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 Ignition
by Inductive Automation

Ignition Core Training

Copyright 2024
All rights reserved.
Inductive Automation
90 Blue Ravine Road
Folsom, CA 95630
5-Day Ignition Instructor-Led Core Training
© 2024 Inductive Automation
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any
means - graphic, electronic, photographic or mechanical; including, but not limited to,
photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems - without
the written permission of Inductive Automation.
All Inductive Automation product names, including, but not limited to, Ignition by
Inductive Automation®, Ignition Edge by Inductive Automation®, Ignition SCADA
by Inductive Automation®, Perspective®, as well as the company name, Inductive
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respective holders.
Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible,
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acts or omissions arising or based upon the information contained in his book.
Revised September, 2024
Version: 8.1.42
This text was written using Ignition 8.1.42. All screenshots and text reflect the state of
Ignition as of that version.
 Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Software Introduction 11
What Is Ignition? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Ignition Software Stack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Ignition’s Main Parts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Gateway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Projects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Chapter 2. Installation and Activation 17

Install Ignition on Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Ignition Editions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Installing Standard Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Accessing the Gateway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Gateway Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Gateway Status. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Licensing and Activating. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Activating the In-Class License. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Chapter 3. Connecting to PLCs and Databases 37

Connecting to Device Simulators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Connecting to Physical Devices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Connecting to a Database. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Chapter 4. Launch Designer and Create a Project 51

Installing the Designer Launcher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Adding and Opening a Designer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Creating a New Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Chapter 5. Introduction to Designer 63

The Designer Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Panels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Chapter 6. Vision Clients, Windows, and Navigation 71
Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Exploring Our Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Duplicating an Existing Window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Creating New Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Window Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Adding Windows to Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Modifying Components on a Window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Changing the Header Icon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Previewing in the Client. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Downloading the Vision Client Launcher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Chapter 7. Vision Component Properties and Bindings 95

Configuring Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Adding Components to Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Understanding Component Layout. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Component Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Use the Symbol Factory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Explore the Vision Drawing Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Chapter 8. Tags 117

Main Benefits of Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Adding Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Binding Tags to Components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Memory Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Derived Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Additional Tag Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
System and Vision Client Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Tag Groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Create New Tag Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Chapter 9. Complex Tags (UDTs) 143

UDT Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Terminology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Create a UDT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
 Create Instances of the UDT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Editing a UDT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Overrides. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Nesting UDTs and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Chapter 10. Templates 161

Create a Template. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Template Parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Adding Components to Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Create an Expression With a Template Parameter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Indirect Tag Bindings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Adding Template Instances to Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Use Parameters on a Symbol Factory Image. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Select Instances From a List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

Chapter 11. Tag History 189

Log the Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Enable Tag History on a UDT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Other Tag History Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Viewing the Tag Historian Database Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Display Historian Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Customize the Easy Chart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

Chapter 12. Transaction Groups 209

Types of Transaction Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Group Items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Triggers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Creating a Basic History Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Add a Trigger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Creating a Recipe Group. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Chapter 13. Security 233

What We Can Secure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Authentication Profiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Add Users and Roles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
 Component Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Adding Security to a Window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Project Security Settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Gateway Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Chapter 14. Alarming 259

Alarm Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Alarm Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Configure an Alarm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Viewing Alarms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Add UDT Alarms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Alarm Status Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Filter the Table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Custom Display Paths. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Alarm Associated Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

Chapter 15. Alarm History 277

Create an Alarm Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Viewing the Journal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Configure the Alarm Journal Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Alarm Event Ids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Alarm Journal Table Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

Chapter 16. Alarm Notification 289

Alarm Notification Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Add User Contact Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Create a Roster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Create an Alarm Notification Profile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .294
Alarm Notification Pipelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Attach an Alarm to a Pipeline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Testing the Pipeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Escalation Pipeline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Dropout Condition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Chapter 17. Popup Windows 321
Creating a Popup Window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
Opening a Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Creating an Indirect Easy Chart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Creating a Dynamic Alarm Display. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Test the Finished Popup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

Chapter 18. Scripting 347

What Is Python?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Getting Started in Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .348
Python Syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Where Is Python Used?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Creating and Accessing Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Adding Code to Components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Component Scripting Dialog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Basic Math. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Conditional Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Lists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
Loops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
String Formatting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Python in Ignition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Using the Documentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
Reading Component Values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Component Extension Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Client and Gateway Event Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

Chapter 19. Perspective 393

Perspective and Web Terms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Creating a View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Positioning and Sizing Components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Bindings in Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Previewing in the Browser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Perspective Views as Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Perspective Expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
Perspective Indirect Tag Bindings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
 Adjusting Layout Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Color Overlay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
Embedding Views. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
Breakpoint Layout. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
Styles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Perspective Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Perspective Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445

Chapter 20. Reporting 453

Creating a Basic PDF Report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
Adding Data to Your Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
Designing the Report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
Add a Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
Add a Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
Report Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
Client Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481

Chapter 21. Gateway Network 485

Connect to a Gateway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
Set Up a Remote Tag Provider. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488

Chapter 22. Backups 491

Gateway Backup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
Project Backup and Restore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
Backup Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
 Welcome

Thank you for choosing Ignition by Inductive Automation, a highly configurable industrial
automation SCADA/HMI software.

About This Training

We will use a step-by-step approach to teach you the core features and capabilities
offered by Ignition. We focus on the Ignition platform and several of its core modules.
Although the architecture of Ignition is modular, the modules are seamlessly integrated
so you can focus on the tasks being performed.
Some of the things you will learn in this training are: how to install the software, connect
to PLCs and SQL Databases, create projects, create tags and store history, launch
clients and sessions, set alarms, send notifications, and generate reports.
Let's get started!
 Chapter 1

Software Introduction

This chapter introduces you to Ignition. It describes what Ignition is, what it can
do, what modules are, and provides an overview of common Ignition system
architectures.

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Ch 1. Software Introduction

What Is Ignition?
Ignition is a software platform for creating custom human machine interface (HMI),
supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), manufacturing execution system
(MES), and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. Ignition is designed from the
ground up to be approachable and easy to get started with while remaining flexible and
capable of scaling up to the largest projects. Ignition is installed as server software and
it is based heavily on current web technologies.

Ignition’s Basic Flow

Ignition is unique in the industrial space because it is server-centric. You launch a
Designer and pull data from the Gateway. Then when you save your project, it’s stored
back into the Gateway. When runtime clients are opened, they pull from the Gateway
as well. This means any client that has a connection to the Gateway will always be up to
date.

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What Can Ignition Do?
Ignition has a unified architecture that provides a way to create anything you need.
Whether you need a custom SCADA application, or need to visualize historian data, or
want to generate PDF reports, or pure database applications, or work notify operators
of alarms, or more, Ignition is the right solution. You can also mix and match to get the
functionality that you want and leave out the rest.

What Makes Ignition Special?

There are a few key points that set Ignition apart from other HMI/SCADA software. The
licensing is sold by the server and allows unlimited tags, clients, screens, connections,
and devices. It has a small installer that downloads and installs in minutes across
Windows, Mac, and Linux. The Designer is included and allows you to quickly create
projects, bind values, set up expressions, and add scripts. It’s modular so it’s flexible and
scalable. And it’s easy to get started and see real results in just a few minutes.

What Are Modules?

Modules are applications that are built on the Ignition platform. Modules are seamlessly
integrated into Ignition so you can choose them based on your system and plant
requirements. A few common modules include OPC UA connections and drivers,
visualization systems, history storage, and alarm notification.

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Ignition Software Stack

The architecture or high-level structure of the Ignition software has several distinct
layers. The platform runs in Java, so as such it is OS agnostic. The modules are in the
platform and can access any functionality. Additional modules are built to work using the
core modules’ functionality as a starting point.

Ignition As a Communications Hub

You can use Ignition as an effective communication hub in your network. The Gateway
can talk to many types of devices and services, even if those individual elements are
incompatible with one another.

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 Ch 1. Software Introduction

Ignition’s Various Architectures

Ignition combines web servers, databases, and OPC UA. This combination allows a wide
variety of powerful configurations based on the customer’s system and plant needs.
There are several types of architectures that can be built with Ignition starting from
a standalone installation and going all the way to a multi-site system spread through
different countries. Ignition can be used in the cloud if you want, and has fail over
redundancy as a primary feature.

Ignition’s Main Parts

Ignition has four main parts: Gateway, Designer, Clients, and Sessions.

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Ch 1. Software Introduction
Gateway
The primary service that drives everything. It is a single application that runs an
embedded web server, connects to data, executes modules, communicates with clients
and more.

Designer
A web-launched application that lets you configure and build your projects. The
Designer is launched from the Designer Launcher that can be found on the Gateway.

Clients
The runtimes of the Vision Module. They run as full applications and feel like traditional
installed clients without the need to install and manually synchronize projects. Clients
are launched from the Designer Launcher that can be found on the Gateway web page.

Sessions
The runtimes of the Perspective Module. They are similar to the Vision Clients except
they run in a browser. Sessions are launched from the Gateway web page.

The Gateway
The Gateway’s architecture contains many parts, each one performing specific tasks or
serving up information to other systems. The Gateway contains database and device
connections, tags, alarms, user sources, projects, and more.

Projects
A project is the central unit of configuration. A project contains Windows, Views,
Transaction Groups, and more. You use the Ignition Designer to design and create
projects. There is no limit to the number of projects you can create in the Gateway.

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 Chapter 2

Installation and Activation

Ignition can be installed on any 64-bit Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X operating

system. The installer can be downloaded from the Inductive Automation website
and installed on any modern computer for testing. When using Ignition in
production, a server-class computer is recommended.
The minimum system requirements for Ignition are extremely low, but we
recommend at least a dual-core processor, 4GB RAM, and 10GB free hard drive
space.

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Ch 2. Installation and Activation

Install Ignition on Windows

Installing Ignition on your computer is just like installing other applications.
1. Visit ia.io on any modern web browser.
2. Click the orange Download Ignition button in the top right corner.

3. Click Skip form and download directly.

4.

5. Open Windows Explorer.

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6. Find the installer file. Most modern browsers will have automatically saved it to the
Downloads folder.
7. Double-click on the executable file to start installation.

The Ignition Installer starts.

8. Click Next.

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9. Click Next to accept the default installation file location and Gateway Service
Name.

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10. Click Next to select the Typical installation.

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Ch 2. Installation and Activation
11. Click Install.

Installation begins.

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12. Click Finish.

The Ignition service will start. After a few moments, the Gateway web page will open.

Ignition Editions
You can choose to install Ignition using one of three editions.

Standard Edition
The Standard edition, which we will be using in this class, is the most common edition
for Ignition installations, and should be used in all situations except those outlined
below.

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Ch 2. Installation and Activation
Maker Edition
The Maker edition is a free, limited edition of Ignition for personal, non-commercial use.
There are a limited number of modules available for Maker edition. You can get more
information on Maker on our website at https://inductiveautomation.com/ignition/maker-
edition.

Edge Edition
Ignition Edge is designed for edge-of-network installations. More information on Edge is
available on our website at https://page.inductiveautomation.com/ignition-edge.

Installing Standard Edition

To finish installing Ignition, follow these steps.
1. Click Standard Edition.

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2. Click I have read and agree with the terms and conditions.
3. Click Next.

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Ch 2. Installation and Activation
4. Create a user.
5. Enter a username of admin.
6. Enter a password of password.
7. Confirm the password.
For class purposes, we want to ensure that we all have the same username and
password, even though these credentials should never be used in a real environment.
8. Click Next.

Ignition requires three ports in order to run. The HTTP port, which defaults to 8088,
is used for Ignition’s built-in web server and is how we will access the Gateway web
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 Ch 2. Installation and Activation
page. The HTTPS port, which defaults to 8043, is used when you access the Gateway
web page in a secure environment and need to have the communication between
the Gateway and the end-user browser encrypted. The Gateway Network Pork, with a
default of 8060, is used in internal network communications.
You should discuss with your IT department if these ports need to be changed in a
production installation of Ignition. For testing and class purposes, the defaults work well.
9. Click Finish Setup.

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10. Click Start Gateway.

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 Ch 2. Installation and Activation
11. Click No thanks, I’d like to start from scratch.
We do not need any of the resources created by Quick Start.

Accessing the Gateway

The Ignition Gateway is accessed through a web browser and is the primary software
service that drives everything in Ignition. It is a single application that runs an embedded
web server, connects to data, executes modules, communicates with clients and
sessions, and more.
Once we complete setup, we will be on the Gateway web page, but should you ever
need to access it again, you can do so by typing http://localhost:8088 in your browser’s
address bar. You might also consider saving the web page as a bookmark in the
browser.

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Ch 2. Installation and Activation

Gateway Configuration
We use the Gateway web page to configure settings within our Ignition installation. To
access the configuration settings, follow these steps.
1. Click Config.

2. Click Log In.

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3. Enter admin.
4. Click Continue.

5. Enter password.
6. Click Continue.

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Ch 2. Installation and Activation
You are now logged into the Configuration section. Here, you can set up connections
to devices and databases, configure security and alarming, create backups, and much
more.

Gateway Status
The other primary resource provided on the Gateway web page is the status section,
which can be accessed by clicking the Status button near the top left corner.
From the Status overview page, you can see what version of Ignition you are running,
get information about the operating system and hardware Ignition is running on, and see
the status of various subsystems, such as database connections, devices, and more.
Note that the Status section is secured by the same log in credentials as Config. Both
will timeout occasionally, so you may need to log back in to access either site.

Licensing and Activating

Ignition has a free trial mode that works for two hours at a time and can be reset an
unlimited number of times. For this class, we will activate a week-long license so that we
do not have to keep resetting the server.
With this Ignition server license, we will be able to:
• Launch unlimited runtime clients.
• Create unlimited Tags from devices, OPC servers, and other Tags.
• Connect to unlimited PLCs, SQL databases, and devices.
• And much more.

How Licensing Works

Like Ignition as a whole, licensing is based on modules.
Licensed and unlicensed modules can operate side-by-side, so some modules can be
tested in trial mode while others are running in a licensed state.
When an individual module is in trial state, Ignition shows the trial time remaining at the
top of the Gateway web page.
Despite the modular licensing, there is generally one CD-Key for each server. That is, a
single license dictates which modules are currently activated.

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When one or modules are purchased, you will receive a CD-Key, which is a six digit
code, that identifies your purchase. You will use this CD-Key to activate the software
through the Ignition Gateway. If you are adding an additional module, your account will
be automatically updated and you can re-use your existing CD-Key to activate the new
features.
You can inactivate your CD-Key at any time, freeing it for activation on a different
machine.

Activating the In-Class License

To activate the license for the class, follow these steps.
1. If necessary, log into the Gateway config site. See the steps above under
“Gateway Configuration” on page 30 for help if needed.
2. Click Activate Ignition.

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Ch 2. Installation and Activation
3. Click Activate License.

4. Enter the license key provided by your instructor.

5. Click Submit.

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6. Click Activate.

Your Ignition installation is now licensed.

Once activated, the current license is displayed. You can expand it to see all of the
modules attached to your license.

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 Chapter 3

Connecting to PLCs and

Databases

Now that you installed Ignition and logged into the Config section of the
Gateway, you can add or connect to devices and databases. A device is a named
connection to an industrial device like a PLC. If you don't have a real device,
Ignition has simulator devices you can add which act as if it is a connection to a
real device.

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Connecting to Device Simulators

To begin our exploration of devices, we are going to use a programmable device
simulator, which will allow us to mimic the functionality of a real PLC.

Connecting to a Simulator Device

We need to connect to a few devices to give us tags to work with throughout the week.
These will be used later for real time values, history, and alarms.
To create our first simulated device, follow these steps.
1. If necessary, log into the Gateway web page.
2. Click Config.

3. Click Device Connections. You may need to scroll down to see it under the OPC
UA heading.

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4. Click Create new Device...

5. Select Programmable Device Simulator. You may need to scroll down.

6. Click Next.

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Ch 3. Connecting to PLCs and Databases
7. Enter DairySim in the Name field.
8. Click Create New Device.

DairySim

The device is created.

Create a Second Simulated Device

Now, we are going to repeat the steps above to create a second device simulator.
You should already be on the devices page.
1. Click Create new Device...

2. Select Programmable Device Simulator. You may need to scroll down.

3. Click Next.
4. Enter GenSim in the Name field.
5. Click Create New Device.

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 Ch 3. Connecting to PLCs and Databases

The second device simulator is created.

Loading the Programs

Now we can set the program for the simulators.
1. Click More to the right of DairySim.
2. Click edit program.

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Ch 3. Connecting to PLCs and Databases
3. Select Dairy Simulator from the dropdown list.

4. Click Load Simulator Program.

5. Scroll to the bottom of the page.

6. Click Save Program.

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You will be returned to the Devices page. A Successfully loaded program message will
appear.
Now, we will repeat those steps for the other simulator.
1. Click More to the right of DairySim.
2. Click edit program.

3. Select Generic Program from the dropdown list.

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Ch 3. Connecting to PLCs and Databases
4. Click Load Simulator Program.

5. Scroll to the bottom of the page.

6. Click Save Program.

Both devices are now loaded and ready to use.

Connecting to Physical Devices

Now we will connect to two real PLCs: a ControlLogix and a MicroLogix.

Note: These steps are only performed in classes held in-person in our Folsom,
California office. If you are taking this class in a virtual setting, or in another location,
your instructor may skip these steps.

1. Click Create new Device....

The Device type selection page is displayed.

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 Ch 3. Connecting to PLCs and Databases
2. Click Allen-Bradley Logix Driver.

3. Click Next. You may need to scroll down.

The Device details page is displayed showing the available settings for AB Logix v21+
devices.
4. Type CLX in the Name field.
5. Type the IP address provided by your instructor in the Hostname field.

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Ch 3. Connecting to PLCs and Databases
6. Leave all other settings at their defaults.

7. Scroll down.
8. Click Create New Device.

The connection to the device is created. Note that it might take several seconds for the
Status to update to Connected.

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Connecting to a Database
Many features of Ignition require a connection to an external database. Later in this
course, we will explore several of these features, but we will go ahead and set up the
database connection now.
Ignition is capable of connecting to any SQL-based database, so long as a JDBC driver
is available.
While we are only going to create a single database connection, Ignition supports
unlimited connections. You can even have connections to different types of databases
within the same Gateway.

Connecting to Microsoft SQL Server

For this course, we will use Microsoft SQL Server as our database, which is already
installed on the computers.

Why SQL Server?

We use Microsoft SQL Server in this class because all of the drivers needed to
connect to it are included in a default Ignition installation. This is not the case with the
other highly popular database server, MySQL. We are not expressing a preference for
one over the other, but rather, going with the one with simpler setup.

1. Click Connections under the Databases section. You may need to scroll.

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Ch 3. Connecting to PLCs and Databases
2. Click Create new Database Connection...

3. Click Microsoft SQL Server.

4. Click Next.

5. Enter DB in the Name field.

6. Edit the Connect URL field to read jdbc:sqlserver://localhost\SQLEXPRESS.

Note: These settings may vary in an in-person class versus a virtual class. Check with
your instructor.

7. Click Create New Database Connection.

8. Enter sa in the Username field.
9. Enter the password provided by your instructor in both password fields.

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10. Scroll down.

11. Click Create New Database Connection.

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 Chapter 4

Launch Designer and

Create a Project

Now that we have set up some connections, we'll launch the Designer and get
started creating a project. Ignition has a special launcher program available in the
Gateway that allows us to use the Designer without first installing Java on any
computer.
Once the Designer is open, we will familiarize ourselves with the panels and
workspaces that are available. Configuration for almost every module is available
through the Designer, and this is where we will be spending most of our time
throughout the week working on our projects.

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Installing the Designer Launcher

The Designer Launcher is a free tool, which can be downloaded directly from the
Gateway web page.
1. Open the Gateway web page. Remember, you can type http://localhost:8088 in
your browser.
2. Click Download Designer Launcher.

3. Click Download for Windows

The installer program will download. Depending on your internet connection, it might
take a few moments.
4. Double-click the installer. It should be in your Downloads folder.

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5. Click Next. You can choose whether or not you want a desktop shortcut.

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Ch 4. Launch Designer and Create a Project
6. Click Install.

The launcher installs.

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 Ch 4. Launch Designer and Create a Project
7. Click Finish. Make sure Launch Designer Launcher is checked.

Adding and Opening a Designer

The Launcher needs to be connected to a Gateway in order to add Designers.
Remember, a Designer is launched from a Gateway.
Your Gateway should automatically appear in the Designer Launcher interface. In
a production environment, it is possible that you will have connections to multiple
Gateways, so you would need to select the Gateway that you want this Designer to be
launched from.

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Ch 4. Launch Designer and Create a Project
1. Click Add Designer.

2. Click your Gateway from the list.

Your Gateway may be listed twice—once by its IP address and once by its hostname
(localhost). It does not matter which one you select.

Note: In the classroom, you may see all of your classmates’ Gateways, as well as your
instructor’s, listed as well.

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3. Click Add Designer.

4. Click the card for your Gateway.

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Ch 4. Launch Designer and Create a Project
5. Click Open Designer.

The Designer will take a moment to launch. It will ask you to log in.
6. Enter admin as the username.
7. Enter password as the password.

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8. Click Login.

Creating a New Project

Projects are where we do most of our work in Ignition. Projects will contain all of the
resources we need, and are the space in which we design our interfaces, work with tags
and alarms, and much more.
Projects can be created in either the Gateway or Designer. For our purposes, we are
going to use Designer.

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1. Click either of the + New Project buttons.

2. Enter CoreClass in the Project Name field. Be sure to not put a space in the
name.
3. Enter Core Class in the Project Title field. A space is fine here.
4. Select Vision Tab Nav from the Project Template list.
5. Ensure that DB is selected in the Default Database list.
6. Click Create New Project.

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The Project Name is used internally by Ignition to identify this project. As such, non-
alphanumeric characters such as spaces are not allowed. The Project Title, on the other
hand, is intended as a human-friendly identifier for the project, so any characters are
allowed.
Project templates provide a convenient starting point for projects. The Vision Tab Nav
template we will use includes a set of pre-built Vision Windows, allowing us to get
started designing faster.
Each project can have a set of default connections to user sources, databases, tag
providers, and identity providers. None of these limit what the project can do; they
are only defaults. For example, a project can be set up to connect to any number of
databases, but the default database will be pre-selected in dialog boxes and other
interface elements within Designer.

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 Chapter 5

Introduction to Designer

Now that we have Designer installed and a project created in it, we want to take a
look at it. We will explore its interface, look at the tools its provides, and discuss a
bit about how to customize its look and feel.

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The Designer Interface

The Ignition Designer is where the majority of configuration and design work is done.
The Designer uses web-launch technology to open and edit your projects. This is how
you can configure your Perspective and Vision projects.
The Designer provides all the firepower to bring your projects to life. You can create
user interfaces by dragging Perspective components onto a view, Vision components
onto a window, and Tags onto your components to instantly bind data to tables, charts,
and graphs. You can set up Tag History and Transaction Groups to log data to your
databases. You can create Reports to print data. The Designer saves all your projects to
the Gateway so everything is controlled in one place.

Panels
The main interface in Designer is made up of a series of panels. Each panel serves a
specific purpose. Panels can be moved around on the screen, and individually opened
and closed as desired. If you are working with multiple monitors, you can even move
panels to other monitors to maximize your screen space.
There is also a toolbar across the top of the screen. We will explore toolbar buttons as
we need them.

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Project Browser
The set of panels that are visible by default depends on which module you currently
have active, but all modules always display the Project Browser. By default, it is always
in the top left corner of the screen.
The Project Browser lists the modules you currently have installed. The license we are
using for class includes the Alarm Notification Pipelines, Sequential Function Charts,
Scripting, Perspective, Transaction Groups, Vision, Named Queries, and Reports
modules. In this class, we will end up exploring all of those except Sequential Function
Charts and Named Queries.
In your work environment, you may have more or fewer modules.
The Project Browser can also show details within each module, allowing you to select
and at times configure the individual elements within a module. Any module that has a
small triangle to the left of its name has sub-elements.

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Vision Default Panels
When we switch to the Vision module, we get a set of default panels for building Vision
clients. We will use this module to explore customizing the workspace.
1. Click Vision in the Project Browser panel.

Designer updates to display the Vision module’s default panels.

You will see that by default, Vision has the Project Browser in the top left corner. Below
that is the Tag Browser, which will be used to manage and view tags, and then below
that is the Vision Property Editor. On the right side of the screen is the Component
Palette, and to its right is the Vision Drawing toolbar.

