development server and may contain UOMs that were added for other type of industries, which would be irrelevant in some production environments.

When adding a Mapping to an Identity in the AF Server this will always generate a new mapping linked to a user/group account.

If this user/group account it's already mapped to an identity then, by default, it will add 1 to the mapping name.

If I have a user called PISCHOOL\u602 and I add it to an identity Engineers it will generate a mapping called PISCHOOL\U602. If I add this same user to another identity like Support then it will by default generate a mapping called PISCHOOL\U603.

This can be misleading since the PISCHOOL\U603 user might already exist and we could think that this user its already mapped to an identity.

I would like to suggest to use the same method use in the PI Data Archive where the mappings are unique and the identities are added to them.

Please see the images attached for a graphic example.

As a PI System administator of a busy PI Data Archive, I find that my message logs are unwieldy. I can miss important messages in the flood of connection messages and other repetitive messages. I would like to be able to search my message logs while excluding certain message types (like in Event Viewer). For example, I would like to be able to run a query that excludes connection messages from pinetmgr and "User query failed" messages so I can quickly narrow in the problem I'm looking for.

Filtering on severity has proven an imperfect solution because sometimes important messages are written with a low severity level.

It would be nice to have the option to select either starttime or endtime of the eventframe as the timestamp for the value that will be written a PI tag using the Outputs at close feature in Event Frames. Currently, it will only write the value with a timestamp of the endtime of the event frame.

Use case:

I have an event frame and I would like to see the average of an attribute value for that duration of that time frame on PI Vision. The expectation is to see a horizontal line indicating the average value throughout the duration of the event frame.

As of now, the average value is written to the underlying PI Point with the timestamp at the end time of the event frame using the Outputs at close feature in Event Frames.
This leads to a sloping trend when you try to visualize the resultant average values. i.e. the trend links the previous average value (calculated from the end of the previous event frame) to the latest event frame output average value.

With the requested option available and combined with the step parameter in the PI tag, we will be able to visualize a straight horizontal line for the average value of the tag for the duration of the event frame for that particular duration.