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216 VOTE
Status No status
Created by taterhead247
Created on Aug 18, 2022

Tool to list all PI Tags and AF Attributes mapped to any display

Right now I get errors in Event Viewer on my Vision server saying "Server is not available".  The server it mentions is our Dev server, which means somehow a tag or attribute got to Prod without being converted.  But the error doesn't tell me the tag or the display.  So I have no way of troubleshooting this without individually checking each and every display or spending all my time digging through the SQL to figure out where all the config information is hidden. The other use case is: if as a PI admin I want to change the name of a PI tag or AF attribute, I would like to do a quick search of our displays to see who it would affect.  That is not possible right now. I realize this is complicated by collections, but if I could even get displays as they are configured in their saved state, that would be far beyond what I have now.
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  • Angela Taylor
    Reply
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    Sep 17, 2024

    The ability to export tags from a Vision Display to excel is of great value. I export tags from PB to use to create an AF DB/Elements I would expect to do the same in Vision, a tag list or AF Element list.

  • Gonzalo Sequeira
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    Sep 17, 2024

    This tool was a great troubleshooting tool in Processbook. If the same button or function can be available in Vision it would help not only users but also support analysts.

  • Bruno Arnold
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    Mar 1, 2024

    Day to day management of displays is part of a practical domain in which theorical developpers see less value sometimes, I can understand.

    To be able to identify rapidly where a TAG or AF object has been used in PI Vision displays is a crucial task that need a lot of effort when no tools exist.

    I also understand we could build a query like the one suggested on last August 18.

    Or course there is a balance between the effort needed to a new fonctionnality and the benefits it provides to customers, I see the point which was expressed for a similar demand here [https://pisystem.feedback.aveva.com/ideas/PIVISION-I-1191] where it was decided "...to decline this item in favor of other high priority work the product needs."

    To be able to cross reference tags should have been thought in the basic design phase of the new PI Vision product, not to be "begged for" in customer support.

    My 2 cents.


  • BradR
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    May 15, 2023

    I viewed the list of suggested enhancements. There are several requests for similar functionality. They often refer to the same "help me find" concept but from different tools. If you add up the votes from each of these separate ideas, they total several thousand. Please address this "where used" concern from multiple tools, PI System Explorer, PI Vision and PI SMT.

  • BradR
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    May 15, 2023

    As PI Systems grow larger, searching each analysis, PI Vision display, etc. to identify where an attribute is used is not productive. I searched AVEVA documents for a solution to this. I see questions and requests going back to 2019. I would expect that after four years, OSI/AVEVA would have addressed this. When we change the name of an AF attribute, all analyses that reference that attribute reference the new name. So there must be an existing way to identify the analysis in which each attribute is currently used. Please provide logic where we can right click on an attribute and identify all of the analyses where the attribute is used. Another useful feature would be to right click on an analysis and identify all of the attributes used in the analysis. When improving our analyses, we need to know if an attribute is used in an analysis prior to deleting the attribute.

  • Stacy Koos
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    Apr 5, 2023

    We need this for being able to determine all the tags on our PI Vision screens so that if we are deleting a tag(s) we can ensure all PI Vision screens are updated.

  • MikeJnoz
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    Oct 5, 2022

    Also add the ability to list out all PI Vision hyperlink references as well!

  • igreguri
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    Aug 18, 2022
    I agree, that would be useful.
  • igreguri
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    Aug 18, 2022
    I agree, that would be useful.
  • Guest
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    Aug 18, 2022
    Thanks for your comments! We're making changes in the next version of PI Vision (PI Vision 4.x) that will handle updates to attribute and element names automatically. Do you see additional value in having this sort of tool if attribute name changes no longer affect display configuration?
  • taterhead247
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    Aug 18, 2022
    Alicia, I 100% value in still having this. If Vision can pick up changes, then the main use would be deleting old/unused attributes. If I think something isn't used anymore, I want to query Vision to see if anyone is still using it. Additionally, even though Vision may pick it up, some people may be confused if they go looking for something they're used to in the pick list and it's not there anymore. So we would want to notify users of changes of major attributes. Also, you mentioned taking into account changes in element and attribute name. Will it handle changes in PI Point name?
  • Guest
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    Aug 18, 2022
    Thanks for your comments! This is quite helpful! To answer your question - yes, PI Vision 4.x will handle PI Point renames as well as element or attribute renames.
  • Guest
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    Aug 18, 2022
    I agree, I currently have an external utility I use to cross-reference PLC-based tags against, so when we change or remove a PLC tag, we know which PI Vision screens need to be updated. We currently have a VBA-based utility that scrapes the ProcessBook .pdi files for tags. It would be useful to have the PIVision tag usage exported into an xml or csv format.
  • Guest
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    Aug 18, 2022
    Some customers are currently using a SQL query to find Vision displays that contain a certain PI Tag. If you need to determine what PI Vision displays contain a specific tag you could use a query similar to this one: SELECT [Name] FROM [PIVision].[dbo].[BrowseElements] FULL OUTER JOIN [PIVision].[dbo].[DisplayDatasources] ON [PIVision].[dbo].[BrowseElements].ID = [PIVision].[dbo].[DisplayDatasources].DisplayID WHERE [PIVision].[dbo].[DisplayDatasources].DataSource = 'SINUSOID'
  • AndyM
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    Aug 18, 2022
    I have identified a set of PI tags that may not be useful anymore, but before I decide what to do with them, I would like to check to make sure this set of tags are not being used in any PI vision screens. We have several hundred PI Vision screens and the list of tags is several thousand long. It would be very useful to have a quick way to determine if any of those several thousands tags are being used on any of our several hundred PI Vision screens.
  • Guest
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    Aug 18, 2022
    Don't stop there, Identifying where Custom Symbols are used in displays would be useful as well, I have a script to do it so i can retire old symbols by replacing them with updated ones.
  • Guest
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    Aug 18, 2022
    As a PI Administrator, it would be helpful if when this is implemented, the tool’s output will also show tags which are referenced only through the ‘calculations’ feature and may not be directly added to a display on their own. These PI Points still need to be considered when migrating displays from one PI System to another, such as from a development system to a production system.
  • Guest
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    Aug 18, 2022
    By the way, there should be such a tool that can export the display to any industry common txt format such as *.svg or anything so we would be able to make macro changes to shapes, tags, etc. Also, in my case I need a list to get the tags in some given screens so I can grant access to some users only.
  • Guest
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    Aug 18, 2022
    The DCS System we utilize at our facility has the ability to search for a tag and, once the tag is found, browse to the display where that tag is (the primary display for each module has to be assigned during configuration). Our operators are asking for something similar within the PI environment. I understand that with collections, this is difficult, but maybe some type of list for each tag on what displays it may be found on? In the meantime I'm going to explore exporting data from a display to see if I can get a separate list set up for reference. The search ability means that a user can have a tag name and not recall what display it is on, but use the tag name to locate that display.
  • Pete Long
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    Aug 18, 2022
    This is one of the cooler features in ProcessBook!
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