Customizing Panels
All windows, components, and templates have properties that can be edited. Many
components have dozens of properties. Thus, it can become inconvenient to have the
Vision Property Editor taking up a small space in the bottom left corner of the screen. To
demonstrate how to customize the interface, we are going to move the Vision Property
Editor to the right side of the screen. We will also collapse the Components Palette so
that it takes up less space.

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1. Press and hold your mouse button on the top of the Vision Property Editor,
directly on its title bar.
2. Drag the editor towards the middle of the screen. It will appear as a gray outline.

3. Continue dragging until a dark gray outline appears to the left of the Component
Palette.

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4. Release your mouse to dock the panel on the right side of the screen.

5. Right-click on the words Component Palette.

6. Click Auto-hide.

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At any point, you can access the panel by moving your mouse over the word
Components.

Moving Panels
You can also move panels without docking them. This is helpful in situations where you
wish to move panels to another monitor.
To move a panel without docking it, simply drag it by its header, just as we did with the
Vision Property Editor. As long as you do not release your mouse near one of the edges
of the Designer window, the panel will not be docked. You can also press and hold the
Ctrl key on your keyboard to prevent the panel from docking, even if you are near one
of the edges of Designer.

Closing Panels
Every panel has a close button—a small x in the top right corner—that you can use to
close the panel if you decide you do not need it.

Reopening Panels
If you close a panel and then decide you need it after all, you can reopen a panel by
using the menus at the top of the screen.
1. Click View,
2. Click Panels.
3. Select the panel you wish to open. Panels will open in the same location they
were in when they were closed.

Resetting Your View

You can reset the panels in any module at any time. This can be helpful if you have
customized the view and then wish to return to the default, or if you have opened
panels and cannot locate them because you moved them off-screen.
1. Click View.
2. Click Reset Panels.

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 Chapter 6

Vision Clients, Windows,

and Navigation

In chapter, we will begin designing a Vision client. We will explore how Vision
clients are made up of components and templates on windows. We will also
explore how to create a navigation system for the client. Finally, we will look at
how to launch the client from the Designer, and how to install the Vision Client
Launcher to open Vision projects directly.

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Vision
Vision is one of the two primary visualization modules in Ignition. Vision projects run in
the Vision Client, which is a Java-based application that looks and feels like any other
installed application on a computer or other device.
Vision clients can be run on any machine that supports Java.
Like all projects, Vision clients are launched from the Gateway.

Vision Windows, Components, and Templates

Windows, components, and templates are the fundamental building blocks for projects
using the Ignition Vision module. A Vision project is a collection of Windows. These
windows are loaded into the Vision Client, where any number of them may be open at
one time.
A window itself is a hierarchy of components. Components range in complexity from the
humble Button and Label all the way to the powerful Easy Chart and Table components.
Shapes such as a line or a rectangle are also considered components, but have some
additional capabilities such as the ability to be rotated.
Templates are components that are reusable across many windows. They are designed
separately, outside of any window. After being designed, you can add them to any
window within a project. The true power of a template is that if you change its design,
all uses of that template across all windows reflect those changes. This feature gives
templates a major advantage over a copy-and-paste style of design.
Windows, components, and templates are designed visually with a drag-and-drop
interface within the Ignition Designer. Components each have a host of properties that
govern how the component looks and behaves.

Window Names and Organization

To keep your project organized, you have many options. You can create folders for each
window, you can rename the folders, and you can add informational notes related to the
window.

Creating Folders
By creating folders you can organize your windows. Each window must have a unique
name within its folder.

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Adding Notes to a Window
You can add notes to a window to document the purpose and any technical information
about how the window works. To add window notes, right-click on a window in the
Project Browser, the click Notes.

Exploring Our Project

When we created the project, we based it on the Vision Tab Nav project template. This
contains a series of windows with components that provides us with a jumping off point
for working in a project. By using this template, we will not have to create everything we
want for our project from scratch.

Project organization
In the Project Browser, we can see that we already have three folders and two windows
at the top level of our project.

You can open any of those folders to see the windows inside them.
The Main Windows folder contains three additional windows: Alarms, Empty, and
Overview.
The Popups window contains one window, Popup.
The User Management window also contains a single window, Switch User.

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Opening Windows
You can open any window by double-clicking it in the Project Browser. This will open the
window in the main workspace for editing.

Duplicating an Existing Window

Rather than creating new windows from scratch, you can duplicate existing windows.
This may save you a lot of time, as you can set up a window that has the correct
properties and any shared visual elements you want to use on other windows.
Throughout the class, we will be adding additional windows to our project by duplicating
the Empty window, rather than creating new windows from scratch.
To duplicate an existing window, follow these steps:
1. Right-click Empty in the Project Browser.
2. Click Duplicate.

A duplicate window, Empty (1) is created.

3. Right-click Empty (1).

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4. Click Rename.

5. Enter Components.
6. Press Enter.
The window is renamed.

Creating New Windows

While we will not be creating new windows from scratch, it is helpful to know how to do
that.
To create a new window, follow these steps.
1. Right-click Windows in the Project Browser.
2. Select the type of window you want to create.

Note: You can also right-click on a folder to add a new window directly to the folder.

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Window Types
There are three types of windows: Main, Popup, and Docked.

The difference between the window types is determined by a combination of the Dock
Position, Border Display Policy, Titlebar Display Policy, and Start Maximized properties.
All of these can be changed on the Vision Property Editor panel.

Main Windows
A main window takes up all the available space in the client and acts much like a typical
“HMI screen.” There can be many main windows in a project, but you can open only one
main window at any time.
To change another type of window to a main window, follow these steps:
1. Double-click the window in the Project Browser.
2. Set Start Maximized on the Vision Property Editor to true.
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3. Set Border Display Policy to When Not Maximized or Never.
4. Set TItlebar Display Policy to When Not Maximized or Never.

Popup Windows
The popup windows are often opened by components in a main window, and are meant
to float on top of other windows. Popup windows are often parameterized so they can
be reused. You define custom parameters for the popup window and then pass those
new parameter values to the window when it is opened. See Chapter 18 for more details
on creating and using popup windows.
To change another type of window to a popup window, follow these steps:
1. Double-click the window in the Project Browser.
2. Set Start Maximized on the Vision Property Editor to false.
3. Set Border Display Policy to When Not Maximized or Always.
4. Set TItlebar Display Policy to When Not Maximized or Always.
5. Set Location to the x and y values where you want the popup to open.
6. Set Layer to a non-zero number.
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Docked Windows
A docked window will “stick” to one side of the screen, and will always be visible, even
as main windows change. These screens are usually tall and skinny or short and wide,
depending on the edge they’re docked to. The purpose of a docked window is to make
some information always available, typically navigation controls and overall status
information. Using docked windows can help eliminate repetitive design elements from
being copied to each screen, making maintenance easier.
To change another type of window to a popup window, follow these steps:
1. Double-click the window in the Project Browser.
2. Set Start Maximized on the Vision Property Editor to false.
3. Set Border Display Policy to Never.
4. Set TItlebar Display Policy to Never.

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5. Set Dock Position to the side of the window to which you wish to dock the
window.

Renaming a Window
To rename a window, right-click on a window from the Project Browser, then click
Rename. You can also use the keyboard shortcut F2.

Adding Windows to Navigation

It is impossible to access a window in a Vision Client unless you provide some way
to navigate to it. Popup windows are usually opened by another component; we will
explore this in Chapter 18.
Main windows need to be added to some kind of navigation control. Vision includes a
Tab Strip component to easily create navigation systems. However, since we based our
project on the Vision Tab Nav project template, we already have a docked window that

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contains a Tab Strip component, so we will be able to simply add windows to this as we
work through our project. There are two windows with a square and triangle icon to the
right of them: Main Windows/Overview, and Navigation. These windows are set to open
on startup so they are the first windows the user will see in the run-time environment.
To add a window to the navigation tab strip, follow these steps:
1. Double-click Navigation in the Project Browser.
2. Right-click the Tab Strip component.
3. Click Customizers.
4. Click Tab Strip Customizer.

5. The Tab Strip Customizer window opens.

6. Click Empty.
7. Click Add Tab.

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8. Select Main Windows/Components from the Window Name list.

9. Enter Components in the Display Name text field.

10. Click OK.

The tab strip is updated to include the new window.
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11. Click File.
12. Click Save All.

13. The project is saved.

Modifying Components on a Window

Now that we have a new window, we want to start adding components to it.
1. Double-click Components in the Project Browser.
2. Click the Header Label component.
3. Type Components in the Title property field on the Vision Property Editor.

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Changing the Header Icon

The header on the windows in the project template display a small icon next to the text.
We would like to change that icon, but unfortunately, there does not appear to be a
property to do that.

Showing All Properties

The property to change the header icon is not showing on the Vision Property Editor
because by default, only a very small subset of properties displays. We need to change
this behavior so that all properties of all components always display.
1. Click the small arrow to the right of Filter Properties.
2. Click All.

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Thankfully, Designer will remember this setting, so you never need to worry about it
again.

Changing the Icon

Now that we can see all properties, we can select a new icon.
1. Click the folder icon in the Image Path property.
2. Double-click any icon.

3. Click File.
4. Click Save All.

Previewing in the Client

While the Designer provides us with a good idea of what our windows will look like, it’s
important to preview our project in the Vision client.
1. Click Tools.
2. Select Launch Project.
3. Click Launch (windowed).

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The Vision Client will launch.

4. Enter admin in the username text field.
5. Enter password in the password text field.
6. Click Login.

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The client launches. The Overview window displays.
7. Click Components.

Launch Types
When you told Designer to open the client, there were two options.
Windowed mode is the usual client launch method. The client runs as its own fully
independent application that can be moved or resized on your computer.
Full Screen mode also runs as a fully independent application, but the client will not
have a title bar or borders, and covers the operating system task bar. If you accidentally
launch in full screen mode, you can click Command, then Exit to close the client.

Downloading the Vision Client Launcher

While we will be opening the client from within Designer, it is worth noting that there is
also a separate client launcher application available. In many cases, you will not want to
give your operators access to Designer; they only need to launch and interact with the
client.

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Download and Install the Client Launcher
Follow these steps to download and install the client launcher:
1. Open the Gateway web page. If you need help, see “Accessing the Gateway” on
page 29.
2. Click Download Vision Client Launcher.

3. Click Download for Windows.

The installer downloads. It will most likely go into the Downloads folder in Windows.
4. Double-click the installer.
5. Click an option to install for only you or for all users.

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6. Click Next. We will install in the default location.

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7. Click Next. We do not need a desktop shortcut.

8. Click Install.

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The Vision Client launcher will install.
9. Click Finish.

The launcher will start automatically.

Connect to a Gateway
Similar to what we did in Designer, the first thing we need to do with the launcher is to
connect it to a Gateway.
1. Click Add Application.

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2. Click your Gateway from the list. It does not matter if you select it by host name or
IP address.
3. Click Select Gateway.

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4. Click Core Class.

5. Click Add Application(s).

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 Chapter 7

Vision Component
Properties and Bindings

Components are the useful content of your windows. Most computer user
interfaces contain components. They are the widgets you work with every day:
the buttons, text areas, drop-downs, charts, and so on. The Vision module comes
with a host of useful components out of the box, many of which are specialized for
industrial controls use.

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Configure Components
Configuring components is likely the bulk of a designer’s work when designing a Vision
project. The basic workflow is to take a component from the palette and drop it onto a
window. From there, you can use the mouse to drag and resize the component, and you
can use the Property Editor panel to change the component’s properties, which changes
the component’s appearance and behavior.
You can configure the following items for each component:
• Properties
• Custom Properties (Dynamic Properties)
• Size and Position
• Layout Mode
• Style Customizers
• Scripting
• Security

Add Components to Windows

You can add components to windows by dragging them from the Components Palette to
the window.
1. If necessary, open the Components main window.
2. Mouse over the Components Palette to expand it.

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3. Press and hold your mouse button on Cylindrical Tank. You may need to scroll to
see it.

4. Drag Cylindrical Tank onto the window. The precise location is not important.

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Understand Component Layout

A component’s layout settings determine its size and position. In many cases, we cannot
know the exact size of the screen on which the client will eventually be displayed, so it
is important to keep that in mind as we determine our layout options.
Vision clients have two options for layout: relative and absolute.
Relative Mode Relative layout, the default option, keeps a component’s size and
position relative to its parent container constant, even as the parent container
grows or shrinks. More precisely, it remembers the component’s position and size
as a percentage of its parent’s size. Relative mode also has the option of scaling a
component’s font appropriately. If the client ends up displaying on a larger screen than
the one you used in Designer, the component will move or resize to maintain its relative
dimensions,
Anchored Mode Anchored layout lets you anchor one or more of the component’s
edges to the container’s edge. For example, if you anchor top and left, then your
component stays a constant distance from top and left edges of its parent. If the client
ends up being larger or smaller than the Designer window, the component will remain
the exact distance from the anchored edges. Note that depending on how many sides
the component is anchored to, this might still cause the component to resize.

Explore Layout
To illustrate how component layout works, we are going to change the settings on the
cylindrical tank we added earlier.
1. Click and drag the tank so that it is positioned near the top left corner of the
window.

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2. Click File.
3. Click Save All.

4. Click Tools.
5. Select Launch Project.
6. Click Launch (Windowed).

The Client will open.

7. Enter admin in the username field.

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8. Enter password in the password field.

Note: if you still have the client open from an earlier exercise, you can simply switch to
it. You may still need to log in.

9. Click Components.
Because the tank is using the default layout mode (relative), it is larger in the client than
it was in the Designer, and appears to be further from the edges of the window. In fact, it
is proportionally both the same size and the same distance, percentage-wise, as it is in
Designer.
10. Return to Designer.
11. Right-click the tank.
12. Click Layout.

13. Click Anchored.

14. Ensure that the top and left anchors are selected.
15. Click OK.

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Note that the top and left sizing arrows on the tank are now red. This indicates that the
tank is using anchored layout, and that those sides are anchored.
16. Click File.
17. Click Save All.
18. Switch back to the client.
You will see that the tank is now in the exact position, and exactly the size, it was in
Designer.
There is no right or wrong to choosing to layout your windows using relative or
anchored mode. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Assessing the specific
needs of each project is the only way to determine which mode to use.

Note: You can change the default layout mode by clicking Project, then Properties.
Click Vision, then Design, and select the desired default settings.

Component Properties
Each component has a unique set of properties. A property is simply a named variable
that affects something about the component’s behavior or appearance.
Component properties can be set to specific values, or they can be bound to other
components, to tags, or to other data sources.

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Bind Components to Other Components
Components can have their properties bound to other components’ properties. This
allows one component to directly control the properties of another component.
To see an example of a property binding, follow these steps:
1. Mouse over the Components Palette to expand it.
2. Scroll to find the Slider component.

Note: You can use the filter text field at the top of the palette to type the name of the
component you want to find.

3. Drag the Slider component to the window.

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4. Click .

Preview mode allows you to interact with components, similar to how you can interact
with them in the client.
5. Drag the Slider’s handle to change its value.

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6. Look at the Value property on the Vision Property Editor.

The Value property represents the current position of the Slider’s handle.
7. Click to exit preview mode.

8. Click the Tank.

The Tank also has a Value property. By changing its value directly on the Vision
Property Editor, you can change how “full” the tank is.
As you can see, both the Slider and the Tank have a Value property. By binding the
Tank’s value to the Slider’s, we can use the Slider to change the Tank.
9. Click the button to the right of the Tank’s Value property.

The Property Binding dialog box opens.

10. Click Property.
11. Expand Slider.
The properties of the Slider that can be used for bindings are listed.
12. Click Value.

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13. Click OK.

14. Click .
15. Drag the Slider’s handle.
The Tank’s value changes to match the Slider’s.

Note: You need to release your mouse on the Slider handle to change the Tank.
The Slider does have a Defer Updates property that, when set to false, dynamically
changes the Tank as you drag the Slider’s button.

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Binding Components Using Expressions
We can also set a binding that is more complex. The Expression binding will allow you
to use more than one property in our expression language to create complex logic to
return a single value. Let’s add a Label to our example that displays the current value
along with some descriptive text.

Add a Label
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Type Label in the filter box.

3. Drag the Label component onto the window.

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You will see that Labels have a Text property. We can bind this to the Slider’s Value.
We want to add an expression that combines the Slider’s Value with literal text. Ignition’s
expression language is a custom-built simplified scripting language used to define
dynamic values for component properties and expression tags.
If you have experience with programming languages, you will find the expression
language very easy to use. If you do not have a programming background, don’t worry—
the expression language is easy to learn.
Everything in the expression language will evaluate to an expression; in other words,
everything returns a value. Using the language is just a matter of figuring out what
expression you need to write to return the value you want.
In our case, our end goal is when the Slider’s Value is, for example, 42, we want the
label to say 42 gallons. For that to work, we need to combine the Slider’s Value with the
literal text “gallons”. The technical term for combining strings of text is concatenation,
but you can think of it as simply adding the strings together, which is useful because we
use the + sign for concatenation.
In order to reference a property of another component, we need to get its full path, and
have it enclosed in curly braces. Fortunately, we never need to type that. The dialog that
allows us to create bindings has buttons to allow you find component properties and
enter them, so you’ll always know that the path is correct.

Add an expression binding

1. Click on the Label’s Text property.

2. Click Expression.
3. Click .
4. Expand Root Container.
5. Expand Slider.
6. Click Value.
7. Click OK.

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8. After the closing curly brace, enter + " gallons"

Note: Be sure to include the space inside the quotation marks.

9. Ensure your expression looks like this:

{Root Container.Slider.value} + " gallons"

10. Click OK.

You may need to resize the label to see all of the text.
11. Click .
12. Drag the Slider’s handle.
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Both the Tank’s Value and the Label’s Text change.
We will see other examples of expression bindings as we proceed through the class.

Use the Symbol Factory

The Symbol Factory is a resource included in Designer that contains hundreds of
images to enhance your visualizations.
All images in the Symbol Factory were created as Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), which
means that they can be freely resized without impacting their quality.
The Symbol Factory contains many categories of images, grouped into two subsections:
Basic and Enhanced. There are more images in the Basic subsection, but images in the
Enhanced subsection allow for more editing possibilities.

Add a Symbol Factory Image

To add an image from the symbol factory, follow these steps:
1. Click Tools.
2. Click Symbol Factory.

The Symbol Factory opens.

3. Click Enhanced.

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4. Click Motors.

5. Drag Simple Motor 4 from the Symbol Factory to your window.

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Note: You need to drag from the main grid of images. You cannot drag the large
preview image.

6. Close the Symbol Factory.

Explore a Symbol Factory Image

Symbol Factory images are really nothing more than collections of drawn shapes.
1. Click Simple Motor 4.

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2. Expand Simple Motor 4 in the Project Browser.
3. Expand Group_MotorBody.

The group expands to show the paths that make up the group.
In a later exercise, we will look at some of the possibilities of working with the groups
that make up the shape, rather than the shape itself.

Explore the Vision Drawing Tools

Shapes such as lines, rectangles, and circles are created using the shape tools. Shapes
are not components, but they have some similarities to them: each shape may be

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individually selected, named, and assigned its own properties. But shapes have some
additional capabilities that other components don’t have, such as the ability to rotate.
By default, the shape toolbar is displayed on the right-hand edge of the Designer
window, but you can drag it to wherever you prefer, just like the panels.
Shape tools allow you to create various shapes as well as edit them after they are
created. Click on the tool’s icon to make it the active tool, then click in the Designer
and drag to place the tool in your workspace. You can also double-click on a shape to
change to that shape’s native tool. When a shape tool is active, a toolbar is displayed
that has specific actions and settings for that tool.
After a shape is created, you can change its fill color, stroke color, and stroke style.

Selection Tool
The selection tool is active by default. In fact, we’ve been using it this whole time. When
active, you can select shapes and components. Selected components can be moved,
resized, and rotated.

Rectangle Tool
The rectangle tool creates and edits rectangle shapes. To create a rectangle, select
the tool and drag inside a window, holding down Ctrl, makes a perfect square. Once a
rectangle is created, you can use the square handles to change the rectangle’s height
and width.
There are also small circle handles that let you alter the rectangle’s corner radius. Simply
drag the circle down the side of the selected rectangle to make it a rounded rectangle.
Hold down Ctrl to drag each rounding handle independently if you want non-symmetric
corner rounding. You can use the Make Straight button in the rectangle tool’s toolbar to
return a rounded rectangle to be a standard straight-corner rectangle.

Ellipse Tool
The ellipse tool creates and edits circles and ellipses. You use it in much the same way
as the rectangle tool. While it is the active tool, you can drag inside a window to create a
new ellipse. Hold down Ctrl to make it a perfect circle. When an ellipse is selected, use
the width and height handles to alter the shape.

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Polygon Tool
The polygon tool creates polygons and stars. When this tool is active, you will see
an additional toolbar at the top of the screen. You can use this toolbar to change the
number of sides on the polygon, and to make it a star shape. Hold down Ctrl to keep the
polygon’s rotation an even multiple of 15°.

Arrow Tool
The arrow tool creates single or double-sided arrow shapes. When it is active, simply
drag to create a new arrow. Use the check box on the toolbar to choose a single or
double-sided arrow. To alter the arrow, use the diamond handles to change the two
ends of the arrow, and the circle handles to change the size of the shaft and the head.
When changing the arrow’s direction, you can hold down Ctrl to snap the arrow to 15°
increments.

Pencil Tool
The pencil tool draws freehand lines and shapes. When selected, you can draw directly
on a window by holding down the mouse button. Release the mouse button to end the
path. If you stop drawing inside the small square that is placed at the shape’s origin, you
create a closed path, otherwise you create an open path (line).
On the pencil tool’s toolbar, there is a Simplify and Smooth setting, as well as a toggle
between creating straight line segments or a curved line segments.
The Simplify option lets you specify a size in pixels that decreases the number of points
used when creating the line. In general, points on the line are as far apart as this Simplify
setting. If you find the line isn’t accurate enough, decrease this setting. If you choose to
create curved segments, the segments between points will be Bézier curves instead of
straight lines. The Smooth option controls how curvy these segments are allowed to get.

Line Tool
The line tool draws lines, arbitrary polygons, or curved paths. Unlike all of the other
tools, you don’t drag to create new paths with the line tool. Instead, you click for each
vertex you’d like to add to your path. To draw a straight line, simply click once where
you want the line to start and double-click where you want the line to end. To make a
multi-vertex path, click for each vertex and to end the line, double-click, press enter, or
make a vertex inside the origin box.

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As you draw the line, “locked-in” sections are drawn in green and the next segment is
drawn in red. Hold down Ctrl at any time to snap the next segment to 15° increments.
On the line tool’s toolbar, you can choose between three modes: normal line,
perpendicular, and curve. Perpendicular mode is just like line mode except that each
segment is restricted to be either horizontal or vertical. Curve mode creates a Bézier
curve path by attempting to draw a smooth curve between the previous two vertices
and the new vertex.

Path Tool
The path tool edits all shapes and paths. This tool lets you directly modify the nodes
in the path, add new nodes, remove nodes, and toggle segments between straight or
curved.

Gradient Tool
The gradient tool affects the orientation and extent of any gradient paints.

Eyedropper Tool
The eyedropper tool sets the selected shape(s) and/or component(s) foreground/
background or stroke/fill colors by pulling the colors from somewhere else in the
window. When this tool is active, left-click to set the selection’s fill or back ground, and
right-click to set the selection’s stroke or foreground. Note that this tool works on most
components as well as shapes. For example, right-clicking sets the font color on a
Button, or left-clicking sets the background color.

Setting a Shape’s Fill and Stroke

All shapes have three properties that affect how they look:
Fill Paint The interior color of the shape.
Stroke Paint The color of the shape’s outline.
Stroke Style The thickness, corners, and dash properties of the shape’s outline.

Editing Colors
The fill and stroke paints can be set to a variety of colors, using a variety of methods.
On the Fill Paint property, click on the pencil icon to open the color picker.
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At the top of the panel, you can choose between the five different paint types:
No paint When used as a fill paint, it makes the interior of the shape transparent. Used
as the stroke paint, does not draw the shape’s outline.
Solid color A color that will completely fill the interior of the shape or the stroke. You
can also set a transparency (alpha) level.
Linear gradient Smoothly blend any number of colors along a straight line across the
shape. Each color is called a Stop. Each stop is represented as a dragable control in
the gradient editor. You can click on a stop to select it and change its color or drag it to
reposition it. You can right-click on it to remove it. You can right-click on the preview strip
to add new stops and change the gradient’s cycle mode.
Radial gradient Very similar to linear gradient except the colors emanate from a point
creating an ellipse of each hue. Radial paints are configured in the same way as linear
paint.
Pattern paint Uses a repeating pixel-pattern with two different colors. You can pick a
pattern from the drop-down or create your own using the built-in pattern editor.

