1. AF Transformer should be able to sync changes made in the source AF Database: if an element is added, deleted or edited.  For the deletions there should be a way to select the behavior: delete an object from the target database, place it under a different hierarchy, rename or do nothing. 


2. It would be also helpful to have an additional AF property in AF - deletion flag. A power user will be reviewing a list of elements flagged for deletion and will be making a decision - delete, rename, move or do nothing (similar to functionality in the connectors admin page).


3. Changes (especially deletions and edits) should be logged with different level of details based on the debug level specified.

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.

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.