AVEVA™ PI System™ Feedback Portal
Welcome to our feedback site!
We created this site to hear your enhancement ideas, suggestions and feedback about AVEVA products and services. All of the feedback you share here is monitored and reviewed by the AVEVA product managers.
To start, take a look at the ideas in the list below and VOTE for your favorite ideas submitted by other users. POST your own idea if it hasn’t been suggested yet. Include COMMENTS and share relevant business case details that will help our product team get more information on the suggestion. Please note that your ideas and comments are visible to all other users.
This page is for feedback specifically for AVEVA PI System. For links to our other feedback portals, please see the tab RESOURCES below.
Entering this on behalf of a customer:
What specific problem are you trying to solve with this enhancement?
There is a lack of ability to determine source of data points on a vision screen in bulk (ie which screens utilize pi tag references, which screens utilize AF references and in regards to AF references which data server and database are being used). When looking to remove databases or rename items there is not an easy way to determine impact and make proper notifications. The ease of use of creating visions screens coupled with poor vision security functionality allowed for a proliferation of screen configurations. As cleanup is attempted this summary information would be vital to remove and update legacy screens.
How would you like this feature to work?
A tool similar to the vision screen access report but showing screen (ID, link), number of pi tag references (including pi tag server) and AF attributes (including AF server and database).
Who will benefit the most from this enhancement?
PI administrators and support teams trying to manage user interactions and trust in the tools.
As a PI admin, it would be very helpful to be able to know where or if a tag/attribute is used. On more than one occasion, we ran into circumstances where we needed to modify or delete an obsolete tag/attribute but were unsure where or if that tag/attribute was used within the PI system.
When PI Vision displays errors in the box located at tht top right of the page (left of the username) it should include the attribute or PI Tag name that is causing the error.
I would also like to see this idea expanded beyond PI Vision to a "where used" query that identifies all of the AF analyses where an attribute is used.
Trying to support end-users, it would be nice to be able to tell them how to navigate a menu structure (via the hyperlinked PI Vision pages) to get to a particular display. Same thing with being able to see a particular tag within PI Vision, a cross-reference would be handy. On both PI System Explorer and PI Vision it is good to know when a tag is obsoleted so analyses or pages can be updated as needed. I've been able to do this using SQL against the PI Vision database, getting the tag list from DisplayDataSources, scraping hyperlinks out of StandardDisplays and pulling ParentID's from the BrowseElements table to get what I need from PI Vision. Using PI Builder, I can get all the information I need from the AssetFramework, but not everyone is able to do that digging and put the information into a comprehensive dataset. A utility for easily exporting this information to Excel or something like it would be more supportable from an end-user standpoint. Also, if I lose access to the database or the structure changes, my work might not function or would at least need to be updated; a tool built into the interface and supported by Aveva would be much more sustainable. A taglist for the AssetFramework environment similar to the one in PI Vision would be nice. I even saw a comment about pulling objects from the PI Vision pages, that is something I've been unable to scrape together so far.
In the area of change management: it would be useful to be able to find all the displays where a particular PI Tag or AF attribute is being used, so that the impact of retiring or changing data streams could be assessed and managed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also add the ability to list out all PI Vision hyperlink references as well!