Stroke Style
The stroke style primarily controls the thickness of the line drawn, but you can also use
it to create a dashed line.
The setting for thickness is specified in pixels. Dashed line can be applied by choosing
the style from the list.
The effect of thickness and dash pattern settings is fairly self-explanatory, but the other
stroke settings are a bit more subtle. You can notice their effect more easily on thick
lines.

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Tags

In Ignition, a Tag is more than simply what is considered a “Tag” in other systems.
Each Ignition Tag starts as one data point, and may have a static or dynamic
value that comes from a PLC device, an expression, or a SQL query. But once we
have access to that data point, we can add configurations for alarming, scaling,
historical storage, and more.
Ignition Tags are stored in Providers, and you can have as many providers as you
want. By default, a fresh Ignition installation will have a single internal Tag provider.

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Main Benefits of Tags

Tags work naturally and easily with Ignition and offer the following features:

Drag-and-Drop Screen Design

Using the Vision and Perspective modules, you can drag-and-drop Tags to a Window or
View to automatically create new components bound to the Tag. You can also bind Tags
to existing components or properties by dragging the Tag onto the component.

Object-oriented Design
Tag UDTs (User Defined Types) can be used to design re-usable, parameterized, and
extendable data types. You can create and configure new instances of these types in
seconds.

Performance and Scalability

Tags offer great performance on both the Gateway and Client. On the Gateway, the
system can support thousands of value changes per second and hundreds of thousands
of Tags. On the Client, Tags improve efficiency with their lightweight subscription
architecture. Adding additional clients creates a negligible effect on Gateway
performance.

Integrated Component Feedback

Tags offer a quality and overlay system for Vision and Perspective module components.
If a Tag’s data quality is anything but good, a component that depends on it gets a visual
overlay. Input components display an animated overlay while write-pending requests
are being written. These features effectively communicate the status of the system at a
glance.

Tag Values
Fundamentally, the primary goal of a Tag is to represent a value in the Ignition system.
The values can come from PLCs, expressions, queries, and so on, and can be used on
Vision Windows, Perspective Views, Transaction Groups, and more.
Additionally, Tags offer alarming, scaling, meta data, and history. Depending on the
specific type of Tag, even more options can be available. In general, Tags provide a
common interface for tying together many types of data in Ignition.
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Add Tags
Now that you are in the Designer and have created some navigation windows, a good
next step is to add some Tags. You’ll use these Tags for real time status and control and
to store history with the Tag Historian. Tags are all configured in the Tag Browser panel.
1. Click in the top left corner of the Tag Browser.
2. Click Browse Devices.

The Connected Devices window opens.

3. Expand Ignition OPC UA Server.
4. Expand Devices.
5. Expand [DairySim].
6. Click Overview.
7. Hold Shift
8. Click Refrigeration.
9. Click Add.

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The Tag folders are added to the For Provider [default] - Tags section of the window.
The Import Details section of the window updates to show that 123 Tags are staged for
import.
10. Click OK.
The Tags are imported and display in the Tag Browser.

Organize Tags
The Tags are now imported, but each of the two folders are listed individually, and there
is no reference to the Diary Sim device that they are coming from. It might make more
sense to organize them so that it’s clear they are from a common device.
1. Click in the Tag Browser.
2. Click New Folder.

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3. Enter DairySim in the Name of the new folder field.

4. Click OK.

Now that you have the folder created, you can drag the Tag folders to it.
1. Click Overview.
2. Press Shift.
3. Click Refrigeration.
4. Drag both folders to the DiarySim folder. The folder will highlight in yellow.

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5. Click Yes to confirm the move.
The Tags are now better organized.

Import Tags Into Folders

In the last section, we imported Tags, then created a folder to organize them. It’s
possible to save a step and create the folder first, then import the Tags directly into the
folder.
1. Click in the Tag Browser.
2. Click New Folder.
3. Enter GenSim.
4. Click OK.
5. Click . It is not necessary to have the new folder selected.
6. Click Browse Devices.
The Connected Devices window opens.
7. Expand Ignition OPC UA Server.
8. Expand Devices.
9. Expand [GenSim].
10. Click Ramp.
11. Press and hold Shift.
12. Click Writeable.
Confirm that all six folders—Ramp, Random, ReadOnly, Realistic, Sine and Writeable—are
selected.
13. Click GenSim in the For Provider [default] - Tags section on the right.
14. Click Add.

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The Tag folders are added to the For Provider [default] - Tags section of the window and
automatically placed inside the folder. The Import Details section of the window updates
to show that 81 Tags are staged for import.
15. Click OK.
The Tags are imported into the folder and display in the Tag Browser.

Note: It may be necessary at times to refresh the Tag Browser if it does not display
the most current changes. You can do this by clicking the Refresh button at the top of
the Tag Browser.

Bind Tags to Components

One of the primary tasks in Ignition is using components to display live Tag data. To do
this, you can bind a Tag to a component’s property.

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Drag a Tag to a Window or View
The simplest way to create a component that visualizes a Tag’s value is to directly drag
the Tag from the Tag Browser to an open Vision Window or Perspective View.
1. If necessary, open the Components Window in Vision.
2. Expand GenSim in the Tag Browser.
3. Expand Ramp.
4. Drag Ramp0 to the window.
5. When you release your mouse, you will see a variety of choices for the component
to use.
6. Select Display.
7. Click LED Display.

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The LED Display component is a simple yet convenient way to display Tag values that
are constantly updating.
When dragging a Tag to a window, three component properties are automatically bound
to the Tag: Mouseover Text, Number Format Pattern, and Value. You can see this
by examining the Vision Property Editor and noting the properties that are bolded and
display the Binding icon.

Drag a Tag to an Existing Component

A second method of binding a Tag to a component is to drag the Tag onto a component
that already exists in the window or view.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Enter LED in the filter box at the top of the palette.

3. Drag an LED Display component onto the window.

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4. Drag Ramp1 from the Tag Browser onto the new LED component. The component
will highlight in yellow.

Note that the same three properties—Mouseover Text, Number Format Pattern, and
Value—are bound to the component.

Drag a Tag to a Property

A third method for binding a Tag is to drag it directly to a property on the Property Editor
of an existing component.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Drag an LED display component onto the window.
3. Drag Ramp2 from the Tag Browser onto Value property of the new LED
component on the Property Editor. The property will highlight in yellow.

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Note that only the Value property is bound.

Manually Bind a Property

The fourth method for binding a component to a Tag is to manually create the binding.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Drag an LED display component onto the window.
3. Click on the Value property.

The Property Binding dialog box opens.

4. Click Tag.
5. Expand Tags.
6. Expand GenSim.
7. Expand Ramp.
8. Click Ramp3.
9. Click OK.

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Best Practice: Which Method Should You Use?

While all four methods outlined above achieve the same visual result, there is an
important difference between the first two and the last two. When dragging a Tag
from the Tag Browser, whether directly to the Window or on to a component, you
will always end up with three bindings in Vision. But when you drag to a particular
property, or manually create the binding, you only get one bound property.
In some cases, this is not going to matter too much, but you need to be aware that
those additional bindings might create issues down the road. An example of this
would be if you duplicated a component that had the three bindings, but then only
changed the Value binding so that the component displayed a different Tag’s value.
Now, you would have a component that is bound to two different Tags, which might
result in unexpected behavior.
For that reason, we recommend primarily using the third or fourth methods over the
first two.

Bidirectional Bindings
All of the bindings above are read-only, because the LED Display component is itself
read-only. But there are many components that are capable of both reading and writing
to Tags.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Click to clear the filter.
3. Enter Numeric.
4. Drag a Numeric Text Field component onto the window.

5. Expand GenSim in the Tag Browser.

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6. Expand Writable.
7. Drag WriteableInteger1 to the Value (Integer) property of the Numeric Text Field.

Dragging a Tag to a writable component automatically creates a bidirectional binding,

allowing the component to both read and write the Tag’s value.
We can test this behavior using Preview mode.
8. Click .
9. Click Read/Write on the main toolbar.

10. Enter a number into the field.

11. Press Enter.
If you examine the Tag’s value in the Tag Browser, you will see it now has the new value.

Memory Tags
All of the Tags we have explored so far have been OPC Tags—Tags that represent
values from actual (or, in our case, simulated) PLCs.
However, there are other types of Tags available to us in Ignition. A common and very
useful example of this is a Memory Tag. Memory Tags are similar to global variables in
programming, as they allow us to store a value that can be used later, in any part of our
project. In fact, because Memory Tags, like all other Tags, are stored on the Gateway,
they are available to every project on that Gateway.
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Create a Memory Tag
Memory Tags are created in the Tag Browser.
1. Collapse any open folders in the Tag Browser.
2. Click in the Tag Browser.
3. Click New Standard Tag.
4. Click Memory Tag.

The Tag Editor opens.

5. Enter TempF in the Name field.
6. Enter 72 in the Value field.
7. Click OK.

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The Memory Tag is created with a default value.

Derived Tags
One use of a Memory Tag is to use it to drive the value of a Derived Tag.
Derived Tags have a source—some other Tag—as well as read and write expressions.
This way, a Derived Tag can both get a value based on its source, but also write back to
the source.
1. Collapse any open folders in the Tag Browser.
2. Click in the Tag Browser.
3. Click New Standard Tag.
4. Click Derived Tag.
The Tag Editor opens.
5. Enter TempC in the Name field.
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6. Click on the Read Expression property.

The Expression dialog box opens.

7. Expand Tags.
8. Click TempF.
9. Click Apply.

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10. Click on the Read Expression property.

The Expression Editor opens. We need to write an expression to tell this Tag how to
calculate its value from its Source Tag.
11. Enter the following expression to convert a temperature from Fahrenheit to
Celsius:
({source}-32)*5/9

12. Click Apply.

13. Click on the Write Expression property.
When this Tag changes, it needs to write a value back to the Source Tag.
14. Enter the following expression to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit:
{value}*9/5+32

15. Click Apply.

16. Click OK.
You will now see the two new Tags, and will notice that TempC—the Derived Tag—has a
value of 22, the Celsius equivalent of 72 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can test the functionality of both Tags by changing either value.

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Additional Tag Types

Several other types of Tags exist on the Gateway.
Expression Tag A Tag driven by an expression. The expression syntax is the same as
for property bindings and allows mathematical operations, references to other Tags,
logic operations, and more.
Query Tag Executes a SQL Query, whose result provides the value for the Tag. Like
SQL binding in Vision, SQL Query Tag can reference other Tags to build dynamic
queries.
Reference Tag A simple type that has the same value as another Tag. This way you can
have multiple copies from the same source, and set different values for alarms, history,
scaling, etc.
Complex Tag (UDT) Created from a standard Tag type, but offers a variety of additional
features. In simple terms, you can think of them as a way to create “data templates”,
where a particular structure of Tag is defined and can then be created as if it were a
single Tag.

System and Vision Client Tags

Ignition comes with predefined system Tags to provide more information about the
Client and the Gateway System.
You can switch between the Tags derived from devices and the Client or System Tags
by selecting the appropriate Tag source in the list at the top of the Tag Browser.

System Tags
System Tags provide status about the system, such as memory usage, performance
metrics, and so on. They exist for the Client and the Gateway. You can modify the
Gateway system Tags to perform alarming, history, and scaling, but you cannot modify
the Client Tags.

Vision Client Tags

Client Tags, as the name implies, are only available for use in Vision Clients. This means
that their values are isolated to a Client runtime. Even though they are created in the
Designer, each Client creates their own instances. This makes them very useful as in-
project variables, for passing information between screens and between other parts of
the Clients, such as scripting.
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Client Tags are a hybrid of memory, expression, and SQL query Tags. However, they do
not have a Tag Group. When set to run as an expression or query, a poll rate is specified
dictating how often the value is calculated.
A great way to use Client Tags is to have a variable that is used across multiple pages
when you can’t use a normal Memory Tag because each running Client would want their
own value. For example, you might have several windows reused for all areas around
your facility. If you are passing the area name into each screen, then you want to use a
Tag to remember without having to pass variables around while opening windows. If two
or more people would want to see different areas at the same time, a Memory Tag won’t
work but a Client Tag will.

Tag Groups
Tags are executed by Tag Groups inside of a Tag Provider.
Tag Groups dictate the rate of execution of Tags, and therefore play crucial role in the
design of large and high-performance systems. They offer several key execution modes
to help create efficient projects.

Direct Tag Group

The Direct Mode executes at a fixed rate, which is defined by the Rate setting. Every Tag
that uses the Direct mode will poll the PLC at the specified rate setting.
Ignition comes with two default Direct Tag Groups: Default and Default Historical. The
Default group polls at a 1 second rate, while the Default Historical group polls at a 10
second rate. However, you can modify either of these if you need to.

Leased Tag Group

The leased Tag Group executes at two rates. A Leased/Driven Rate executes when a
component on any open window, in either Designer or the Client, is bound to the Tag.
If no components are on open windows bound to the Tag, it will poll at the Rate setting.
Usually, the Rate will be slower than the Leased/Driven Rate.

Driven Tag Group

The rate of the Driven Tag Group is based on a simple comparison between a Tag value
and a number. If the condition is true, the Tag Group executes at its Leased/Driven rate.
If false, it runs at the Rate.

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Create New Tag Groups

For the purposes of seeing how Tag groups work, we will create two new Tag groups so
that we can explore how Leased and Driven groups work.

Create New Tag Groups

We want to create a Leased Tag Group that will update Tags once per second when
a component on an open window is bound to them, and once every ten seconds
otherwise.
Then, we will create a Driven Tag Group that will update Tags once per second if the
value of our TempF Memory Tag is above 32, and not update their values at all if it is
below 32.
1. Click in the top right corner of the Tag Browser.
2. Click Edit Tag Groups.

The Tag Group Editor opens.

3. Click to add a new Tag Group.
4. Enter Leased in the Name field.
5. Select Leased from the Mode list.
6. Enter 10000 in the Rate (ms) field.

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7. Click to add a new Tag Group.

8. Enter Driven in the Name field.
9. Select Driven from the Mode list.
10. Type 0 in the Rate (ms) property.

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Setting a Rate to zero means that Tags will never poll for a new value if the expression is
not met.
11. Click to edit the Driving Expression property.
We want an expression that will first read our TempF memory Tag. We can use the
dialog box to find and correctly insert the path to that Tag.
12. Click .
13. Expand Tags.
14. Click TempF.
15. Click OK.

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16. Click Apply.

A reference to the Tag, {[default]TempF}, is inserted into the Driving Expression
property.
17. Select > from the Driving Comparison list.
18. Type 32 in the Comparison Value field.
19. Click OK.

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Apply Tag Groups to Tags

Now that we have the Tag Groups, we want to apply them to some Tags.
1. Expand GenSim on the Tag Browser.
2. Expand Random.
3. Double-click RandomInteger1.
The Tag Editor opens.
4. Select Leased from the Tag Group dropdown.
5. Click OK.

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Because we have set it to the Leased Tag Group, but have no components on any
windows bound to the Tag, it will now only update once every 10 seconds.
6. Drag RandomInteger1 to the window.
7. Select Display.
8. Click LED Display.
Now that there is an open window with a component displaying the Tag’s value, it will
begin updating every second.
9. Double-click RandomInteger2.
10. Select Driven from the Tag Group dropdown.
11. Click OK.
12. Double-click the value of TempF.

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13. Type 50.
14. Press Enter.
15. The value of RandomInteger2 will update once every second.
16. Double-click the value of TempF.
17. Type 20.
18. Press Enter.
The value of RandomInteger2 will stop updating.

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Complex Tags (UDTs)

Complex Tags, also referred to as Tag UDTs, let you leverage object-oriented data
design principles in Ignition. Using complex Tags, you can dramatically reduce
the amount of work necessary to create robust-systems by essentially creating
parameterized “data templates” that you can use to generate Tag instances.

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UDT Features
UDTs allow you to more efficiently manage large groups of Tags. Some key features of
UDTs include:
Central Definition Once you define your data type, you can then create instances of
it. If at a later time you want to change some aspect of the Tag, you can simply edit the
type definition and all instances of it are automatically updated.
Parameterized Settings Define custom parameters on your data type and then
reference them inside your member Tags. When its time to create instances, you can
simply modify their parameter values in order to change where the underlying data
comes from.
Extendable Data types can inherit from other data types in order to add additional
members or override settings. Instances can also override settings, allowing flexibility
for dealing with irregular data and corner cases.

Terminology
The following terms are frequently used when discussing complex Tags:
UDT (User Defined Type) The definition of the data type: its structure, Tags, attributes,
and settings.
Instances Running copies of a data type with specific data for all members. Instances
are linked to their parent types and are refreshed when their parent type changes.
Except for specifically overridden settings, all settings are inherited from the type
definition. This should be a specific object, like Motor 3, or Cooling Tank 5.
Parameters Custom properties on data types that you can use inside the type or
instance definition to create parameterized data templates. For example, if a data
type consists of three OPC Tags that only differ by a number in the path, you can use
a parameter for the “base address”, allowing instances to be created with only one
setting.
Members Tags inside of a data type or instance. Members can be basic Tag types, or
other UDTs.

Create a UDT
Our DairySim device contains eight Motors, each with an identical structure. These are a
prime candidate for a set of Tags that could be more easily managed as an UDT.

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Creating a MotorUDT
The easy way to create a UDT is to model it after an existing sample Tag. So, we will
create a UDT for our Motors, and initially base it off of one of the existing Motor Tags.
1. Click UDT Definitions in the Tag Browser.
2. Click in the top left corner of the Tag Browser.

3. Click New Data Type.

The UDT Definitions Editor opens.

4. Enter MotorUDT in the Name field.

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The UDT will need references to the Tags we want to include in it. We can create these
by adding sample Tags, then changing them to be general references to the Tag type
instead.
5. Click
6. Expand Ignition OPC UA Server.
7. Expand Devices.
8. Expand [DairySim].
9. Expand Overview.
10. Expand Motor 1.
11. Click Amps.
12. Press Shift.

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13. Click HOA.
14. Click Add.

15. Leave the UDT Definition Editor open.

UDT Parameters
All of the Tags we have worked with up until now have had a hard-coded OPC item
path. For example, the path for the Amps Tag in Motor 1 looks like this:
ns=1;s=[DiarySim]_Meta:Overview/Motor 1/Amps

And the path for Motor 2:

ns=1;s=[DiarySim]_Meta:Overview/Motor 2/Amps

If we carefully examine those paths, we can see that they are identical, with a single
exception: the number following “Motor”.
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Our UDT needs to be able to represent the generic idea of a Motor, but the individual
instances of Motors we will create from it will need a way to differentiate between those
paths. It is able to do this with a parameter—a value we can pass in to each instance as
a variable.

Note: In our simplified example for class, we are using a single parameter to
represent a single portion of the OPC Item Path. In real-world situations, though, UDTs
might require multiple parameters that represent a variety of values within the UDT.

1. Click on the Parameters property.

2. Click to add a parameter.

3. Click in the Name field.
4. Enter MotorNumber.

Note: The spacing and capitalization in the parameter name is not important, but
every time you need to reference this parameter, it will need to be spelled (including
capitalization) exactly the same way, so it’s important to have a naming convention
established to ensure consistency. For class, we will always spell multi-word
parameters as one word, capitalizing the first letter of each word.

5. Press Enter.

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6. Leave the UDT Definition Editor open.

Using the Parameter

Now that we have created the parameter, we need to edit the OPC Item Path for each
Tag in our UDT.
1. Click Amps.
2. Click on the OPC Item Path property.
3. Click Edit.

The Edit Binding dialog box opens.

4. Delete the 1 in the path.
5. Click
6. Click MotorNumber.

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A reference to the parameter, {MotorNumber}, is inserted into the path.
7. Make sure your path now looks like this:
ns=1;s=[DiarySim]_Meta:Overview/Motor {MotorNumber}/Amps

Note: Be sure there is a space between the word “Motor” and the parameter
reference.

8. Click Apply.
9. Click HOA.
10. Click on the OPC Item Path property.
11. Click Edit.
The Edit Binding dialog box opens.
12. Delete the 1 in the path.
13. Click
14. Click MotorNumber.
A reference to the parameter is inserted into the path.
15. Make sure your path now looks like this:
ns=1;s=[DiarySim]_Meta:Overview/Motor {MotorNumber}/HOA

16. Click Apply.

17. Click OK.

Create Instances of the UDT

Now that we have a UDT created, we can make instances of it. Instances are running
copies of a data type with concrete data for all members.
We’ll start by creating a folder for our instances.
1. Click Tags in the Tag Browser.
2. Collapse any open folders.
3. Click in the top left corner of the Tag Browser.
4. Click New Folder.
5. Enter Motors.
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6. Click OK.

Create a Single Instance

You can create a single instance of a UDT in the Tag Browser. While this is useful for
class demonstration purposes, it would be rarely used in the real world. After all, the
entire purpose of using UDTs is to ease the creation and management of many Tags at
once.
1. Right-click the Motors folder.
2. Select New Tag.
3. Select Data Type Instance.
4. Click MotorUDT.

The Tag Editor opens.

In order to create an instance of a UDT, we need to provide, at a minimum, two things: a
unique name, and a value for each parameter.

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5. Enter Motor 5 in the Name field. Be sure to include the space between the word
and the number.
6. Click to the right of Parameters.

7. Double-click the Value field.

8. Enter 5.
9. Click OK.

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The instance is created. You may need to expand the Motors folder to see it.

Create Multiple Instances

More often than not, you will want to create many instances of a UDT. Thankfully, this is
a simple process with the Multi-instance Wizard.

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1. Right-click the Motors folder.
2. Click Multi-instance Wizard.

The Instance Creation Wizard opens.

The first step in the wizard is to select the UDT to create instances from, but in this case
we only have a single UDT, so we can skip to the next step in the wizard.
3. Enter Motor in the Base Tag Name field.
4. Enter a space after the word.
5. Enter 1-4,6-8 in the Tag Name Pattern field.

Note: Make sure there is no space following the comma in the pattern.
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There are a wide variety of Tag name patterns possible. In this case, we need the
numbers 1-4 and 6-8, because we have already created Motor 5. If we had not created
that individual instance, we could simply use 1-8 as the pattern.
Note that we have a simple naming scheme here, with a word followed by a number.
More complex environments will require more complex naming schemes, and many
options for the pattern are outlined in the blue box at the bottom of the wizard.
In addition to the naming pattern, we also need to create the pattern for the parameter.
In our case, it is the same as the naming pattern, but it will not always necessarily be the
same.
6. Double-click the Parameter field.
7. Enter 1-4,6-8.

Note: Once again, ensure that there is no space in the pattern.

8. Press Enter.

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The Size and Tags to create will both update to show that the wizard will create 7 Tags.
9. Click Preview.
Verify that the Tags to be created have the correct names and parameter numbers. If
they do not, click Back and make any necessary corrections.

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Best Practice: Always Use Preview

Once you click OK to have the wizard create the Tags, there is no simple way
to fix a mistake in the naming convention or parameters. Therefore, it’s highly
recommended that you always use the Preview button to verify that you have
everything configured correctly before closing the wizard.

10. Click OK.

The remaining Tags are created.
You can verify that the newly-created Tags are correct by expanding one, and then
expanding the Amps or the HOA Tag, and viewing the OPC Item Path to see that the
number in the path is being properly replaced by the parameter.

Editing a UDT
One of the primary benefits to using UDTs is that you can edit the UDT definition, and
automatically have those changes applied to every instance.

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To demonstrate this, we are going to add a Memory Tag to each Motor. We will actually
use this Tag later in the course; for now, we just want to see that adding it to the UDT
automatically adds it to each instance.
1. Click UDT Definitions in the Tag Browser.
2. Double-click MotorUDT.
The UDT Definition Editor opens.
3. Click .
4. Click Memory Tag.

A new Tag is added to the UDT.

5. Enter SpeedSP in the Name field.
6. Select Double for the Data Type.
7. Enter 50 in the Value field.
8. Click OK.

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9. Click Tags in the Tag Browser.

10. Expand several of the Motors.
Each Tag now has a SpeedSP memory Tag.

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When we created the TempF Memory Tag earlier, we noted that it was a global variable.
Memory Tags in UDTs still function like variables, but now, each one is unique to its Tag
instance—changing the value one will not impact any of the others.

Overrides
We all know that not every motor is exactly the same, so there is a way to make changes
to individual Instances of a UDT. You can override any property of a UDT by going into
the Tag Editor and changing any property or value. When you override a value, you will
see a small green circle appear to the left of the property name. This lets you know that
this property has a local override.
Once you have overridden a property on a UDT, further changes to that property on the
UDT itself will not impact the overridden property on the instance, so this needs to be
used with caution.
You will also notice an icon in the Tag Browser whenever a property is overridden.
In fact, each of our motors already has an override, as the value of the parameter, by
definition, needs to be unique to each instance.

Nesting UDTs and Inheritance

When creating new UDTs, you can make them as simple or complex as you want. In
the example above, we have a simple UDT with just three Tags. You can also include
other UDTs inside a UDT. For example, you could have a UDT for a conveyor where
each conveyor has a motor attached to it. You can re-use your motor UDT as a part of
the Conveyor. This way when you update the Motor UDT, all Conveyor UDTs will be
automatically updated.
UDTs can also have parent-child relationships. You might have several types of motors,
where one is simple like the example above, and one is a variable frequency drive that
has our simple motor as a parent and adds a few other Tags that control the motor
speed. This way when you update the simple motor UDT, all child motor UDTs will be
updated automatically.

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Templates

Templates are a simple but a very powerful feature in Ignition that you can use in
Vision. HMI and SCADA systems typically have a lot of repetition in their screens.
You might use a group of the same components over and over within your project
to represent different motors. The data driving each set of graphics is different,
but the graphics themselves are copies of each other.
Without Templates, the only way to do this is to copy-and-paste the components
each time you want to represent a motor. This is simple, and it works, but it can
cause major headaches and time consuming corrections later on. If you ever
want to make a change to how motors are represented, you’re stuck making the
change to each copy of the group. Templates solve all of these issues.

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Create a Template
A Template is created in much the same way as a Vision window: you add components,
arrange them as necessary, and bind them to each other or other data sources.
To create a Template, follow these steps:
1. Right-click Templates in the Project Browser.
2. Click New Template.

3. Enter Motor Template in the Name field.

4. Click Create Template.

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A blank Template is created.

Note: The Template has a checkerboard pattern as its background because by

default, Templates use a transparent background so that they can be placed on any
window and adopt that window’s background. The Template does, however, have a
Background Color property that can be changed to any other color if you wish.

Template Parameters
The primary use of Templates is to create a generic version of an interface, and then
create instances that will show specific instances. In much the same way that a UDT
uses parameters to represent variables in instances, Templates have parameters that
can be passed to them to change specific elements to reflect differences in instances.
To create a parameter for the Template, follow these steps:
1. Right-click in the background of the Template.
2. Select Customizers.
3. Click Custom Properties.

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4. Click .
5. Enter MotorNum in the Name field.
6. Click OK.

Note: Even though the Template’s MotorNum parameter and the UDT’s MotorNumber
parameter represent the same thing—the number of the motor—they are completely
unrelated. We are therefore giving them slightly different names, but that is to make
clear that they are not the same. It is perfectly acceptable to use the same name for
both.

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Adding Components to Templates

You can add components to your Template in exactly the same way you add them to
windows.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Enter Label in the Filter box.

3. Drag a Label to the top left corner of the Template.

4. Resize the Label to the same width as the Template.

5. Right-click the Label.

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6. Select Layout.
7. Select Anchored.
8. Click the top, left and right anchor buttons.
9. Click OK.

10. Expand the Components Palette.

11. Drag a Label to the Template.
12. Position the new Label near the left edge of the Template, below the previous
Label.
13. Apply the same layout settings as above.
14. Expand the Components Palette.
15. Click to clear the text from the Filter box.
16. Enter LED.
17. Drag an LED Display to the Template.
18. Position the LED to the right of the second Label.
19. Apply the same layout settings as above.
20. Select both the Label and the LED.
21. Press the Ctrl key.

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22. Drag the components down to duplicate them.
23. Enter Amps in the Text property of the first Label.
24. Enter SpeedSP in the Text property of the second Label.
25. Expand the Components Palette.
26. Click to clear the text from the Filter box.
27. Enter Multi.
28. Drag a Multi-state Button to the Template.
29. Position the button below the existing components.
30. Apply the same layout settings as above.
31. Click Tools.
32. Click Symbol Factory.
33. Click Enhanced.
34. Click Motors.
35. Drag Simple motor 4 to the Template.
36. Position the motor below the other components. It may be necessary to resize the
Template.

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Create an Expression With a Template Parameter

We have already seen how we can use expressions to create dynamic bindings on
components. We can also use the Template parameter as a variable in the expression.
1. Click the first label on the Template.
2. Click for the label’s Text property.
3. Click Expression.
4. Enter the following:
"Motor " +

Be sure to include the space between the word and the closing quotes.
5. Click .
6. Click MotorNum.
7. Click OK.

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8. Confirm that your code looks like this:
"Motor " + {Motor Template.MotorNum}

9. Click OK.

Indirect Tag Bindings

We have already seen how we can bind Components to Tags, but Templates require
a slightly different method. The bindings we have used so far have been attached to
a specific Tag. But now, we need a more generic binding that can use the Template’s
parameter as part of the binding.
1. Click the top LED display.
2. Click on the LED’s Value property.
3. Click Indirect Tag.
To create the indirect binding, we first need a sample Tag path. We can do this by using
the Insert Tag feature to find a Tag from one of the instances of our UDT. Then, we can
modify the one part of that path that matches the Template parameter value by using
the Insert property value feature.
1. Click
2. Expand Motors.
3. Expand Motor 1.

Note: You can select any of the motors.

4. Click Amps.
5. Click OK.

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6. Select the 1 in the path.

7. Press Delete.
8. Click .
9. Click MotorNum.
10. Click OK.

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11. Ensure your final Indirect Tag Path looks like this:

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You can now test this by clicking in a blank area of the Template’s background and
confirming the current value of the MotorNum parameter.

Note: There is no way to set an initial default value for the parameter, so the first time
you examine it, the value will likely be 0. This will cause your binding to appear to
not work, as there is no Motor 0. Simply changing the parameter value to a number
between 1 and 8 will get the LED display to start working.

Compare the value of the Amps Tag in the Tag Browser for the Motor that matches
your Template parameter with the value being displayed in the LED. Then, change the
Template parameter and check to make sure the LED changes to display that Motor’s
Amps.
Now, we can repeat this process with the other LED.
1. Click the second LED display.
2. Click for the LED’s Value property.
3. Click Indirect Tag.
4. Click
5. Expand Motors.
6. Expand any Motor.
7. Click SpeedSP.
8. Select the number in the path.
9. Press Delete.
10. Click .
11. Click MotorNum.
12. Click OK.
13. Click OK.

Note: Remember that as a Memory Tag, SpeedSP has a single, static value, so it will
not constantly update in the LED.

Indirect Tags With a Multi-state Button

We want to use the Multi-state Button to both view and control the value of the HOA
Tag. The button has two distinct properties for this. The Control Value is a writable
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property that can change the state of the Tag, while the Indicator Value is a read-only
property that reads the value of the Tag and changes the button’s state accordingly. In
order to set up the button, we will need to set Indirect Tag bindings on both properties.
1. Click the Multi-state Button.
2. Click for the LED’s Value property.
3. Click Indirect Tag.
4. Click
5. Expand Motors.
6. Expand any Motor.
7. Click HOA.
8. Select the number in the path.
9. Press Delete.
10. Click .
11. Click MotorNum.
12. Click OK.
13. Click Bidirectional.

Note: It is critical to check the Bidirectional checkbox. If you do not, the Control Value
will not be able to write to the Tag.

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14. Click OK.

Copying Bindings
The Multi-state Button’s Indicator Value needs the exact same binding as its Control
Value. Rather than repeat all of the steps above, we can simply copy and paste the
Control Value binding onto the Indicator Value.
1. Right-click Control Value.
2. Click Copy Binding.

3. Right-click Indicator Value.

4. Click Paste Binding.
That was simple, but it does raise a question. The Control Value’s binding includes
the Bidirectional setting, which allows the property to write to the Tag. We need that
for Control Value, but not Indicator Value. However, when we copied the binding, we
copied the entire binding, including that Bidirectional setting. In this particular case, it
doesn’t matter. The Indicator Value property of a Multi-state Button cannot write to a
Tag, so the Bidirectional setting in this case will not do anything even if it is set. But you
should be cautious when copying and pasting bindings to and from other components,
as somethings settings like this will cause issues.

Adding Template Instances to Windows

Now that we have the Template created, we can use it in Vision Windows.
Once placed in a Window, a Template behaves exactly like a Component—it can be
freely moved and resized, it is subject to layout behaviors, and it will have its own set of
properties.

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Create a New Vision Window
We need a window to add our Template to.
1. Expand Windows.
2. Expand Main Windows.
3. Right-click Empty.
4. Click Duplicate.
5. Right-click Empty(1).
6. Click Rename.
7. Enter Motor View.
8. Click OK.
9. Double-click Empty on the header.
10. Enter Motor View.
11. If desired, change the icon. See “Changing the Header Icon” on page 83.

Add a Template Instance

So far, we have added Components to Windows by dragging them from the
Components Palette. So, it might be reasonable to expect that we could drag a
Template from the Project Browser to add it to a Window. And, we can, but there is a
very big caveat: the Template itself cannot be open in the Designer. If it is, as soon as we
try to click it in the Project Browser, Designer will switch to the Template, and attempting
to drag it will end up dragging the Template into itself, which will result in an error.
1. Click File.
2. Click Save All.
3. Click x on the Template’s tab at the bottom of the Designer.

4. Click Yes to save the Template.

5. Drag Motor Template in the Project Browser to the Window.

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Set the Template Parameter

Now that we have an instance of the Template, we can direct it to display a particular
Motor. By default, new instances will have whatever value the parameter is set to on the
Template itself.
1. Click the Template instance.
2. Change the value of MotorNum on the Vision Property Editor.

The Template will now display the details about the new Motor.

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Add Additional Instances
You can have as many instances of a Template on a single Window as you need. You
can add new instances by dragging them from the Project Browser, or by copying and
pasting existing instances, or by holding Ctrl and dragging to duplicate instances. Each
instance has its own MotorNum parameter that can be set to allow for a display of
multiple Motors.

Use the Template Repeater

Another option for adding multiple instances of a Template to a Window is to use the
Template Repeater component.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Click to clear the current filter.
3. Enter Template.
4. Drag the Template Repeater to the Window.
5. Resize the Template Repeater, and if necessary the Window, to create enough
space to display 8 instances of your Motor Template in a grid 4 across and 2 high.
6. Select Motor Template from the Template Path property list.

7. Select Dataset from the Repeat Behavior property list.

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8. Click on the Template Parameters property.

The Dataset Editor opens.
The Template Repeater will populate itself with multiple instances of the Template set in
the Template Path property, and is able to pass a unique value to the parameter in each
instance. In order to do this, the Repeater needs a dataset, where each column is the
name of a parameter in the Template, and each field is a parameter value. In our case,
our Template only has a single parameter, so we need to create a dataset with a single
column. More complex Templates might have multiple parameters and thus need more
complex datasets.
9. Click .
10. Enter MotorNum.

Note: The name of the column must exactly match the name of the parameter. Pay
close attention to capital letters and spacing.

11. Select Integer as the Type.

12. Click Add Column.
13. Click 8 times.
14. Set the values of the rows to 1 through 8.

Note: You can enter the number of the first row, and then press Tab to move to the
next.

15. Click OK.

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The Template Repeater will now populate with eight instances of the Template.
We can tweak a few more settings to improve its appearance.
1. Select Flow from the Layout Style property list.
2. Select Vertical from the Flow Direction property list.
You can adjust the settings of the other properties in the Appearance section to further
refine how the Template Repeater looks.

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Best Practice: Datasets

After completing the last few steps, you might be asking yourself if manually creating
the dataset for the Template Repeater is really necessary. Manually setting up
the dataset with a single column and eight rows wasn’t really difficult, but what if
our Template had 5 parameters, and we needed to display 50 of them. Would we
really need to set up a 5 by 50 dataset and then manually enter all 250 pieces of
information?
Well, no. What we would do in a real-world environment would be have all of that
information stored in a database. We could then use Ignition to query the database
and return the information we need, and then simply bind the Template Repeater
to the dataset. While that is beyond the scope of this class, it is covered in our
advanced Database & Scripting class.

Use Parameters on a Symbol Factory Image

Our Template also includes a Symbol Factory image. It might not be obvious that there
is anything bindable on the image, but in fact there are a host of properties we can
potentially use to make the image dynamic.
One thing we can do is to add a color overlay to the image so that it can reflect the
same colors as the Multi-State Button: red when the button (and thus the bound HOA
Tag) is in the “Off” state, yellow when it is in the “Hand” state, and green when it is in the
“Auto” state.
In order for this to apply to all instances of the Template, we want to set this up on the
Template itself.
1. Double-click Motor Template in the Project Browser.
2. Expand Simple motor 4 in the Project Browser.
You will see that the image is made up of three groups, which are in turn made up of a
series of drawings.
In order to create the color overlay, we need a simplified version of this image that is a
single shape, rather than a collection of many shapes. We can achieve this by creating a
copy of the image, and then using the Shape tools to combine the elements of that copy
into a simplified shape.
3. Click Simple motor 4.

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4. Press Ctrl+d on your keyboard.
5. A copy, named Simple motor 5, is created.

Note: There is no other way to directly duplicate the image and place the duplicate
exactly on top of the original other than using the keyboard shortcut.

6. Click Simple motor 5.

7. Click on the main toolbar.
8. The shape is simplified into a single object, now named Union.

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Now that we have the simplified shape, we can use its Fill Paint property to create the
color overlay we want. You can refer back to “Setting a Shape’s Fill and Stroke” on page
115 for details on using the color tools.
9. Click on the Stroke Paint property.
10. Click No paint.

The Stroke is removed.

11. Click on the Fill Paint property.
In order the achieve the effect we want, we will bind the shape’s Fill Paint to the HOA
Tag using an Indirect Binding. However, we do have to ask: how will we convert the
Tag’s three values–0, 1, 2–to a valid color value? In order for this to work, we will need to
create the binding, and then add a color mapping to it, so that we can specify the color
we want when the Tag is in each of its three states.
12. Click Indirect Tag.
13. Click .
14. Expand Motors.
15. Expand a Motor.
16. Click HOA.
17. Click OK.
18. Delete the number from the Tag path.
19. Click .
20. Click MotorNum.
21. Click OK.

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22. Double-click the black bar in the first row of the Number-to-Color Translation
table.
23. Click .
24. Click inside the triangle to select a shade of red.
25. Drag the A slider until the value reads 40.

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26. Click on the Color popup.

27. Click OK.
28. Double-click the white bar in the second row of the Number-to-Color
Translation table.
29. Click .
30. Drag the line on the color wheel to yellow.
31. Click inside the triangle to select a shade of yellow.
32. Drag the A slider until the value reads 40.
33. Click the color popup.
34. Click OK.
35. Click .
36. Double-click the white bar in the third row of the Number-to-Color Translation
table.
37. Click .

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38. Drag the line on the color wheel to a green.
39. Click inside the triangle to select a shade of green.
40. Drag the A slider until the value reads 40.
41. Click the Color popup.
42. Click OK.
43. Click OK.

The binding is added to the shape.

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You can see the result of this by returning to the Motor View window. You should
see the image on each Template instance vary based on that Motor’s HOA value. If
necessary, you can go into Preview mode and use the Multi-State Button to alter the
value of the Tag and see the image change to match.

Select Instances From a List

Another potential way we can display Template instances to our users is by showing
a single instance and then allowing operators to select an instance from a list. This is
going to be a better option for displays with limited screen space or limited computing
resources, as the display only needs to ever show a single instance at a time.

Add a List
We will add a List component to our Window, and then bind it to the original instance of
the Template we put on the Window.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Click to clear the filter.
3. Enter Dropdown.
4. Drag a Dropdown List component to the Window under the single instance of the
Template.
5. Click on the Data property of the List.
Like the Template Repeater, the List is primarily controlled by a dataset. However, unlike
the Template Repeater, the List’s dataset already has the two columns it needs. The
Value column is what is passed out of the List to be used by other components, and the
Label column is what the user sees.
6. Click eight times.
7. Double-click in the first cell of the dataset.
8. Enter 1.
9. Press Tab.
10. Enter Motor 1.
11. Press Tab.
12. Repeat the steps above to add Values and Labels for all eight motors.

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13. Click OK.

Before we move on, we want to test the List.

14. Click .
15. Select a Motor from the List.
Look at the Selected Value property on the Vision Property Editor. You will see that
whenever you select a Motor, this property displays the associated Value from the List.
That lets us know what we need to use to bind the Template to the List.

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Bind the Template to the List
Now that we have the components we need, we can bind them together.
1. Click
2. Click the Template instance.
3. Click on the MotorNum property.
4. Click Property.
5. Click .
6. Expand Dropdown List.
7. Click Selected Value.
8. Click OK.
Now that we have the instance bound to the List, we can test it.
1. Click .
2. Select a Motor from the List.
The Template will update to reflect the selected motor.

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 Chapter 11

Tag History

Storing History in Ignition is powerful and simple to use. The Tag Historian module
uses intelligent algorithms to limit the amount of data being stored while still
preserving the ability to perform detailed analytics on the stored data.

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Log the Data

Logging data is easy to do with the Tag Historian. Once you enable Tag History, Ignition
creates the tables, logs the data, and maintains the database for you.
1. Expand GenSim in the Tag Browser.
2. Expand Ramp.
3. Click Ramp0.
4. Shift-click Ramp9.
5. Right-click on any selected Tag.
6. Click Edit Tag(s).

The Tag Editor window opens.

7. Scroll to the bottom of the property list.
8. Change History Enabled to true.

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Note: Do not merely check the checkbox. When you have multiple Tags selected,
every property has a checkbox next to it. This merely indicates that the value of that
property has changed and will be modified for all selected Tags. In order to enable
Tag History, you must change the value of the property from false to true.

9. Select DB from the Storage Provider list.

Note: You must select a database source as the Storage Provider for Tag History.
Because Tag History is a Gateway-level resource, it cannot use the project-level
default database connection. If you do not set a data source, Tag History will be
enabled but no data will be stored in the database.

10. Click OK.

Tag History is now enabled for all of the Ramp Tags. You will now see a clock icon next
to each Tag, indicating that History is being stored.

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Enable Tag History on a UDT

Enabling Tag History on a UDT automatically enables it for all instances.
1. Click UDT Definitions on the Tag Browser.
2. Double-click MotorUDT.
The UDT editor opens.
3. Click Amps.
4. Shift-click HOA.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the properties.
6. Change History Enabled to true.
7. Select DB from the Storage Provider list.
8. Click OK.

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9. Click Tags on the Tag Browser.
10. Expand any of the Motor instances to confirm that the clock icon is present.

Other Tag History Properties

While the defaults will, more often than not, be sufficient for storing Tag History, it can be
helpful to understand the other properties of the Tag Historian.
Deadband The Tag Historian is designed to sample the data, rather than storing all
of it. (Transaction groups allow you to store all of the data.) There are two algorithms
available for determining how the data is stored: analog and discrete. The default
setting for these is determined by the Tag’s datatype: Floats and Doubles default to
analog, while Booleans, Strings, and Integers default to discrete. The Deadband Style
allows you to change this default behavior.
Deadband Mode A setting of Absolute here treats the Historical Deadband setting
as an absolute value, while a setting of Percent treats it as a percenTage of the Tag’s
engineering unit span. The Off setting is the equivalent of 0.0.
Historical Deadband This determines the value of the deadband. Only changes that
are plus or minus this value will be evaluated for potential storage.
Sample Mode This setting determines how often the Tag Historian should evaluate the
value for potential storage. On Change, the default, evaluates every time the value of
the Tag changes. Periodic allows you to set a time frame on which the value should be
evaluated, regardless of how often the actual value changes. Tag Group allows you to

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use a Tag Group to set the frequency on which the Tag’s value is evaluated. See "Tag
Groups" on page 135 for more information on creating Tag Groups.
Min Time Between Samples Use this setting to set a time that must elapse between
samples, regardless of the Sample Mode. For example, if you have Sample Mode set
to On Change, and your Tags are changing every quarter second, you could use this
setting to have the Historian only evaluate Tags every second.
Min Time Units The unit for the above setting.
Max Time Between Samples This setting allows you to force the Tag Historian to store
a value at some pre-determined rate, even if the other settings would not have triggered
storing a value. As an example, imagine a Tag that is storing the temperature in a
freezer. If the freezer is working properly, this value will rarely, if ever, change, and thus,
the Tag Historian would not store values for the Tag. However, if you were to look at the
table, there would not be a way to tell if the values were not being stored because the
Tag wasn’t changing, or if there was a problem with the Tag Historian. Using this setting,
you could force a value to be stored at some rate that allows you to see that the Tag is
simply not changing values.
Max Time Units The unit for the above setting.

Viewing the Tag Historian Database Tables

Once enabled, the Tag Historian creates the tables it needs in the specified database.
While you should not plan to directly query the database in order to display the data, it
can be useful to view the tables to see how the Tag Historian is doing its work.
1. Click Tools.
2. Click Database Query Browser.

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The Database Query Browser opens.
The Database Query Browser is a useful tool within Ignition that allows us to interact
with any database that our Gateway has a connection to.

Note: The Database Query Browser is not operating in a “sandbox” environment.

Rather, it is a real, live connection to the database. Any changes you make to the
data will result in immediate, irrevocable changes to the database.

In the Schema section to the right, you will see that you now have 7 tables, all of them
beginning with sql.
The 5 tables in the middle of the list—sqlth_annotations, sqlth_drv, sqlth_partitions,
sqlth_sce, and sqlth_scinfo—are tables that the Tag Historian needs for its own
internal bookkeeping. None of the information in these tables is designed to be human-
readable or useful, and you should not do anything with these tables.
The final table in the list—sqlth_te—is useful. Let’s take a look at its data.
1. Double-click sqlth_te.
2. Click Execute.

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When you double-click a table in the Schema section of the Database Query Browser, a
SQL statement is automatically written for you that will return all of the data in the table.
You can then execute this query without modification to see that data.
What you will see here is a list of the Tags for which you have enabled Tag History;
in our case, all 10 Ramp Tags and all of the Tags within each instance of our Motors.
There’s a lot that isn’t important here, but the first two columns are.
id The id of this Tag within the Tag Historian system.
tagpath The Tag being stored.
By matching the id to the Tagpath, we can figure out how to look up the actual data for
each Tag.
The remaining table in the query, which should be first alphabetically, is named sqlt_
data_X_XXXX_X, where the X represents some digit. Careful analysis of those digits
will quickly reveal that they are not random. Rather, they represent the current month
and year, followed by a counter.
We mentioned previously that the Tag Historian tries to minimize the amount of data
being stored in a table in our database. While in theory enterprise-grade databases
have only the physical size of the hard drive as a data storage limit, in practice tables
with millions or billions of data points can often become unmanageable. One of the
strategies the Tag Historian uses to minimize the data is the use of its algorithms (see
"Other Tag History Properties" on page 193), but the second, equally important
strategy is the use of data partitioning.
By default, the Tag Historian will create a new table to store its data once a month. This
is a setting that can be changed in the Gateway, but the default explains the name of
this table: the month and year the table is storing data for, and a numeric reference for
the portion of that month.
Data partitioning is why you should not plan to directly query the database in order
to display the data from the Tag Historian. It simply becomes a nightmare to attempt
to know what exact table any given piece of the Tag Historian data resides in any
given table. Don’t worry, though—there are plenty of components in both Vision and
Perspective that are available to you to view this data.
That said, let’s go ahead and run a very simply query to see the data that is being
stored. Remember that you would not want to do this in a regular environment, but it’s a
useful way for us to view the limited amount of data we currently have.
1. Find Ramp0 in the current resultset and note its id. It should be 1.
2. Right-click in the gray area to the right of Resultset 1.
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3. Click + New Tab.

4. Double-click the sqlt_data_X_XXXX_X table.

5. Enter WHERE tagid = 1 at the end of the query. If needed, change the number to
match the id of Ramp0.
6. Click Execute.

View the resulting data. Remember that the purpose of the Tag Historian is not to store
every value, but rather, to store a sampling of the data. Here, you will see that with the
exception of the first record, which is the value that Ramp0 happened to have been at

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the moment you turned on Tag History, the only values being stored at those closest to
10 and closest to 0.
This is as expected, and shows the Tag Historian’s analog compression algorithm
working as designed.

Display Historian Data

Now that we have seen that we can store Tag History data in our database, let’s look at
some ways that we can display it.

Use an Easy Chart

The first component we will use to display Tag History data is the Easy Chart. Before we
create a chart for historical data, we need a new window to display it.
1. Right-click Empty in the Project Browser.
2. Click Duplicate.
3. Right-click Empty (1).
4. Click Rename.
5. Enter Tag History.
6. Press Enter.
7. Double-click the header text.
8. Enter Tag History.
9. If desired, change the header icon. See "Changing the Header Icon" on page
83.
Now that we have a new window, we can go ahead and add the Easy Chart. This is a
component whose primary function is to display Tag History data.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Enter Easy in the Filter box.
3. Drag an Easy Chart to the Window.
4. Resize the chart to fill the top half of the window.

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5. Drag Ramp0 from the Tag Browser to the Easy Chart.

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Ramp0’s Tag History data will display on the chart. Note that this Tag is a simple line
graph that grows from 0 to 10, drops back to 0, and repeats.
The Easy Chart has two modes: Historical and Realtime. The Historical mode includes
a date range so that operators can select a range of time to view the data. Realtime
updates the data continuously, and includes a way to set how far back in time data
should be displayed.
The chart defaults to Historical, but let’s change that to help us better visualize what is
happening.
1. Click the Easy Chart.
2. Select Realtime from the Mode list.

Now, you will see the chart continuously updating.

This is a useful tool to help us understand the actual data being stored by the Tag
Historian. You’ll recall that when we looked at the data itself, it was only storing the value
closest to 0 and closest to 10. Given that, how is the chart apparently providing new data
points every second?
It’s critical to understand that the Tag Historian is, by design, sampling data. It is not
designed to store all of the data. Because the Easy Chart is specifically built to display
this data, it has the ability to interpolate the data, which is what you are actually seeing
on the chart.

Use a Power Table

Another component that can be useful in visualizing Tag History data is the Power Table.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Click to clear the filter.
3. Enter Power.

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4. Drag a Power Table to the window.
5. Resize the table to fill the bottom half of the window.

6. Click on the Data property.

7. Click Tag History.
8. Expand DB.
9. Expand the Gateway.
10. Expand gensim.
11. Expand ramp.
12. Click ramp0.
13. Shift-click ramp2.

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14. Drag all three Tags to the Selected Historical Tags.

The Power Table needs to aggregate the data it will display. By changing the settings on
the binding, you can control what this aggregation looks like. We will change the binding
to display an average of the last day’s worth of data.
15. Select Realtime from the Date Range dropdown.
16. Enter 24 in the Most Recent field.
17. Select hour from the dropdown.

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18. Select Basic Average from the Aggregation Mode list.
19. Select Fixed from the Sample Size list.
20. Enter 24 in the Sample Size text field.
21. Click OK.

By setting Most Recent to 24 and Sample Size to a fixed size of 24, we can get one
sample per hour for the last 24 hours.
You should now see a table that is mostly filled with zeros. This is expected—we told the
table to display the last 24 hours of data, but we have only had Tag History enabled for

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the last 1 or possibly 2 hours. To view the data, we need to switch to Preview Mode so
we can scroll down.
1. Click .
2. Scroll down on the table to see the data.
Because we are averaging the data, the column for Ramp0 should be all 5s, as the
average of the data being stored—something close to 0 and something close to 10—will
always average out to 5.

Customize the Easy Chart

We have seen how the Easy Chart makes visualizing Tag History data easy. However,
there is a lot more that we can do with this component.

Dynamically Set the Chart Mode

You can allow operators to dynamically set the Chart Mode for the Easy Chart.
1. Resize the Easy Chart to make space above it.
2. Expand the Components Palette.
3. Click to clear the filter.
4. Type dropdown.
5. Drag a Dropdown List component to the window.
6. Click for the component’s Data property.
7. Click twice.
8. Type 1 in the first Value cell.
9. Press Tab.
10. Type Historical.
11. Press Tab.
12. Type 2.
13. Press Tab.
14. Type Realtime.
15. Click OK.

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16. Click the Easy Chart.

17. Click for the chart’s Mode property.
18. Click Property.
19. Expand Dropdown.
20. Click Selected Value.
21. Click OK.

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22. Click .
23. Change the selection in the Dropdown List to change the Chart’s mode.

Allow Operators to Add Tags to the Chart

You can allow operators to add Tags to the chart through a Tag Browse Tree component.
1. Expand the Component Palette.
2. Click clear the filter.
3. Type Tag.
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4. Drag a Tag Browse Tree component to the window.
Because we are using this in conjunction with the Easy Chart, we want to limit operators
to adding Tags that are being historized. But more than that, we want to further limit
them to only the Ramp Tags, which we can do by setting the Tree's Root Path property.
5. Right-click the Ramp folder in the Tag Browser.
6. Click Copy Path.

7. Click in the Root Node Path field.

8. Press ctrl-v on your keyboard.
9. Uncheck Include Realitime Tags.

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10. Click .
11. Drag one or more of the Tags from the Tag Tree Component to the Easy Chart.

Restrict Removal of Tags

By default, the Easy Chart allows operators to remove Tags from the chart by clicking
in the Pens legend. You can remove this option so that operators cannot remove
pens as easily.
1. Click .
2. Click for the Tag Pens property. You will need to scroll to the bottom of the
property editor to see this property.
3. Expand the Dataset Editor so that it is as wide as your monitor will allow.
4. Click the checkbox on the USER_REMOVABLE field for each pen. This is the final
column in the dataset.
5. Click OK.

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Transaction Groups

The other primary method of storing Tag data in a database is Transaction Groups.
While Tag History stores a sampling of the data, primarily for trend analysis,
Transaction Groups store all of the data. This allows for direct querying of the
data tables, and for the retrieval of specific data points, but it can potentially lead
to massive amounts of stored data. Transaction Groups can also be bidirectional,
allowing for Tags to be changed based on database queries, as in a recipe.

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Types of Transaction Groups

There are four types of transaction groups that you can use in your projects.
Historical Group The historical group makes it easy to quickly log historical data to
a SQL database. The historical group inserts records of data into a SQL database by
mapping items to columns. With full support for triggering, expression items, hour and
event meters, and more, you can set up complex historical transactions. Unlike the
standard group, the historical group cannot update rows, it can only insert records. Also,
it cannot write back to items, except for trigger resets and handshakes.
Standard Group The standard group is a flexible and general use group that can be
adapted to a variety of situations. The data model is row-based, with items mapping to
columns and the data corresponding to a specific row of a table. The standard group
contains items that may be mapped to the database or used internally for features such
as triggering or handshakes. Items that are mapped to the database target a specific
column of a single specific row, chosen according to the group settings. Items can be
mapped either one-way or bidirectionally. The group may also insert new rows instead
of updating a specific row. In this way, data can be inserted for historical purposes
based on a timer, with an optional trigger.
Block Data Group The block data group is so named because it writes “blocks” of data
to a table, consisting of multiple rows and columns. A block data group contains one or
more block items. Each block item maps to a column in the group’s table. Then it defines
any number of values (OPC or Tag items) that will be written vertically as rows under that
column. Block groups are very efficient and they can be used to store massive amounts
of data to the database. For example, 100 columns each with 100 rows would give us
100,000 data points, which will often only take a few hundred milliseconds to write,
depending on the database. Like the standard group, the block group can insert a new
block or update the first, last, or a custom block. Additionally, the group can be set to
only insert rows that have changed in the block.
Stored Procedure Group The stored procedure group is similar to the other groups
in terms of execution, triggering, and item configuration. The primary difference is that
unlike the other group types, the target is not a database table, but instead a stored
procedure. Items in the group can be mapped to input or output parameters of the
procedure. They can also be bound to output parameters, in which case the value
returned from the procedure will be written to the item. Items can be bound to both an
input and output at the same time.

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Group Items
Items are the core elements of a group. When items are executed, the values are used
by the group (for logic purposes), by other items, and to write to the database.
Items can be written to and from the database or from other items. The following are the
group items types:
OPC Item An OPC item, directly subscribes to an OPC server at the rate of the group.
Executed by the group, so alarms are evaluated when the group is executed. These
items are executed even when the trigger isn’t active.
Expression Item (Run-Always) Run-Always expression items are much like an
expression Tag. They can be either a static value, an expression, or a database query.
Run-Always expression items are evaluated at each group interval before the trigger
state is evaluated.
Expression Item (On-Trigger) On-Trigger expression items are the same as Run-
Always expression items, except that they are only executed after the trigger has been
evaluated and is active.
Tag Reference Allows a Tag to be used in a group like any other item type, except that
the Tag is evaluated by its Tag Group instead of by the group.
It is easy to confuse the definition and purpose of Tags and OPC items in transaction
groups, though they have distinct benefits.
Tags may be referenced inside of groups, however it is critical to remember that they
are executed by the Ignition Gateway, according to their scan classes and independent
of the group. Adding a Tag into a group is like creating a shortcut to that Tag.

Triggers
The trigger settings determine when a group will execute. They are examined each time
the group evaluates according to the update rate of the group. If they pass, the group
will run and perform its action.
The trigger settings are the same for all group types. They are found in the right side of
the Transaction Group workspace, on the second tab.
There are two types of triggers. One type only evaluates when values have changed,
while the other executes the group based on the value of an item within the group.

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Creating a Basic History Group

The historical group makes it easy to quickly log data historically to a SQL database.

Create an Historical Group

Let’s create an historical group that logs a few Tags to the database every 10 seconds.
1. Click Transaction Groups in the Project Browser.
2. Enter Basic History in the Name of the transaction group field.
3. Click Create.

Now we need to drag in the Tags we want to log.

4. Expand GenSim in the Tag Browser.
5. Expand Realistic.
6. Click Realistic0.
7. Shift-click Realistic4.
8. Drag the selected Tags to the Basic OPC/Group Items table.

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Configure the Action Settings

Next, we need to setup the group rate and database connection.
1. Enter 10 in the Timer text field.
2. Leave the Data source list at <Default>.

Note: Because Transaction Groups are part of the project, they can use the project
default database connection.

3. Enter history for the table name.

4. Press Enter.

Note: If you do not press Enter after typing the name for the table name, it may not
set the name and instead will revert back to the default group_table.

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Run the Group

Now that we have the basic settings configured, we can run the group to make sure it
works as we expect it to.
1. Click Enabled.
2. Click File.
3. Click Save All.
The group will be enabled and will start to log data. You should see the values on Total
Executions and DB Writes start to increment every 10 seconds. You will also see a green
arrow next to the group on the Project Browser.

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Examine the Data
Let’s take a look at the data being stored by the group.
1. Click Disabled.
2. Click File.
3. Click Save All.
The group stops executing.
4. Click Tools.
5. Click Database Query Browser.
The Database Query Browser opens.
6. Double-click history.
7. Click Execute.

The table shows all of the data that was logged by the group.
It’s important to note that unlike Tag History, the group is logging all of the data: each
individual data point is recorded for each Tag.

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This might be what is needed by your organization, but it’s also important to note that all
of this data is being logging a single table in the database. Transaction Groups can very
quickly result in unmanageably large tables.
That said, the fact that the group is being logged in a single table—one that we named—
does mean that, unlike the Tag Historian’s data, we can write SQL statements directly
against this data.

Add a Trigger
A Transaction Group can be dynamically controlled through the use of a trigger. With a
trigger, we can only have the Transaction Group become active when one or more of
its Tags are actually changing values, which will prevent it from needlessly recording
duplicate values when the Tags are not changing, or we can turn the Group on and off
by changing the value of one of the Group’s Tags, which is what we will explore in our
example.
1. Ensure your Designer is in Read-Write mode.

2. Click TempF in the Tag Browser.

3. Double-click its value.
4. Enter 50.
5. Drag TempF to the Basic OPC/Group Items table.

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6. Click Trigger.
7. Click Execute this group on a trigger.
8. Select TempF from the Trigger on item list.
9. Select is active from the Trigger conditions.
10. Enter 32 in the > field.
11. Enter 32 in the <= field.

Note: Be careful that your conditions do not overlap or leave a gap in values.

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12. Click Enabled.

13. Click File.
14. Click Save All.
The Transaction Group will resume, and you will once again see the Total executions
and DB writes values incrementing every 10 seconds.
Now, let’s use the trigger to dynamically stop the group.
1. Double-click the value of TempF in the Tag Browser.
2. Enter 20.

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3. Press Enter.
Because the trigger’s value is now below the value set to make it non-active, it will
stop executing. It is still Enabled, though—you’ll still see the green arrow on the Project
Browser—so that at any point when the trigger once again raised above the threshold,
it’ll begin recording values again.
We will use this data later in the class, so we want to make sure that the Transaction
Group is recording values, so let’s get it going again by resetting our trigger.
1. Double-click the value of TempF in the Tag Browser.
2. Enter 50.
3. Press Enter.

Creating a Recipe Group

While recording historical data is a very common use of Transaction Groups, another
common use is to leverage the ability of a group to be bidirectional: not only can groups
write Tag information to the database, they can also read information from the database,
and then use that information to write values back to Tags. A very common use-case for
this feature is loading recipes.
To set this up, we’re going to have the Transaction Group create a new table in our
database with column names derived from some Tags. Then, we’ll manually populate
the database with some (made up) recipe information. After that, we’ll run the group and
have it write values back to the Tags based on the information in the database. Don’t
worry, it’s not as complex as it sounds.

Rename the Tags

To make this example a little more fun, let’s create a recipe for several flavors of ice
cream. Ice cream needs four basic things: milk, sugar, ice, and a flavor.
We’ll start by renaming some of the Tags in the Writable folder to stand in for our
ingredients. We’ll use three of the WriteableInteger Tags for milk, sugar, and ice, and one
of the WriteableStrings for the flavor. We also need a fourth WritableInteger to represent
the index, or primary key, of the recipe in the database table we’ll eventually use.
1. Expand GenSim in the Tag Browser.
2. Expand Writeable.
3. Right-click WriteableInteger1.

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4. Click Rename.

5. Enter Milk.
6. Press Enter.
7. Right-click WriteableInteger2.
8. Click Rename.
9. Enter Sugar.
10. Press Enter.
11. Right-click WriteableInteger3.
12. Click Rename.
13. Enter Ice.

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14. Press Enter.
15. Right-click WriteableInteger4.
16. Click Rename.
17. Enter Index.
18. Press Enter.
19. Right-click WriteableString1.
20. Click Rename.
21. Enter Flavor.
22. Press Enter.

Create the Transaction Group

Now that we have our Tags in place, we need to create the group itself. Because we
need bidirectionality, we will use a Standard Group.
1. Click Transaction Groups in the Project Browser.
2. Enter Recipe in the Name of the transaction group field.
3. Click Standard Group.
4. Click Create.

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5. Click Flavor.
6. Shift-click Sugar.
7. Drag all five Tags to the Basic OPC/Group Items table.

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8. Enter recipe in the Table name field.

9. Press Enter.
10. Click Store timestamp to so that it is not selected.

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Set Target Name
Each column in the Basic OPC/Group Items table has a Target Name setting. This will
be the name that is assigned in the database table when it gets created. In our case,
we want the defaults—the name of the Tag—for each column, except the Index. When
the Transaction Group creates the table, an index (primary key) column will be created.
So, we do not want an additional column for our Index Tag. We’ll associate that with the
primary key field in a later step. For now, we need to tell the Transaction Group to not
create a field for that Tag.
1. Select Read Only from the Target Name list.

Create the Table

While it’s possible to create the table needed for the recipe directly in the database, we
can save ourselves a lot of work by letting the Transaction Group create the table. Then,
we can go into the table and delete the data, then replace it with our own data.
1. Click Enabled.
2. Click File.
3. Click Save All.
Allow the group to run for several seconds, enough for at least 4 total executions.
4. Click Disabled.
5. Click File.

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6. Click Save All.
Now that the table has been created, we can use the Database Query Browser to
update the data to the values we need.
7. Click Tools.
8. Click Database Query Browser.
9. Double-click recipes.
10. Click Execute.

You can see that by letting the Transaction Group run, it created the table and the rows
we need. It also populated the table with a bunch of data. Note here that even though
the Tags are not changing—none of the Writeable Tags change values automatically—
the group was still logging those values every second. You’ll also see that a column was
not created for the Index Tag.

Update the Data

Our next step is to delete that data and any extra rows we don’t need and replace it with
our own data. Thankfully, this can all be done in the Database Query Browser without
writing code.
1. Click Edit.
2. Click in the first cell in row 5.
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3. Shift-click the first cell in the last row of the table.

Note: the number of rows you have will vary depending on how long you let the
Transaction Group run. We want to delete all but 4 rows, so the number of rows you
are deleting does not matter.

4. Right-click in one of the selected rows.

5. Click Delete Row(s).
6. Click Apply.

Now, we can change the data to represent values we actually need. Feel free to make
up all of the values, including the flavors. Just make sure that each numeric value is
different, so that when we run the group, you will be able to see that the values are
changing.
7. Double-click in the first cell in the Flavor column.
8. Enter Vanilla.
9. Press Tab.
10. Enter 20.
11. Press Tab.

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12. Enter 35.
13. Press Tab.
14. Enter 42.
15. Press Tab.
16. Continue entering values, using the Tab key to move between cells.
17. Click Apply when finished.

Change the Group Settings

Now that we have our database set up, we can change the Transaction Group to be
bidirectional.
1. Select DB to OPC from the Update mode list.
2. Click update/select in the Table action.
We need to establish a relationship between the database table and the Tags. We can
do this by assigning key/value pairs, which will allow us to associate the Flavor column
in the database (the key) with the Flavor Tag (the value). This way, when we change
the value of the Tag, the Transaction Group will be able to match that value to the
associated row of the database, and assign values to the other Tags based on that row.
3. Click key/value pairs.
4. Click .
5. Click in the first cell under Column.
6. Select recipe_ndx from the list.
7. Click the first cell under Value.
8. Select GenSim/Writeable/Index from the list.

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Test the Group

Now that we have things set up, it’s time to test. In order to see everything happening at
once, be sure you have your Database Query Browser open and visible on the screen,
and be sure that you can see the renamed Tags in the Tag Browser.

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1. Click Enabled.
2. Click File.
3. Click Save All.

Note: When the group is running, you will see Total Executions and DB Writes
incrementing, but no data will be actually written to the database because the mode
is set to read from the DB instead.

4. Double-click the value of the Index Tag in the Tag Browser.

5. Enter the value of the recipe_ndx that matches a recipe you entered in the
database.
For example, in the images above, the index for Vanilla is 1.
6. Press Enter.
7. The Ice, Milk, and Sugar Tag values will update to match the values in the
database.

Create an Window
As a final step, let’s create a Window in Vision that would allow operators to load
recipes.
1. Expand Vision in the Project Browser.
2. Expand Windows.
3. Expand Main Windows.
4. Right-click Empty.
5. Click Duplicate.
6. Right-click Empty(1).
7. Click Rename.
8. Enter Recipes.
9. Update the header text.
10. Expand the Components Palette.
11. Enter Dropdown in the Filter box.
12. Drag a List to the Window.

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13. Click for the Data property.

14. Click four times.
15. Enter 1 in the first Value field.
16. Press Tab.
17. Enter Vanilla in the first Label field.
18. Press Tab.
19. Continue filling out the table with your flavors.
20. Click OK.

Note: Be sure to add the flavors in the exact same order that they exist in the table.
Also, it would be possible to write a query and then populate the list with the data
from the database, but that is beyond the scope of this course.

21. Click for the Selected Value property.

22. Click Tag.
23. Expand Tags.

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24. Expand GenSim.
25. Expand Writable.
26. Click Index.
27. Click Bidirectional.
28. Click OK.

29. Click and drag Ice from the Tag Browser to the Window.
30. Select Display.

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31. Click LED Display.
32. Repeat the last three sets to add LED Display components for Milk and Sugar.
33. Add Labels to all four controls.
34. Click .
35. Select a flavor from the list.

While this is obviously a very simple example, it shows the power of Transaction Groups
to both write Tag data to the database and read from the database to write data back to
Tags.

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 Chapter 13

Security

Ignition uses a roles-based security scheme to lock down Gateway and project
resources. In effect, this means that users within Ignition are assigned roles, and
their ability to access resources is dependent on the roles they are assigned. This
abstraction allows users to be reassigned, removed, and added without affecting
the logic of the security policy.

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What We Can Secure

Security can be applied to many aspects of our Gateway and projects.
Specifically, we can use security settings to:
• Determine who can change configuration, in both the Gateway and Designer.
• Who has access to the Vision Client or Perspective Session.
• Who can read from and write to Tags.
• Who can view or interact with individual components, containers, or Windows in
Vision.
• Who can view of interact with individual Views in Perspective.
• Who can execute scripts.

Gateway Communication
It is possible to require the use of Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, to encrypt the network
communication between the Gateway and Designer, between the Gateway and the
Vision Client, and between the Gateway and the web browser for Perspective Sessions.
SSL cannot be used on communication between the Gateway and PLCs, but OPC-UA
provides its own security protocols to encrypt this communication.
Setting up and configuring SSL and OPC-UA security is beyond the scope of this course.

Authentication Profiles
The users and their roles are defined in authentication profiles. An Ignition Gateway
can have many different authentication profiles defined, each governing the security of
different aspects of Gateway. For example, logging into the Gateway configuration web
interface might be governed by one authentication profile, while another profile governs
the security for a project.
Authentication profiles can managed using one of six systems:
Active Directory Microsoft’s industry-standard user authentication system. If you work
for a large organization, there is a high probability that your company already using AD
for its IT security. If so, Ignition can simply authenticate against that, eliminating the need
to manually recreate users and roles.

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AD/Database Hybrid Sometimes, organizations will use AD, but the roles set up do not
match the roles needed for Ignition. In that scenario, you can use AD for users, but a
separate, manually-created database system to manage the roles.
AD/Internal Hybrid The same as above, but rather than storing roles in an external
database, they can be stored internally within Ignition.
Database If your organization does not use AD, you can create users and roles in a set
of database tables. This requires manual setup in the database. We use this setup in our
advanced classes.
Fallback Cache Remote installations can connect to another Gateway for
authentication, but use this as an option if network communication to the main Gateway
is lost. Existing users will continue to be able to log in and work in Ignition until
communication is restored.
Internal Essentially the same as the database option above, but the information is
stored locally within the Gateway. This is the system used by the default authentication
profile, and it is what we will be using in this class.

Add Users and Roles

As stated above, Ignition’s security is all roles-based. Usernames, passwords, roles, and
other data are all stored in authentication profiles.
On installation, Ignition creates an authentication profile called default. It contains the
admin account that we have been using throughout the course. (You might remember
that we created this user account as part of the installation process.) This account is in
the Administrator role, which is also created on installation.

Add New Roles

We need additional users and roles so that we can explore security settings.
1. Open the Gateway web page.
2. Click Config.
3. Log in.
4. Click Users, Roles in the Security section.

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5. Click More to the right of default.

6. Click manage users.

7. Click Roles.
8. Click Add Role.

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9. Type Operator in the Role Name field.
10. Click Add Role.

The new role is created, and you are returned to the previous screen.
11. Click Add Role.
12. Type Manager in the Role Name field.
13. Click Add Role.
We now have three roles to work with.

Add New Users

Now that we have our roles created, let’s add some additional users.
1. Click Users.
2. Click Add User.

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3. Type oper in the Username field.
4. Type password in the Password field.

Note; For ease of testing, we will use “password” for all users. For obvious reasons,
you should make sure that all users in your system have strong passwords. Because
of our weak password, you may get warnings in the browser. Simply click to ignore
the warning.

5. Retype the password.

6. Click Operator from the list of roles.

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7. Scroll down.
8. Click Add User.
The user is added, and you are returned to the previous screen.
9. Click Add User.
10. Type manager in the Username field.
11. Type password in the Password field.
12. Retype the password.
13. Click Manager from the list of roles.
14. Click Save Changes.
Our new user is added.
15. Click Add User.
16. Type supervisor in the Username field.
17. Type password in the Password field.
18. Retype the password.
19. Click Administrator and Manager from the list of roles.
20. Click Add User.
The new user is adding into both roles.
21. Click Add User.
22. Type guest in the Username field.
23. Type password in the Password field.
24. Retype the password.
25. Ensure that no roles are selected.
26. Click Add User.
27. Confirm that your list of users matches those shown below, and that the users are
in the correct roles.

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Component Security
Now that we have some users to work with, we want to explore options for applying
security settings in our Vision project. The first set of options we will look at revolves
around restricting access to individual components.
1. Return to Designer.
2. Expand Vision.

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3. Expand Windows.
4. Expand Main Windows.
5. Right-click Empty.
6. Click Duplicate.
7. Right-click Empty (1).
8. Click Rename.
9. Type Security.
10. Change the heading text and, if desired, the icon.
11. Expand Components Palette.
12. Click in the filter box.
13. Type multi
14. Drag a Multi-State Button to the Window.
15. Drag three more Multi-State Buttons to the Window.
16. Arrange the four buttons in the 2x2 grid.

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We will use these four buttons to explore component security. We are using multi-state
buttons because they offer a basic level of interactivity, however, we will not be binding
them to Tags.
17. Right-click the top left button.
18. Click Security.

The Security Settings panel will open on the left side of the screen.

Component Security Options

The Security Settings panel in Designer gives us three groups of options for applying
security to components.
The first is deciding whether or not this component should inherit its permissions. All
components in Vision exist within a hierarchy. In this example, the buttons are directly
on the window, so they are all children of the window’s Root Container, and thus inherit
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their permissions from that. It is possible to group components, thus creating a new
parent container. This would be the preferred method for applying the same security
settings to several components: rather than applying them individually, you could
group them, then apply the security to the group container. Because all components
are set to inherit permissions by default, applying permissions to the container would
automatically apply those to all components in the group.
The second section, Restrictions, allows us to apply one or more of the following
restrictions.
Access Denied Overlay Shows an overlay on top of the component when the user
doesn’t have security clearance.
Disable Sets the Enabled property to false on the component when the window opens
up.
Disable Events Prevents event scripts from running when the user doesn’t have
security clearance.
Hide Sets the Visible property to false on the component when the window opens up.
The third section of the panel, Exempt Roles, allows us to exempt roles from the
restrictions applied in the second panel. You can exempt any roles from the project’s
user source. See "Project Security Settings" on page 252 for more details on setting
the project’s user source.

Note: If you do not see the roles you created in the Gateway, right-click in the Roles
section of the Security panel and click Refresh. If the roles still do not appear, verify
that you set up the roles in the correct user source.

Disable a Component
For our first button, we want to disable the component and any events that might be
on it for our Administrator users, but still allow the use of the button for those in the
Manager and Operator roles.
1. Uncheck Inherit Permissions in the Security Settings panel.
2. Leave Disable and Disable Events checked in the Restrictions section.
3. Check Manager and Operator in the Exempt Roles section.

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A Security icon is displayed next to the component in the Project Browser, indicating
that the security is set up.

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Apply the Access Denied Overlay
Next, we want to apply the Access Denied Overlay to the second button for users in the
Administrator and Operator roles, while allowing Manager users access to it. You should
still have the Security Settings panel open from the prior steps.
1. Click the top-right button to select it.
2. Uncheck Inherit Permissions in the Security panel.
3. Check Access Denied Overlay in the Restrictions section.
4. Check Administator and Operator in the Exempt Roles section.
Once again, a Security icon is displayed next to the component in the Project Browser,
indicating that the security is set up.

Hide a Component
We want to hide the third button so that it does not appear at all for anyone except
those in the Administrator and Manager roles.
1. Click the bottom-right button to select it.
2. Uncheck Inherit Permissions in the Security panel.
3. Check Hide in the Restrictions section.
4. Check Administrator and Manager in the Exempt Roles section.
Once again, a Security icon is displayed next to the component in the Project Browser,
indicating that the security is set up.
We are going to leave the fourth and final button with its default security settings, which
means that it will inherit permissions from its parent and in effect, have no specific
security settings applied to it.

Testing Component Security

In order to test component-level security, we need to look at the project in the Vision
Client. Not all of our roles have Designer access, so there is no easy way to switch
between the user accounts in Designer.
Before we can do that, we need to add our new Security window to the navigation.
Then, we will launch the client and test our security.
1. Double-click Navigation in the Project Browser.

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2. Double-click the Tab Strip component.
3. Click the tab you want the new tab to be next to.
4. Click Add Tab.
5. Select Main Windows/Security from the Window list.
6. Type Security in the Name field.
7. Click OK.
8. Click File.
9. Click Save All.
10. Click Tools.
11. Select Launch Project.
12. Click Launch (windowed).
13. Log into the client with the admin account.
14. Click Security.

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Because we are logged in as admin, which is in the Administrator group, the top-left
button will be disabled, and the top-right button will show the Access Denied Overlay,
and the two bottom buttons will be fully enabled.
15. Click Switch User.
16. Type oper in the Username field.
17. Type password in the Password field.
18. Click OK.

Our oper user is in the Operator role. Therefore, the top-right button will show the
Access Denied Overlay, and the bottom-left button will be hidden.

Note: There is no easy way to customize the appearance of the Access Denied
Overlay. It can only be done by using the Ignition SDK and writing Java code.

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Users in Multiple Roles
Our supervisor user is in both the Administrator and the Manager role, while our
manager user is both a Manager and an Operator.
Our buttons have conflicting permissions for these role combinations. For example, the
top-left button is disabled for the Administrator role, but enabled for the Manager role.
We want to explore what happens when users exist in more than one role.
1. Click Switch User.
2. Type supervisor in the Username field.
3. Type password in the Password field.
4. Click OK.

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You will see here the result: users in multiple roles are provided with the least restrictive
combination of the security settings for their roles. As an Administrator, the supervisor
role should have the top-left button disabled, but as a Manager is should be enabled,
and you’ll see that the button is enabled. The same is true for the top-right button: it
should show the Access Denied Overlay for Administrators but not Managers, so again,
our user in both roles has access to it because one of their roles does.

Users in No Roles
For our final example, we want to take a look at our guest user, who is not in any roles.
1. Click Switch User.
2. Type guest in the Username field.
3. Type password in the Password field.
4. Click OK.

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While users in multiple roles are granted the least restrictive combination of the security
settings, users in no role at all will get the most restrictive settings. Any security settings
that apply restrictions will automatically apply to a user in no roles.

Adding Security to a Window

You can also apply security settings on Windows. Let’s add security to our History
window.
1. Double-click Tag History in the Project Browser.

Note: You cannot configure security properties on a Window unless it is open in

Designer.

The Security panel should still be open from the prior exercise. You will see that it is
laid out in the same way, with the option to inherit permissions, the restrictions, and the
exempt roles. However, you will see that there is only one restriction: Do Not Open.
2. Uncheck Inherit Permissions.
3. Check Administrator in the Exempt Roles section.

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4. Click File.
5. Click Save All.
6. Return to the Client.

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7. Click Tag History on the navigation tab strip.

We are still logged in as our guest user, so we see an error when we try to access the
Window. Only users in the Administrator role can view it.
1. Click Close.
1. Click Switch User.
2. Type supervisor in the Username field.
3. Type password in the Password field.
4. Click OK.
5. Click Security on the navigation tab strip.
Our supervisor user is in the Administrator role, and so they do have access to the
window.

Project Security Settings

In addition to component and window-based security, we can apply security settings to
the project.
1. Return to Designer.

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2. Click Project.
3. Click Project Properties.

In the Project Properties dialog box, you will see three categories for Permissions, but
several other categories have security-related settings as well.

Project General
The General category of the Project has a Security section. There, you can set the
Identity Provider (see "Identity Providers" on page 256 for more details), as well as the
project’s User Source. You can also set required roles to access the project; if roles are
listed here, users not in one of those roles will be unable to log into the Client.

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Project Permissions
The Permissions category in the Project section, allows you to set roles for the Designer.
You can restrict who can view projects in the Designer, who can save changes, who can
delete resources, and who are access project resources.

Vision Login
In the Login category of the Vision section does not directly impact security settings, but
does provide options to customize the Vision Client log in screen.

Vision Permissions
The list of features in the Permissions category in the Vision section allows you to
restrict access to specific Ignition subsystems. By default, all are disabled. Enabling any
of these allows all users to access elements that use them, but you can also provide a
comma-separated list of roles to still provide limited access.
The features are:
Alarm Management Allows the Client to cancel, shelve, and acknowledge alarms.
Applies to both local and remote Alarms.
Datasource Management Allows the Client to modify Gateway datasource
connections.
Device Management Allows the Client to modify device connections.
DNP3 Management Allows the Client to freeze DNP3 operations via scripting.
Legacy Database Access Allows Clients to run queries directly against the database.
This doesn’t effect named queries.
OPC Server Management Allows the Client to modify OPC server connections.
SFC Management Allows the Client to start or stop Sequential Function Charts.
Tag Editing Allows the Client to add, edit, or delete Tags through scripting.
Tag History Allows the Client to query/modify Tag History.
Translation Management Allows the Client to modify translations in the localization
system.
User Management Allows the Client to modify schedules, holidays, and users through
scripting or components.

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Perspective Permissions
We will discuss Perspective permissions in detail in "Perspective Security" on page
440.

Gateway Security
The final place security is used is on the Ignition Gateway itself. While we are not going
to change any of these settings, they are worth exploring.
These settings are all located in under the Security heading of the Gateway’s Config
section. We are not going to discuss all of the sections, as several of them are beyond
the scope of this class.

General
The General category provides a series of high-level security options.
System Identity Provider This setting controls access to the Gateway’s web pages and
the Designer, if the Designer’s authentication strategy is set to Identity Provider. See
"Identity Providers" on page 256 and "Project General" on page 253.
Designer Authentication Strategy This sets how users can authenticate in Designer.
Classic displays the login screen we have become familiar with, while Identity Provider
uses that method. See "Identity Providers" on page 256.
System User Source This sets the default user source for Designer when using the
Classic strategy.
Designer Role(s) You can determine what roles have access to Designer here. The
default setting, Administrator, means that we could be using our supervisor user to log
into Designer, as well as the admin user we have been.
Create Project Role(s) You can provide a list of roles that are allowed to create new
projects in Designer. While it would not make sense to have a role here that can create
projects but not be included in the list above to log into Designer, the opposite might be
true: you might have roles that you want to give Designer access to, but only allow them
to work in existing projects.
Gateway Config Permissions Throughout class, we have been using our admin user to
log into the Config section of the Gateway. This is possible because the Administrator
role is provided here. We could choose to allow other roles to access Config as well.
Note that this uses the Security Levels setup, rather than just roles. See "Security Levels"
on page 257 for more details.
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Status Page Permissions The same as above, but for the Status section of the
Gateway.
Home Page Permissions We have seen that the default Gateway Home Page merely
provides a series of links to download and access resources. As there is nothing
proprietary on the Home Page, it is set by default to allow access to anyone. However, it
is possible to change the default Home Page, and if you do, it might make sense to limit
access to it. Like the two settings above, this uses Security Levels.
User Inactivity Timeout You will have noticed that anytime you are away from the
Gateway web page for some time, you need to log back in. This setting controls how
long, in minutes, you can not interact with the Gateway before it times out and forces a
log in. Setting this to a value of 0 (or any negative number) will mean that the Gateway
never times out.
Allow User Admin Vision includes a User Management Component to allow for adding,
removing, and editing users and roles in the Client. Regardless of any other settings,
that component will be disabled unless this setting is enabled.
Allow Designer SSO If you want to use your organization’s single-sign-on
authentication, you need to enable this.
Gateway Audit Profile You can provide an audit profile to log Gateway events. Note
that audit profiles are beyond the scope of this class.

Identity Providers
Even if you have never heard the term “identity provider,” odds are very good you have
encountered them before. Many web sites today allow users to either create a new
account for the site or use their existing account from a service such as Google, Apple,
or Facebook. All three of those companies, and many others like them, act as an Identity
Provider (IdP). In essence, an identity provider is some kind of server that provides
user authentication. Many very large organizations, like the three listed above, have
hundreds of millions, or in some cases billions, of users, and allow other sites to simply
use those user accounts.
While being an identity provider is not the primary business for Facebook or Google,
there are also companies whose whole business is in providing user authentication. It’s
possible that your organization has you log into the network via a company such as Duo
or Okta. These are just two examples of companies whose business model is built on
being an identity provider.

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Setting up a third-party identify provider is beyond the scope of this course, and mostly
involves signing up with one of the companies that provides that as a service and then
filling in the appropriate information in the Identity Provider section of the Gateway.
Ignition has also a built-in identity provider in the Gateway. This allows you to set the
Designer or the Client to use an identity provider authentication strategy. This will still
authenticate against one of the user sources in the Gateway, but will force users to log
in through a browser interface instead of the native login screen we have been using in
class so far.

Security Levels
With Security Levels, you define a hierarchy for access inside a Perspective Session
or Vision Client. This authorization system provides a way for you to map roles from
an Identity Provider (IdP) to Ignition roles. Any IdP can be used to provide roles, and
security levels are independent of the type of IdP being used. Any role from the IdP is
automatically granted to the user as a role, but only roles in your Security Levels are
available to the security screens in the Designer. You can also use the User Grants
option to grant additional access for each user.
Security levels are particularly useful in Perspective, so we will return to this topic and
cover it in detail in "Perspective Security" on page 440.

Security Zones
A security zone is a group of gateways, computers, or IP addresses that share unified
security settings. Though Ignition relies heavily on a role-based security model, it is
possible to configure some high-level security restrictions based on security zone,
thereby controlling access based on where a given resource request is coming from,
rather than what user is requesting it.
As with Security Levels, we will examine Security Zone in more detail in "Perspective
Security" on page 440.

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Alarming

Alarming is a core feature of the Ignition platform. Alarms are conditions that are
evaluated with respect to a specific numeric datapoint. Most commonly, alarms are
configured on a Tag or a Transaction Group item.

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Alarm Basics
Any number of alarms can be attached to a datapoint. When the alarm condition
becomes true, the alarm is considered to be “active”. For example, on an analog Tag
you might add a high-level alarm that goes active when the Tag’s value is over 50.0. You
could add another alarm on the same Tag for a high-level when the value is over 75.0.
On a discrete Tag, you might configure an alarm to be active when the value is non-zero.
Each alarm has its own name, priority, and many other settings.
When the alarm condition becomes false after it has been true, the alarm is said to have
“cleared”. Each alarm has a numeric deadband and time delay deadbands that can
affect when the alarm goes active and clear, this is to prevent frequent oscillations of an
alarm between active and clear when the value is hovering near the setpoint. At some
point, an operator can acknowledge an alarm, confirming that they have seen the event.
The history of alarms is stored in any configured alarm journals. These will journal all
state changes on each alarm, as well as acknowledgments, to an external SQL database
of your choosing.

Alarm Properties
Every alarm you configure has a set of properties that can be set.

Alarm Name
The name of the alarm will be used to reference it throughout the rest the project.

Enabled
This boolean determines whether or not the alarm will be evaluated. A disabled alarm’s
condition is not evaluated and thus does not generate any alarm events. Generally, this
would be set dynamically based on some other criteria.

Priority
Can affect how it appears in an alarm status table, or can affect how it is escalated
through a pipeline. There are five priorities: Diagnostic, Low, Medium, High, and Critical.
Each priority also has associated integer value, counting from 0 (Diagnostic) up to 4
(Critical), that can be used to reference the priority in scripts and expressions.

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Timestamp Source
Chooses where the timestamp for the alarm event should come from: the system time of
when the event was generated, or the timestamp of the value that tripped the event.

Label
This string value is used to display alarm information to the operators.

Display Path
This string value is used to display the alarm to the operators. If this value is blank, the
operator will see the path to the Tag instead.

Ack Mode
Dictates how acknowledgment works for the alarm.
Unused Acknowledgment is not used for this Tag. Any alarm that is generated will
automatically be marked as acknowledged.
Auto The alarm is acknowledged automatically when the alarm becomes cleared.
Manual The alarm is never set to acknowledged by the system; it is up to operators to
manually acknowledge alarms.

Notes
A place for any free-form documentation about the alarm that can be displayed to
operators.

Ack Notes Required

If this setting is true, the operators cannot acknowledge this alarm without entering
some notes.

Shelving Allowed
If this setting is true, the shelving feature is available for this alarm.

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Mode
Sets the condition that the alarm is evaluating. The following are the different mode
options:
Equal Active when the Tag’s value equals the alarm’s setpoint.
Not Equal Active when the Tag’s value is not equal the alarm’s setpoint.
Above Setpoint Active when the Tag’s value is above the alarm’s setpoint.
Below Setpoint Active when the Tag’s value is below the alarm’s setpoint.
Between Setpoints Active when the Tag’s value is between the low and high setpoints.
If any change is true, an event is generated for each value change between the
setpoints.
Outside Setpoints Active when the Tag’s value falls outside the low and high setpoints.
If any change is true, an event is generated for each value change outside the setpoints.
Out of range Same as Outside Setpoints, but uses the Tag’s Engineering High and
Engineering Low as the high and low setpoints.
Bad Quality Active if the Tag value becomes a bad quality, for example, on
communication loss.
Any Change Generates an alarm event every time the Tag value changes. Note that
this alarm will never be “active” because each active event is paired with a matching
clear event, instantly.
Bit State Active when a specific bit out of an integer Tag becomes high. You must
specify which bit position to use, with zero being the least significant bit. The On Zero
property is used to invert the logic and alarm when the bit is low.
On Condition Use this free-form mode when you want to specify the condition using
an expression or another Tag. To do this, bind the Is Active property to an appropriate
expression or Tag.

Setpoint / Low Setpoint / High Setpoint

The setpoint properties are used for many alarm modes to specify the range for which
the alarm becomes active.

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Inclusive / Low Inclusive / High Inclusive
The inclusive properties correspond to a setpoint. If true, the range will be active if the
value is exactly equal to the setpoint, not only above or below it.

Deadband Mode
The following are the two deadband modes:
Absolute The deadband setting is considered to be an absolute value.
Percent The actual deadband is calculated as a percent of the Tag’s engineering unit
span.

Deadband
The deadband value is interpreted according to the deadband mode. Note that all
alarms are only evaluated after the Tag’s value changes, which means that the Tag’s
own deadband is considered first.
When the deadband is positive, an active alarm condition needs to clear its setpoint(s)
by the amount of the deadband for the alarm to clear. For example, suppose you had
a Between Setpoints alarm with a low setpoint of 50 and a high setpoint of 70, with a
deadband of 2. The alarm goes active if the value is between 50 and 70, but will only
clear if the value falls below 48 or rises above 72.

Active Delay
The time, in seconds, before the alarm will be considered active after the alarm’s
condition becomes true. Also known as a “rising edge time deadband”.

Clear Delay
The time, in seconds, before an active alarm will be considered clear after the alarm’s
condition becomes false. Also known as a “falling edge time deadband”.

Ack Pipeline
The name of an alarm notification pipeline to put this alarm into when the alarm
becomes acknowledged.

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Active Pipeline
The name of an alarm notification pipeline to put this alarm into when it becomes active.
This is the primary source for sending out alarm messages. Many alarms may share a
single pipeline.

Clear Pipeline
The name of an alarm notification pipeline to put this alarm into when it becomes clear.

Custom Subject
A string that is used as the subject line of an email notification message. If blank, the
message settings defined on the notification block that sent the email out is used
instead.

Custom Message
A string that is used as the body of this alarm’s email notification message. If blank,
the message settings defined on the notification block that sent the email out is used
instead.

Configure an Alarm
As a first example, let’s set an alarm that will be active if the value of the
WriteableBoolean1 Tag is true, and inactive when it’s false. Configuring an alarm on this
Tag will allow us to easily control the alarm’s status.
1. Expand GenSim In the Tag Browser.
2. Expand Writable.
3. Double-click WriteableBoolean1.
4. Click Alarms.
5. Double-click New Alarm.
6. Enter Test Alarm in the Name field.
7. Select Medium from the Priority list.
8. Double-click the Setpoint value.
9. Enter 1.

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10. Press Enter.
11. Click OK.

Now that the Tag as an alarm set on it, you will see a bell icon next to the Tag in the Tag
Browser.

Viewing Alarms
There are several different components in Vision to display alarms.
Because we started our project using the Vision Tab Nav project template, we already
have a window with one of those components, the Alarm Status Table, set up on it.
1. Expand Vision in the Project Browser.
2. Expand Windows.
3. Expand Main Windows.
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4. Double-click Alarms.
The Alarm Status Table on this window should currently be empty.

Note: If you selected the option to Enable Quick Start when you first installed Ignition,
you may already have alarms showing in the table. You can just ignore those.

Enabling an Alarm
In order to populate the table, let’s enable the alarm we set up in the prior steps.
1. Click the checkbox next to WriteableBoolean1.
By toggling the Tag’s value to true, you will activate the alarm. You should see it appear
in the table.
2. Click the checkbox next to WriteableBoolean1 again.

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Toggling the Tag to false will cause the alarm to become inactive. You will still see it on
the table, but now it will indicate that it is inactive.

Add UDT Alarms

In order to really explore the features of the Alarm Status Table, it will be helpful to have
more alarms. We also want to look at alarms that function more like real alarms, which
are constantly becoming active and inactive as the Tag’s value changes. We can do this
by adding alarms to the UDT, which will add them to all UDT instances.
1. Click UDT Definitions.
2. Double-click MotorUDT.
3. Click HOA.
4. Click Alarms.
5. Double-click New Alarm.
6. Enter Faulted in the Name field.
7. Select High from the Priority list.
8. Enter 2 in the Setpoint field.

Note: Remember that a value of 2 on the HOA Tag is associated with the “Hand”
stated on the linked Multi-State Buttons.

9. Leave the dialog box open for the next set of steps.

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Dynamic Setpoints
We also want to set an alarm on the Amps Tag, but in this case, we want the setpoint to
be dynamic. Rather than the hard-coded values we’ve been using, we want to have the
alarm be triggered by the value of the UDT instance’s HighSP memory Tag. This is, in
fact, the entire reason why the UDT has that memory Tag in the first place. To do this, we
simply need to bind the setpoint to the memory Tag.
1. Click Amps.
2. Click Alarms.
3. Double-click New Alarm.
4. Enter High Amps Alarm in the Name field.
5. Select High from the Priority list.
6. Select Above Setpoint from the Mode list.
7. Click on the Setpoint field.

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8. Click Tag.
9. Click UDT.
10. Click SpeedSP.
11. Click Apply.

12. Click OK.

Alarms will now be set on the HOA and Amps Tags in each instance of the MotorUDT.
You can verify this by looking at the instances in the Tag Browser.
The Alarm Status table will now automatically populate with many more alarms, as the
values of the Amps Tags are constantly fluctuating.

Alarm Status Table

Let’s take a closer look at some of the built-in features of the Alarm Status Table.
You will notice that there are a set of buttons along the bottom of the table. You will
need to be in Preview mode to interact with the table.

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Acknowledge
If you select an alarm on the table and click the Acknowledge button, the alarm will
transition into the Acknowledged state. You will see the background color of the row
change, and its position on the table may change as well. Notice that alarms can still be
active even when they have been acknowledged.

Shelve
You can think of shelving an alarm like using the Snooze feature on an alarm on your
phone. Shelved alarms are removed from the status table and can be ignored for a pre-
set amount of time. Once the time expires, the shelved alarm will display as normal on
the table.

Inspect Selected Alarm

If you select an alarm and click the magnifying glass button, you can inspect the alarm to
look at details of the alarm, including the exact time and value that the Tag was at when
the alarm was triggered.

Alarm Trends
Clicking the button to the right of the magnifying glass will display an alarm trends
graph. Note that this is displaying from Tag History data, so it will only work if the Tag is
being historized; otherwise, a blank graph will appear.

Manage Shelved Alarms

The final button at the bottom of the table allows operators to view all shelved alarms.
They can also unshelve alarms from here.

Sort, Adjust, and Add or Remove Columns

As with other tables in Ignition, the Alarm Status Table includes automatic sorting by
clicking on any column header. You can also adjust the width of any column by dragging
between column headers. You can right-click on any header to see a list of the available
columns; clicking on an unchecked column will add it to the table, while clicking an
already-visible column will remove it.

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Other Alarm Status Properties
It is also possible to change how the table behaves. For example, all exposed buttons
in the table can be shown or hidden using the set of properties that can be found under
the Appearance section. You can also bind any of these properties to an expression to
limit who can see them.
For example, if you only want those in the Administrator role to be able to shelve alarms,
you can do the following:
1. Click the Alarm Status Table to select it.
2. Click on the Show Shelve Button property.

3. Click Expression.
4. Enter hasRole("Administrator")

Customize Alarm States

You can customize how the various alarm states are displayed as well..
1. Right-click the table.
2. Select Customizers.
3. Click Alarm Row Styles.

You can see that the alarm rows are based on expression, built around either the state
or the priority (or both) of the alarm. You can click on an existing expression and alter
any of the formatting, or add your own expression.

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Filter the Table

You can set up the table to only display a subset of the alarms using the Display
Path Filter property. The property accepts two wildcards: * to represent zero or more
characters, and ? to represent a single character.
To set up a filter so that only Motor alarms will display (in our example, to essentially
hide the WriteableBoolean1 alarms), you can add a filter that combines those wildcards
and the literal text motor.
4. Click to edit the Display Path filter. You may need to scroll down.
5. Enter *Motor*
6. Press Enter.
7. The table filters to only show alarms that contain the word “motor” in their display
path.

Note: Unlike expressions, the display path is not case sensitive.

Dynamic Alarm Filtering

You can also allow your operators to set the alarm filters on the fly by adding a
component and a simple binding.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Click to clear the filter.
3. Enter Text.
4. Drag a Text Field to the Window.
5. Click on the Display Path Filter property.
6. Click Expression.
7. Enter "*" +
8. Click .
9. Expand Root Container.
10. Expand Text Field.
11. Click Text.
12. Click OK.

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13. Enter + "*"
14. Confirm that your expression looks like this:
"*" + {Root Container.Text Field.text} + "*"

15. Click OK.

You can test this by going into Preview Mode and typing some portion of a display path
into the text field.

Custom Display Paths

Operators likely only need to worry about specific alarms on specific machines. Allow
for custom filtering of the display path can be helpful, but you can make it even easier
for operators to quickly find the alarms they care about by customizing the display path
on alarms.
In our example, we are going to change the display path on the UDT Amps alarms so
that they read something like “Motor 1 High Amps Alarm,” rather than displaying the
entire path of the Tag.
1. Click UDT Definitions.
2. Double-click MotorUDT.
3. Click Amps.
4. Click Alarms.
5. Click High Amps Alarm.
6. Click on the Display Path property.
7. Click Expression.
8. Enter "Motor " +
9. Click .
10. Click MotorNum.
11. Enter + " High Amps Alarm"
12. Ensure your expression looks like this:
"Motor " + {MotorNum} + " High Amps Alarm"

13. Click Apply.

14. Click OK.
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Any new alarms that are added to the table will show the new display path.

The expression above is one of several possible ways to achieve this result. Because
we are working in a UDT, the alarm has access to the name of the instance of the
UDT as a parameter, so rather than hard-coding the word "Motor " and appending
the MotorNum parameter, you could instead use the InstanceName parameter,
which is available using the same UDT Parameters button we used above. Then,
you could add a literal space, and instead of writing "High Amps Alarm" you could
instead use the alarm’s own name property, which you can find by clicking the Alarm
Properties button, then navigating to Main, then Name. The resulting expression
would be {InstanceName} + " " + {name}. The resulting display path would be
identical.

Alarm Associated Data

Sometimes you might want to have more data than just your alarm setpoints and values
when an alarm goes off. Alarms can carry any extra data you may want as Associated
Data. Associated Data are like custom properties on Vision components; each alarm
can have as many Associated Data Properties as you want, and these properties can be
bound.
For example, if your Motor Amps goes into its alarm state, you might want to know what
the HOA value was when the alarm happened. Instead of having to check Tag history
and hope the value was recorded, you can add the HOA value directly to the alarm.
1. Double-click MotorUDT.
2. Click Amps.
3. Click Alarms.
4. Click Amps High Alarm.
5. Click .
An Associated Data property is added at the bottom of the list.
6. Double-click New Data. You may need to scroll down.
7. Enter HOA.
8. Click .
9. Click Tag.
10. Click HOA.
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11. Click Apply.
12. Click OK.
13. Click .
14. Select a Motor High Amps alarm.
15. Click Inspect selected alarm.
16. Scroll down on the list of Details.
Near the bottom of the list, you will see the HOA property. It will likely be empty; while all
alarms will now have the property, only alarms triggered after you add the property will
have a value.

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Alarm History

So far, we have been working only with the Alarm Status Table, which is showing
us a live list of the alarms our Gateway is storing in memory. However, this system
does not keep track of information forever­—if we want to store alarm events in the
database, we’ll need to set up an Alarm Journal.

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Create an Alarm Journal

An Alarm Journal allows us to store alarm events in our database, so that they can be
retrieved at any time in the future. The Alarm Journal is created in the Gateway web
page.
1. Open the Gateway web page.
2. If necessary, log in.
3. Click Config.
4. Click Journal in the Alarming section.

5. Click Create new Alarm Journal Profile...

Alarm Journal Storage Options

When setting up an Alarm Journal, you have three storage options.
Database Use an existing database connection within your Gateway. To review how to
set up a database connection, see “Connecting to a Database” on page 47.
Remote Connect to another Gateway to use its Alarm Journal.
Internal Use an internal SQLite database to store the information. Note that this
differs from the Database option above in that the data if stored internally can only be
accessed from within Ignition, while the Database option stores the data in a separate
database that can be accessed directly, without Ignition.

Configure the Alarm Journal

1. Click Database.

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2. Click Next.
3. Enter Journal in the Name field.

Note: Be sure to capitalize the J.

4. Click Create New Alarm Journal Profile. You may need to scroll down.

Additional Settings
While we are not going to change any other settings, there are a few that are
noteworthy.
Events You can set the priority level of alarms you wish to store, as well as determining
whether or not to store shelved, enabled, and disabled events.
Store Shelved Events You can choose whether or not alarms that are shelved are still
stored in the Journal.
Data Filters The three options here allow you to set up filters on the Alarm Source,
Display Path, or Display Path or Source. These filters follow the same patterns as filtering
on the Alarm Status table. See “Security” on page 233.
Data Pruning You can have Ignition automatically deleted old data from the database
by enabling pruning and then determining the age at which events are deleted. Note
that once pruned, the data cannot be recovered.

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Viewing the Journal

Once the Journal is set up, Ignition will automatically create two new tables in the
database and begin storing the data as soon as an alarm occurs.

Inspect the Database Table

You can see these tables and their data by looking at the database directly.
1. Return to Designer.
2. Click Tools.
3. Click Database Query Browser.
In the Schema section, you will see two new tables: alarm_events and alarm_event_
data.
4. Double-click alarm_events.
5. Click Execute.

This table shows the alarm events, and includes columns for the source (the Tag that
generated the alarm), the display path (if set), the priority, time the alarm occurred, and
more.
6. Double-click alarm_event_data.

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7. Click Execute.
This table shows the actual values of the Tags at the moment the alarm was trigged. The
id column on this table relates it to the id column in the alarm_events table. If you know
SQL, you can write queries to join these tables and see the data more clearly. However,
we don’t need to do that, as we have a component that is built specifically to display
Alarm Journal information.

Add an Alarm Journal Table

1. If necessary, open the Alarms window in Vision.
2. Right-click the Alarm Status Table.
3. Click Layout.
4. Click Anchor South to turn it off.
5. Click OK.
6. Click Root Container in the Project Browser.
7. Drag the bottom middle control handle to make the window about twice as tall.
8. Expand the Components Palette.
9. Click in the Filter box.
10. Enter Alarm.
11. Drag an Alarm Journal Table to the window.
12. Position and resize the table to fit in the bottom of the window.

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The table will automatically populate with the Alarm Journal data.

Note: The Alarm Journal Table assumes that the journal is named Journal in the
Gateway. If the journal has any other name (and it is case-sensitive, so the “J” needs
to be capitalized,) then the table will not automatically populate. You an solve this by
clicking on the Journal Name property and typing the name you gave the Journal
in the Gateway.

Configure the Alarm Journal Table

By default, the Alarm Journal Table displays the last 8 hours of information. It populates
with the latest data when it first renders, meaning whenever the window it is on is
opened, but it will not automatically update as new data comes in. You can force
updates to the table by changing the Start Date and End Date properties of the table.
Let’s take a look at two ways that we can do that.

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Add a Date Range Component
One option to update the Journal’s data is to bind it to a Date Range component.
Once bound, changing the date range will cause the table’s Start Date and End Date
properties to update, which will force the table to get new data.
1. Click the Alarm Journal Table.
2. Resize the table to provide about an inch of space above it.
3. Expand the Components Palette.
4. Click in the Filter box.
5. Enter Date.
6. Drag a Date Range component to the window.

Note: We are using a Date Range component in this example, but any of the date
picker components will work.

7. Click the Alarm Journal Table.

8. Click on the table’s Start Date property.
9. Click Property.
10. Expand Date Range.
11. Click Start Date.

12. Click OK.

13. Click on the table’s End Date property.
14. Click Property.
15. Expand Date Range.
16. Click End Date.

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17. Click OK.
18. Click .
19. Drag the slider on the Date Range component to change the date.

The table updates with new data.

Update with Expressions

You can also force the table to update by using expressions on the Start Date and End
Date properties. Thankfully, we have some built-in functions to make this simple.
To show this, we’re going to add a second Alarm Journal Table to the window, so that
we can see both options at work.
1. Click Root Container in the Project Browser.
2. Drag the bottom middle control handle to make the window taller.
3. Expand the Components Palette.
4. Click to clear the Filter box.
5. Enter Alarm.
6. Drag an Alarm Journal Table to the window.
7. Position and resize the table to fit in the bottom of the window.
We will start by building the Start Date expression. For this example, we want to get the
last hour of data, and have the table update every 30 seconds.
There are no functions in the Expression language to subtract time. However, there are
a set of functions to add time, all of which can take negative values, which has the effect
of subtracting time.
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8. Click on the table’s Start Date property.

9. Click Expression.
10. Click .
11. Select Date and Time.
12. Select add<field>.
13. Click addHours.

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The addHours function needs two parameters: a time to start from, and a number of
hours to add (or subtract) from that time. For this expression, we want to start from the
current time, which we can get thanks to the now() function, and add negative one hour
to that.
14. Enter now(), -1 inside the parentheses to complete the expression.
15. Check that your expression looks like this:
addHours(now(), -1)

We’re almost there, but not quite yet. By default, now() updates (or polls) to get the
current time every second. We do not want this; instead, we want to update the time
every 30 seconds. Fortunately, now() can take a parameter to set the polling frequency,
in milliseconds.
16. Click between the parentheses after now.
17. Enter 30000.
18. Check your final expression:
addHours(now(30000), -1)

19. Click OK.

Now that we have the Start Date expression set, we need to add a simpler expression to
End Date. There, we only need to tell it to start at the current moment, updated every 30
seconds.
20. Click on the table’s End Date property.
21. Click Expression.
22. Enter now(30000).
23. Check your expression:
now(30000)

24. Click OK.

You should see the table update with new data. Wait 30 seconds, and it will update
again.

Alarm Event Ids

Before we explore the Alarm Journal Table further, we need to discuss what is meant by
an “alarm event,” and understand the alarm event life cycle.

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Every time an alarm triggers—in other words, the alarm condition is true—an alarm event
is triggered and the alarm becomes active. At some future point, the alarm condition will
become false, and the alarm becomes inactive. In between those two points, the alarm
can be acknowledged.
The source of an alarm is the Tag, and a single Tag can and will generate multiple
alarms. All of those alarms would therefore be from the same source, but each time an
alarm becomes active, it generates a new event, which has a unique event id.
The following diagram illustrates this. In the diagram, the orange line represents a Tag’s
value over time. Each time the value exceeds the setpoint (represented by the straight
horizontal line on the chart), an alarm becomes active. Each time the value drops below
that setpoint, the alarm becomes inactive. Each of these active/inactive instances
generates a unique alarm id, even though all alarms are from the same source.

Alarm Journal Table Features

Now that you have an understanding of how alarm ids are generated, let’s look at the
features of the alarm table. Note that you will need to be in Preview mode to use the
buttons on the table.
Event Counter The bottom left corner of the table shows the number of events
currently displaying in the table.

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Focus The small bullseye button in the bottom right of the table allows you to focus, or
filter, the table by alarm source or by event id. You will need to have an alarm selected
for this button to be active.
Inspect Selected Alarm This allows you to see details on the alarm. The button
functions exactly as the same button on the Alarm Status Table.
Filter The Journal Table provides built-in functionality for creating filters.

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 Chapter 16

Alarm Notification

Alarm notification is the act of sending a message to a group of people when an

alarm becomes active or clear. In Ignition, this functionality is enabled by having
the Alarm Notification Module installed. You can also add the Voice and SMS
notification modules for additional ways to notify users.

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Alarm Notification Process

In order to set up alarm notifications, you need to complete five steps in order. The first
three are completed on the Gateway, and the final two in Designer. The steps are:
1. Add user contact information
2. Create a roster, or a list of users to be notified
3. Create an Alarm Notification Profile
4. Create an Alarm Pipeline
5. Connect an alarm to a pipeline
The remainder of this chapter will go over these steps, one at a time.

Add User Contact Information

In chapter 13, Security, we created a set of roles and users. Now, we will add contact
information to those user accounts.
1. Return to the Gateway web page.
2. If necessary, log in.
3. Click Config.
4. Click Users/Roles under the Security heading.
5. Click More to the right of default.
6. Click manage users.
7. Click edit to the right of admin.

8. Scroll down to the Contact Information section.

9. Click Add Contact Info.
10. Select Email from the list.

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11. Enter admin@company.com.

Note: The exact address is unimportant for class, but it does need to be formatted
as a valid address. For our purposes, we will set all emails to the same format:
username@company.com.

12. Click Save.

13. Click Save User.

14. Repeat steps 7-13 for each of the other users, except Guest.

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Create a Roster
Once we have the contact information entered, you need to group users into rosters.
Just as security relies on roles, rather than individual users, alarm notification relies on
rosters.
For class, we will create two rosters. The first will be for our managers, which will include
our admin, supervisor, and manager roles. The second will be for our operators, which
will include our manager and our operator. Note that the manager user will be included
in both rosters.
1. Click On-Call Rosters under the Alarming heading.

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2. Click Create new On-Call Roster.
3. Enter Managers.
4. Click Create New On-Call Roster.

5. Click More.
6. Click Manage.

7. Select default from the All Users from list.

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8. Click next to admin.

9. Click next to supervisor.
10. Click next to manager.
11. Click Save.

12. Click Create new On-Call Roster.

13. Enter Operators.
14. Click Create New On-Call Roster.
15. Click More.
16. Click Manage.
17. Select default from the All Users from list.
18. Click next to manager.
19. Click next to oper.
20. Click Save.

Create an Alarm Notification Profile

The third and final step to be completed on the Gateway is to create an Alarm
Notification Profile, which defines a delivery channel through which an alarm notification
message may be sent to a user.
The Alarm Notification Module allows you to set up a profile using one of the following
options:
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Email Notification This is what we will use, so it will be discussed in detail below.
Remote Gateway Notification This allows this Gateway to essentially forward the alarm
notification to another Gateway’s alarm notification system.
Simple One-Way Email Notification A legacy feature that sends an email whenever
an alarm within a specified range becomes active. This does not require the creation
of alarm pipelines, but lacks any of the configuration and potential sophistication of the
Email Notification option.
SMS Notification Rather than using an email server, you can setup and configure an
SMS server to send notifications. Note that you would need to get the SMS Notification
Module and add phone numbers, either in place of or in addition to, email addresses, to
use this option.
VOIP Voice Notification Using a VOIP server, the Gateway can notify users via phone
call. This requires the Phone Notification Module and phone numbers in the user
contacts.

Email Notification
We want to go ahead and set up an email notification profile.
1. Return to the Gateway web page.
2. If necessary, log in.
3. Click Config.
4. Click Notification under the Alarming heading.
5. Click Create new Alarm Notification Profile.

6. Select Email Notification.

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7. Click Next.

8. Enter Email Notification in the Name field.

In order to test email notifications, we are going to use a free, open-source tool called
PaperCut SMTP. This tool, developed by Changemaker Studios and available at https://
github.com/ChangemakerStudios/Papercut-SMTP, simulates a simple SMTP server,
which is what it used to send email. Every email you have ever received has been sent
by an SMTP server. PaperCut also includes a simple email interface that we can use to
view the emails being sent out.
Because PaperCut is not a real email server, it does not have security configured, so
the setup is very easy. In a true production environment, you would need to discuss
with your IT department the setup and configuration needed to send emails via your
company’s system.
9. Enter localhost in the Hostname field.

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10. Scroll down.

Two-way Notification
You have the option of enabling two-way settings in the Email Notification profile. Doing
so will cause the outgoing email to include a link that, when clicked on by the operator,
allows them to acknowledge the alarm.
11. Check Two-way Enabled.
12. Enter localhost:8088 in the Gateway field.

Note: You must not include http:// when entering the Gateway address.

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13. Scroll down.

14. Click Create New Alarm Notification Profile.

Alarm Notification Pipelines

Now that we have configured our user contact information, rosters and alarm notification
profiles, we can create a pipeline to bring everything together.
Pipelines are a graphical mechanism for building up logic, providing an easy-to-use
drag-and-drop interface for creating complex notification scenarios. Using pipelines, it is
possible to accomplish many tasks, such as alarm escalation, notification consolidation,
and conditional dispatch.
Because Alarm Notification Pipelines are their own module, they are created in the
pipeline workspace. The workspace is effectively a blank canvas, upon which you
arrange and connect various pipeline blocks.

Create a New Pipeline

Let’s create a new pipeline. It will use the settings we created in the Gateway to send
email notifications to our Managers roster.
1. Switch to Designer.
2. Click Alarm Notification Pipelines.

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3. Enter Manager Pipeline in the Name of the pipeline field.

4. Click Blank Pipeline.
5. Click Create.

Pipeline Blocks
The available blocks are:
Notification Delivers a notification through the selected Notification Profile.

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Delay Blocks the alarm event for the specified amount of time.
Splitter Forwards a single event concurrently to multiple other blocks.
Switch Evaluates a non-Boolean expression and forwards to an output based on the
result.
Expression Evaluates a Boolean expression and forwards the event to that output.
Set Property Evaluates an expression and sets the result as a runtime property on the
alarm event.
Jump Forwards the alarm event to a different pipeline.
Script Executes a task outside the pipeline.

Pipeline Block Editor

The Pipeline Block Editor serves as a property editor for the Pipelines module. There are
not many properties available, but they are almost all important. We want to see these
properties more easily, so let’s move this panel from the lower left corner to instead
stretch across the bottom of the window.
1. Press and hold your mouse over the Pipeline Block Editor title.
2. Drag the panel towards the middle of the screen, then down to the bottom.
3. Release your mouse.

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Add Blocks
To create the pipeline, we need to add blocks to the main window, then connect them.
All pipelines begin with a START block.
1. Drag a Notification block to the window.

2. Press and hold your mouse over the output pin on START.
3. Drag to the input pin on Notification.

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Note: If you find yourself moving the entire Start block, it’s likely that you clicked on it
and selected it. Click in a blank area of the pipeline editor to deselect, then click-and-
drag from the output pin to the input pin.

Block Settings
Now that we have added a Notification block, we need to configure its settings. The
block has a list of settings needed to fully configure it. For a Notification block, you need
to select an Alarm Notification Profile and an On-call Roster.
1. Click the Notification block.
2. Select Email Notification from the Choose One list in the Pipeline Block editor.

3. Click Contacts.
4. Select Managers from the On-call Rosters list.

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5. Click File.
6. Click Save All.

Attach an Alarm to a Pipeline

Now that we have the pipeline created, there’s only one more step: attaching an alarm
to a pipeline.
1. Expand GenSim in the Tag Browser.
2. Expand Writable.
3. Double-click WritableBoolean1.
4. Click Alarms.
5. Click Test Alarm.
6. Scroll to the Notification settings.
7. Select CoreClass/Manager Pipeline from the list for Active Pipeline.
8. Click OK.

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9. Click File.
10. Click Save All.

Testing the Pipeline

Now that we have completed the five steps to set up the pipeline, we can test it.
First, we will need to open PaperCut. Then, we will trigger the alarm and view the
resulting email.
1. Click the Windows Start button.
2. Enter PaperCut.
3. Press Enter.

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Papercut will launch, showing a welcome email. We want to delete this and any other
emails currently in Papercut (if any) so that we can focus just on the messages being
sent by our system.
4. Click Delete All.
5. Click Proceed.

Activate the Alarm

We want to activate an alarm on our WriteableBoolean1 Tag to get the notification email
to send.

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1. Return to Designer.
2. Enable WriteableBoolean1 in the Tag Browser. If it was already enabled, disable
it, then enable it again.

Test the Acknowledgement Link

You should immediately get notifications in Windows that you have new email. We can
now test to make sure the two-way settings work.

1. Switch back to PaperCut.

You should have three emails, as the roster includes three users (admin, supervisor, and
manager.)
Make note of the To: and From: addresses, as well as the body of the email.

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2. Click the link in the email.
A web page will open. Take a look at the URL: you will see that it is being sent from your
Gateway.
3. Enter a note.
4. Click Acknowledge.

5. Return to Designer.
6. Click Vision in the Project Browser.
7. Expand Windows.
8. Expand Main Windows.
9. Double-click Alarms.
10. Switch to Preview mode.
11. Click the acknowledged alarm.
12. Click Inspect Selected Alarm.

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13. Scroll to the bottom of the alarm properties.

You will see that the properties show that the alarm was acknowledged and by whom,
including the note you entered.

Escalation Pipeline
Now that we have created a simple pipeline to notify a group of users, let’s create a
more complex pipeline.
In this scenario, we are going to notify our operators roster when an alarm becomes
active. We will then give them a chance to acknowledge the alarm. If they do not
acknowledge the alarm, we will notify them a second, then a third time. If they still have
not acknowledged the alarm after the third notification, we are going to escalate the
issue, and notify the managers roster.
This flowchart shows the logic of the pipeline, to give you an idea of what we are
building.

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1. Click Alarm Notification Pipelines in the Project Browser.

2. Enter Escalation Pipeline in the Name of the pipeline field.
3. Click Blank Pipeline.
4. Click Create.

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Create a Counter
First, we will need a counter to keep track of how many times we have notified our
users.
1. Drag a Set Property block to the pipeline window.
This block creates a variable that exists only within the pipeline.
2. Press and hold your mouse over the output pin on START.
3. Click and drag to the input pin on Set Property.

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4. Enter numCalls in the Property Name field in the Pipeline Block Editor.
5. Enter 0 in Property Value (expression).

Note: Pay close attention to the spelling and capitalization of the Property Name. We
will need to enter this manually later, and will need it to exactly match.

Add a Notification Block

Now that we have initialized the property to track how many times our operators have
been notified, we need to send the first notification.
1. Drag a Notification block to the pipeline window.
2. Click the Notification block.
3. Select Email Notification from the Choose One list in the Pipeline Block editor.
4. Click Contacts.
5. Select Operators from the On-call Rosters list.
6. Drag the output pin on the Set Property block to the input pin on the Notification
block.

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Add a Delay
We want to give our operators some time to acknowledge the alarm before sending
another notification.
1. Drag a Delay block into the pipeline.
2. Drag the output pin on the Notification block to the input pin on the Delay block.
3. Click the Delay block.
4. Enter 10 in the Delay (sec) field.

Note: Obviously, 10 seconds is not a reasonable time frame to allow operators to

acknowledge the alarm. We are setting a very low value here so that we can quickly
test and make see how this pipeline will work.

Increment the Counter Property

If operators do not acknowledge the alarm, we want to notify them again. But before we
do that, we need to increment the value of our counter, and then test that value to see
how many times we have sent notifications and escalate it needed.

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We are also going to add some steps to ensure that our pipeline remains easily
readable. This is particularly important when we are dealing with complex pipelines. In
this case, we will end up with a loop in our pipeline, so we want to set up our pipelines
to visually represent that loop.
1. Drag a Set Property block to the pipeline window.
2. Position the Set Property block below the Delay block.
3. Drag the output pin of the Delay block to the input pin on the Set Property block.
You’ll see that this causes the connecting line to wrap around the block. We don’t want
that.

4. Right-click the Set Property block.

5. Click Reverse Orientation.

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6. Click the Set Property block.

7. Enter numCalls in the Property Name field.

Note: You must ensure that you type this property precisely like you did the first time,
as we want to change the value of the existing property, not create a new one. Pay
close attention the capitalization.

8. Enter {numCalls} + 1 in the Property Value (expression) field.

This expression takes the current value of numCalls and adds 1 to it.

Test numCalls
Next, we need to test the value of our property. If it is less than 3, then we will notify the
same roster again. If it is 3, we will escalate the pipeline.
1. Drag in an Expression block into the pipeline.
2. Right-click the Expression block.
3. Click Reverse Orientation.
4. Drag the output pin of the Set Property block to the input pin on the Expression
block.

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5. Enter {numCalls} < 3 in the Expression Block.

If the expression is false, meaning that we have sent fewer than 3 notifications, we want
to restart our loop.
6. Drag the output pin next to TRUE on the Expression Block to the input pin on
the original Notification block.

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Note: You can connect blocks to as many other blocks as you need.

Jump to the Other Pipeline

If our expression is false, meaning that we have sent 3 notifications, we want to escalate
this pipeline to notify our managers. But recall that we already have a notification
pipeline that sends emails to that managers roster: our Manager pipeline. Rather than
recreating that, we can simply connect to it.
1. Drag a Jump block to the pipeline window.
2. Right-click the Jump pipeline.
3. Click Reverse Orientation.
4. Drag the output pin next to FALSE on the Expression block to the input pin on
the Jump block.
5. Click the Jump block.
6. Select Manager Pipeline from the Destination Pipeline list.
7. Click File.

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8. Click Save All.

Apply and Test the New Pipeline

Now that we have the pipeline created, lets replace the Manager pipeline on our Tag
with this one so we can test it.
1. Expand GenSim on the Tag Browser.
2. Expand Writable.
3. Double-click WritableBoolean1.
4. Click Alarms.
5. Click Test Alarm.
6. Scroll to the Notification settings.
7. Select CoreClass/Escalation Pipeline from the Active Pipeline list.

8. Click OK.

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9. Click File.
10. Click Save All.
11. Enable WriteableBoolean1 in the Tag Browser.
12. Switch back to PaperCut.

You should get two new emails right away, since both our manager and our operator
users are in the Operators roster. 10 seconds later, you will get two more. 10 seconds
after that, you’ll get two more. However, 10 seconds later, you’ll get three emails: the
pipeline has now escalated the issue and send messages to admin, supervisor, and
manager.

Dropout Condition
You might be asking yourself, “how does the pipeline know if an alarm has been
acknowledged?” Let’s first see this in action, then discuss how it works.
1. Click Delete All in PaperCut.
2. Switch back to Designer.
3. Enable WriteableBoolean1 in the Tag Browser.
4. Switch back to PaperCut.
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5. Click one of the emails.
6. Click the link.
7. Enter a note.
8. Click Acknowledge.
9. Return to PaperCut.
You will see that no further emails are received. Acknowledging the alarm causes the
alarm to drop out of the pipeline.

Configure Dropout Conditions

There are three possible dropout conditions for each pipeline: Acknowledged, Cleared,
and Shelved. These dictate when alarms fall out of the pipeline. If any of the selected
conditions become true for an event in a pipeline, it will “drop out” entirely, no matter
where it is at. No further action will be taken for that event.
1. Return to Designer.
2. Click in a blank area of the pipeline window so that no blocks are selected.

With nothing selected, the Pipeline Block Editor shows the dropout conditions. These
are evaluated in order from top to bottom. Therefore, once an alarm is Acknowledged, it
drops out of the pipeline and no further notifications wil be sent.

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 Chapter 17

Popup Windows

In previous chapters, we created a template to show Tag data for our motors. We
also made the template dynamic, so that it could look at data for any single motor,
as opposed to being tied to a single one. In this chapter, we’ll explore a similar
task, using a Popup window to dynamically show more detailed information for a
given motor.

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Creating a Popup Window

In this exercise, we’ll be configuring a parameterized Popup window. That is, a Popup
window that takes a parameter, and uses that parameter to decide which of our items
we want to show data for. This approach, notably, will eliminate the need to create a
new popup window for each motor.

Create a Detailed Motor Popup Window

The project template we are using includes a blank popup window. We are going to
duplicate that for ours. Even though it is in a folder called Popups, it is the Window’s
settings that make is a popup. See “Window Types” on page 76.
1. Open Designer.
2. Click Vision.
3. Expand Windows.
4. Expand Popups.
5. Right-click Popup.
6. Click Duplicate.
7. Right-click Popup (1).
8. Click Rename.
9. Enter Motor Details.
10. Double-click the header Label component.
11. Enter Motor Details.

Add a Parameter to the Popup

In order for the popup to dynamically display information, it will need one or more
parameters—data to be passed into the popup from whatever triggered it that the
components on the popup can use to change the information they display.
1. Right-click the background of the popup.
2. Select Customizers
3. Click Custom Properties.

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4. Click .
5. Enter MotorNum in the Name field.
6. Select Integer as the Type.
7. Click OK.

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If you examine the Vision Properties for the Root Container, you will now see our new
parameter in the Custom Properties section. Pay attention, however, to its default
value: because the dialog box used to create the property does give us a way to set a
default value, it will be set to 0. While this is technically a valid value, we do not have a
Motor 0, so unless we change it, our bindings will appear to be broken even if they are
correct.
8. Click 0.
9. Enter 4.

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This sets our property to a number that matches one of our motors, so bindings will now
work correctly as we create them.

Add Components to the Popup

You can add components to the Popup in the same way that you add them to a Main
Window.
1. Drag the Motor Template to the Popup Window.

Note: Be sure the Motor Template is not open in Designer.

The Motor Template takes a parameter­—the motor number—to display the details of a
particular motor. Our Popup also has a parameter designed to represent the same thing.

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So, binding the template’s parameter to the popup’s will allow us to have the template
display details for whichever motor the popup is showing.
2. Click the template.
3. Click on the MotorNumber property.
4. Click Property.
5. Expand Root Container, if necessary.
6. Click MotorNum.
7. Click OK.

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The template will update to display information for Motor 4. You can change the popup’s
MotorNum property to something else to ensure the binding is correct.
Now, let’s add a few more components to the Popup.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Click in the Filter box.
3. Enter numeric.
4. Drag a Numeric Text Field to the window.
We want to bind this text field to the SpeedSP Tag in our Motors. We will need an
indirect Tag binding to do this.
5. Click on the Value (Integer) property.
6. Click Indirect Tag.
7. Click .
8. Expand Tags.
9. Expand Motors.
10. Expand Motor 1.
11. Click SpeedSP.
12. Click OK.
13. Select 1 in the Tag path.
14. Press Delete.
15. Click .
16. Expand Root Container.
17. Click MotorNum.
18. Click OK.
19. Check Bidirectional.
20. Click OK.

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The numeric text field will update to show the value of the Motor 4 SpeedSP (assuming
your parameter is still set to 4.)
We do not want unlabeled fields on our interfaces, so let’s quickly fix that.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Click in the Filter box.
3. Click to clear to previous filter.
4. Enter label.

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5. Drag a Label to the window.
6. Double-click the Label.
7. Type Speed Setpoint.

Opening a Popup
Earlier in class, we created a Main Window that displays multiple copies of our Motor
Template. We want users to be able to click on one of those instances of the template
and open the Popup. To do this, we need to add a navigation script to the background
of the popup.
1. Double-click Motor Template.
2. Right-click in the background of the template.

Note: You may need to try several locations to find a spot on the template that is not
covered by one of the components. If you cannot find a spot, you can just right-click
on the template in the Project Browser.

3. Click Scripting.

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The Component Scripting dialog box has a lot of features, and we will spend
considerably more time on it later. For now, we only need the first tab.
All scripts are based on events. Again, we will discuss this in more detail in the chapter
on scripting, but for now, we can simply select the event we need to open a popup.
Then, we can complete the rest of the dialog box.
1. Expand mouse under Event Handlers.
2. Click mouseReleased.

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3. Click Open/Swap.
4. Select Popups/Motor Popup from the Window list.
When we click on an instance of the template in the Window, we need to pass the
parameter from the template into the popup, which will then become the popup’s
parameter value.
5. Click Pass Parameters.
6. Click .
7. Select MotorNum from the Parameter Name list.

Note: This list is populated based on the window that you chose in step 7.

8. Double-click the Value field.

9. Click for use as parameter value.
10. Click MotorNumber.
11. Click OK.
12. Click OK.

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Even though we have not finished working on our popup, we can go ahead and test and
make sure the scripting functionality, and in particular the passing of the parameter, is
working correctly.
13. Click File.
14. Click Save All.
15. Click Tools.
16. Click Launch Project.
17. Click Launch (windowed).
18. Log into the client. It does not matter what user account you use.
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19. Click Motor View.
20. Click on any motor.

The popup will appear, and the instance of the template inside the popup will be set to
the same template instance you clicked on.
21. Click on any other motor on the Main Window.
The popup will update to show the correct motor.

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Creating an Indirect Easy Chart

We are storing Tag history on our motors, and want to display that data on the popup.
An ideal component for displaying historical data is the Easy Chart. (See “Use an Easy
Chart” on page 198 for more information.)
1. Return to the Motor Popup.
2. Click in the background of the popup so that no components are selected.
3. Resize the popup.
4. Expand the Components Palette.
5. Click in the Filter box.
6. Click to clear to previous filter.
7. Enter easy.
8. Drag an Easy Chart to the popup.
9. Size and position the Easy Chart so that it is roughly the same height as the
template and covers the area to the right of the template.
10. Expand Motors in the Tag Browser.
11. Expand Motor 4.
12. Click Amps.
13. Shift-click HOA.
14. Drag all three Tags to the Easy Chart.
15. Select Realtime from the list on the Chart Mode property.

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Customize the Chart
The three points of data, or pens, that we are displaying on the chart have radically
different data ranges. On the one hand, the HOA Tag is strictly limited to 0, 1 and 2. The
Amps, however, are generally hovering around 100, but occasionally spike much higher
or lower. And while the SpeedSP Tag is relatively static, it’s value is going to be closer to
the Amps than the HOA.
In addition, the Amps and SpeedSP values are directly related: the SpeedSP is used
to trigger alarms when the Amps get too high. But the HOA isn’t really related to those
other two, other than being a Tag reported by the same device.
For these reasons, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to display all three values on the same
plot in the chart. It would make a lot more sense—and result in a much more readable
chart—if the Amps and SpeedSP were on one plot, and the HOA on a separate plot.
Thankfully, the Easy Chart provides a range of customization possibilities.
1. Right-click the Easy Chart.
2. Select Customizers.
3. Click Easy Chart Customizer.

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4. Click Subplots.
5. Click .
6. Double-click Relative Weight on Plot 1.
7. Enter 3.

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The Relative Weight setting allots the vertical space of the Easy Chart proportionally. By
setting Plot 1 to 3 and leaving Plot 2 at 1, we are saying that we want Plot 1 to have 75%
of the height of the chart, and Plot 2 to have the other 25%.
Next, we need to set up a custom vertical axis for the HOA Tag. As we know, its values
are either 0, 1, or 2. We want to set the upper and lower bounds of the plot to slightly
more than 2 and slightly less than 0 so that those values will be more visible. We also
want to add custom labels so that it shows Off, Auto, and Hand instead of 0, 1, and 2.
1. Click Axes.
2. Click .
3. Enter HOA in the Name field.
4. Enter HOA in the Label field.
5. Select Symbol from the Type list.
6. Deselect Auto Range.
7. Enter -0.1 in the Lower Bound field.
8. Enter 2.1 in the Upper Bound field.
9. Enter Off,Auto,Hand in the Symbols/Grid Bands field.

Note: Do not put spaces before or after the commas.

10. Click OK.

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Finally, we have to configure the HOA Tag pen to use the subplot and axis we’ve
configured.
1. Click Pens.
2. Click HOA.
3. Click .
4. Select HOA from the Axis list.
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5. Set Subplot to 2.
6. Click OK.
7. Click OK.

The chart will update so that now the HOA is on its own custom plot and the other two
Tags are on their own plot.

Make the Chart Indirect

There’s just one more problem, though. The chart can only display the values from
Motor 4. We need to make its bindings indirect. But this isn’t quite as straight-forward
as it seems. Unlike other components we have explored, the Easy Chart doesn’t have a

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simple value property that the pens are bound to. So let’s take a look at how the chart is
getting its data in the first place.
1. Make sure the chart is selected.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the properties.
3. Click on the Tag pens property.
The Easy Chart uses this dataset to populate itself. It has one row for each Tag
you added to the chart, but it also has 20 columns, so this dialog box can be a bit
challenging to work with at first.
4. Drag the left edge of the dialog box to the left to expand its width.
5. Repeat with the right edge.

If your monitor is wide enough, you should not be able to see all 20 columns. Most of
time are not important for our purposes, but one is: TAG_PATH. As you can see, this
property shows the path to the Tag for each pen, and has the motor number hard-coded
into the cell. So, in order to make this chart indirect, we need to use a special kind of
binding, called a Cell Update Binding, to be able to go into this dataset and edit just
the individual cell we want. But we can’t do that from here; as always, we need to work
with a binding.
1. Click Cancel.
2. Click on the Tag Pens property.
3. Click Cell Update.
This shows the exact same table we saw a moment ago, but now we can add bindings
to individual cells.
4. Drag the left edge of the dialog box to the left to expand its width.
5. Repeat with the right edge.
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6. Click in the first TAG_PATH cell.

Normally, we would create a binding, then use the button to find the Tag we want,
but that does not work for Cell Bindings. Instead, we need to copy and paste the Tag
path from the table, then replace the hard-coded number with the parameter.
1. Press Ctrl+C on your keyboard to copy the selected path.
2. Click to add a binding.
3. Double-click in the Value cell.
4. Press Ctrl+V on your keyboard to paste the path.

5. Select 4 in the path.

6. Press Delete.
7. Click .
8. Expand Root Container.
9. Click MotorNum.
10. Click OK.
Now that our first Tag’s path is dynamic, we can repeat those steps for the other two.
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11. Click in the second TAG_PATH cell.
12. Press Ctrl+C on your keyboard to copy the selected path.
13. Click to add a binding.
14. Double-click in the Value cell.
15. Press ctrl-v on your keyboard to paste the path.
16. Select 4 in the path.
17. Press Delete.
18. Click .
19. Expand Root Container.
20. Click MotorNum.
21. Click OK.
22. Click in the third TAG_PATH cell.
23. Press Ctrl+C on your keyboard to copy the selected path.
24. Click to add a binding.
25. Double-click in the Value cell.
26. Press Ctrl+V on your keyboard to paste the path.
27. Select 4 in the path.
28. Press Delete.
29. Click .
30. Expand Root Container.
31. Click MotorNum.
32. Click OK.
33. Click OK.

Creating a Dynamic Alarm Display

The last thing we’ll add to our Popup window is a display that will show the live alarms
for our specified motor. For this, we’ll make use of the Alarm Status Table. See “Alarm
Status Table” on page 269 to review this powerful component.

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1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Click in the Filter box.
3. Click to clear to previous filter.
4. Enter alarm.
5. Drag an Alarm Status Table to the window.
6. Size and position the table to take up the bottom half of the window.

Customize the Columns

We can remove the columns from the table that we don’t really need.
1. Click .
2. Right-click on any header cell in the table.
3. Click the checkboxes to remove Event Id and Label.
4. Resize the remaining columns to fit.

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Filter the Table
By default, the Alarm Status table will show all alarms on our system. We need to
configure a filter that will only allow alarms for the current motor to be shown.
We explored Display Path Filters back in “Filter the Table” on page 272, and can use
them again here to filter the table for the specific motor we want to show.
We want to configure a Display Path Filter that will only match alarms for the specified
motor. The easiest approach is to filter out any alarms that don’t have the name of our
Motor, which is something like Motor 1 or Motor 4, somewhere in the Display Path.
1. Click .
2. Click for the Display Path Filter property.
3. Click Expression.
In order to filter for our motor number somewhere in the display path, we need an
expression that looks for zero or more characters, followed by our motor name, followed
by a space, and zero or more characters.
4. Enter "*Motor " +
5. Click .
6. Click MotorNumber.
7. Enter + " *".
8. Ensure that your expression looks like this:
"*Motor " + {Root Container.MotorNum} + " *"

Note: In this case, there are only 8 motors, so the space after the motor number
isn’t strictly necessary. However, if our operation expanded at some point and we
got more than 10 motors, it would become critical, as the only way to differentiate
between Motor 1 High Amps Alarm and Motor 10 High Amps Alarm is the space after
the 1.

9. Click OK.

Test the Finished Popup

Our popup is complete, so let’s return to the client and view the final result.
1. Click File.

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2. Click Save All.
3. Click Tools.
4. Click Launch project.
5. Click Launch (windowed).
6. Log into the client, using any user account.
7. Click Motors.
8. Click on any motor template instance.

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Scripting

Scripting offers a significant degree of flexibility and customization where the

standard available options fall short. There are two major scripting languages in
Ignition: Python and Expression Language.
Let’s now focus on Python in Ignition.

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What Is Python?
Most of the time, when we talk about “scripting” in Ignition, we’re talking about Python
scripting. Python is a general purpose programming language that was developed in the
early 90’s and remains one of the most-widely used languages today.
Why do we use Python in Ignition? Python has a lot of advanTages of other scripting
languages, but the biggest one is simple: it gracefully interacts with Java. As Ignition
is written in Java, we needed a scripting language that could easily interact with the
underlying Java code, and Python does exactly that.
Python or Jython? Jython is an interpreter that converts Python to Java.

A Note on Versions
Python is currently available in version 3. However, in Ignition, we have to write Python
2.7. This is simply because Jython is still using 2.7. At some point, the folks behind
Jython will update to 3, and then we’ll take a look at it and, if it makes sense, upgrade
the version in Ignition. But for the foreseeable future, we will be using Python 2.7.
This is very important to understand because Python 3.0 (and they’re now well beyond
that) represented a significant upgrade in the language. If you have any training in
Python, it might be in Python 3. If you look on line or get a book on the language, odds
are it will be on version 3. So it’s important to remember that we are using a slightly
outdated version of Python, and there are times when you will see coding techniques on
line that will not work in Ignition.

Python fun fact: while the logo for Python represents two coiled snakes, the language
is actually named for Monty Python, the 70s-era British comedy group.

Getting Started in Python

Python is easy to learn because its syntax is intuitive and easy to read.

Script Console
We want to begin exploring Python by writing and testing some simple code.
To do this we need an environment to write our code in. To get started, will we use the
Script Console in Designer.
1. Click Tools.

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2. Click Script Console.
The Script Console is a simple interactive editor that allows us to write Python on the left
and execute it. The result of the code will be displayed on the right.

Note: The Script Console does not permanently save code. It will only remember code
that you have written in this session of Designer. In a bit, we will look at how you can
write code that is saved with the project.

Let’s start with an example that has been commonplace in beginning programming
books since the 1970s: displaying the phrase “Hello, world” on the screen.
1. Type print "Hello, world"
2. Click Execute.

The print keyword is a handy tool in Python, allowing you to put text into the output
console. This is useful for debugging your scripts.

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Python Syntax
Now that we have written a line of code, we need to discuss Python’s syntax. The
syntax of a programming language is like the grammar of a spoken language. Following
grammatical rules ensures that what we say makes sense to other people listening to
us, and following syntax rules in programming makes sure that the tool that will run the
code (in Python, like other scripting languages, that tool is called an interpreter) knows
what it is supposed to do.

Basic Syntax Rules

Thankfully, Python has a syntax that makes it fairly easy to learn. The two most important
rules to follow are:
Case sensitive Everything in Python is always case sensitive, meaning that whether or
not you capitalize things always matters. Pay close attention to this as we move forward.
Whitespace sensitive Unlike many other languages, Python is whitespace sensitive. In
particular, Python cares about when you press Enter in your code, and how you indent
your code. You also need to pay close attention to this as we move forward.

Comments
Comments are notes that you can leave in your code. They can be very useful in
describing what the code does, and why you chose to write the code in the way you
did. Many times your comments will help you remember what the script does when you
haven’t gone through it in a long time.
Comments in Python begin with the # character. You might call that character a hash
sign, or a pound sign, or a number sign, but regardless of what you call it, Python will
always ignore anything on the line that follows it. The comment can be on its own line or
be at the end of an existing line of code.

Note: Technically, Python does not support multi-line comments. You will find
resources on line that include what appear to be multi-line comments in Python, but
those are technically hacking a quirk in the way Python handles strings. Because they
are not strictly supported by the language, we will not be using them in class.

Throughout Ignition, you can select one or more lines of code and use the keyboard
shortcut Ctrl-/ to either add the comment character to the beginning of every selected
line. If you select some code that is already commented, the same keyboard shortcut
will remove the comment symbols.
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Keywords
If syntax is the grammar of a programming language, keywords are its vocabulary.
Thankfully, unlike spoken languages that have massive vocabularies (it’s estimated that
modern English has more than 5 million words), programming languages tend to stick to
fairly small lists of keywords. We aren’t going to list them here, because it’s not important
that you know all of them at this point. However, any coding environment within Ignition
will make keywords bold and blue, and like everything else in the language, remember
that they are case sensitive, so for example True is a keyword, but true is not.

Where Is Python Used?

Python is used in many places in Ignition. You can attach scripts to components, but you
can also write code that becomes part of your project, or have code that directly runs on
the Client or the Gateway.

Event Handlers
Event handling enables you to use scripting to respond to a wide variety of events that
components fire. This lets you configure windows that are very interactive and are an
important part of project design in Vision and Perspective.
An event can be many things, such as a mouse click, a key press, or simply a property
change. Whenever these events occur, a script can be called to “handle” the event.
Different components can fire different types of events.
Events are organized into event sets. For example, the mouse event set includes
mouseClicked, mousePressed, and mouseReleased. Many times the events in an event
set share the same properties for their event object.

Creating and Accessing Variables

Variables, a common staple of all programming languages, are a way to store a value
that you use later using a name that is (hopefully) easy to remember. Even if you have no
prior programming experience, you are likely familiar with the concept of a variable from
middle school algebra: in the formula x+1=2, x is a variable.

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Data Types
Python, like all programming languages, uses data types to differentiate between
values. Python has many data types, but for our purposes in this class we really only
need to care about four of them:
Strings A string is any sequence of characters, usually text. Words, sentences, or even
individual letters are strings. Note that in certain cases, numbers can be represented as
strings.
Integers An integer is a whole number, like 42.
Floats Floats are decimal numbers.
Booleans A Boolean value is literally either True or False.

Note: If you have a computer science degree, you might note that the above is a vast
over-simplification. That is true, but it’s really all we need to understand at this point in
learning scripting.

Python is sometimes referred to as a “loosely typed” or “dynamically typed” language,

which means that while every variable will have a value with a set data type, you do not
need to declare the data type when you define the variable. Instead, Python will look at
the value you assign and decide on the data type for you. Sometimes, that is fine, but
other times it may lead to issues. We will explore one of those issues later.

Variable Names
Variable names must begin with a letter or an underscore character. Importantly,
they cannot start with a number. After the first character, they can contain letters,
underscores, and numbers.
Because variable names, like everything else in Python, are case sensitive, and also
because they cannot contain spaces, you need to develop a consistent method of
writing multi-word variable names.
For this class, we will be using a method known as camel case for all names. Camel
case involves removing the spaces and capitalizing the first word of every word in the
name, but leaving the very first letter lowercase.
In other words, if we want to represent “first name,” we would write it as firstName. If we
wanted something like “is not admin”, we should use isNotAdmin.
There are other valid ways to represent multi-word variables in Python, but there’s a
very important reason why we want to use camel case: every built-in name in Ignition
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is written with camel case. So, if we use it for our names, we won’t have to worry about
how variable names are written when we’re referring to both our own stuff and the stuff
built into Ignition. It’ll all be the same.

Create Variables
Let’s create a few variables to see how they work.
1. Type firstName =.
2. Type your first name, enclosed in quotation marks.
3. Press Enter.
4. Type lastName =.
5. Type your last name, enclosed in quotation marks.
6. Type print firstName, lastName.
7. Click Execute.

Your first and last name will appear on the right side of the console.

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You will also see a nice feature of Python here: you can provide a comma-separated list
of variables to the print statement, and it will output them all together.

Adding Code to Components

While the script console is a great place to test out a script, the downside as mentioned
earlier is that it won’t save our work if you close Designer. It also cannot interact with
components on a window.
Because of these limitations, most of the time code will be written in other places in our
project. And one particularly common place is on a component in a window.

Create a Script Window

To begin, let’s create a window that we can use to test out a variety of scripts.
1. Click Vision.
2. Expand Windows.
3. Expand Main Windows.
4. Right-click Empty.
5. Click Duplicate.
6. Right-click Empty (1).
7. Click Rename.
8. Type Scripting.
9. Press Enter.
10. Double-click the header text.
11. Type Scripting.

Add a Button
The easiest component to add a script to is the Button. In fact, the Button component
does not do anything on its own—you must write a script of some kind to get a Button to
work.
12. Expand the Components Palette.
13. Click in the Filter box.

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14. Click to clear to previous filter.

15. Type button.
16. Drag a Button to the Window.
17. Click the Text property.
18. Enter Variables.

Because you have to add some kind of script to get a Button to do anything, double-
clicking the Button opens the Component Scripting dialog box.

Component Scripting Dialog

We saw the Component Scripting Dialog box in the “Opening a Popup” on page 329,
but we only used the first tab—Navigation.

The actionPerformed Event

We have discussed events briefly before. Buttons will almost always use the
actionPerformed event, which is triggered regardless of how the button is activated.
In fact, this is so common that this event is pre-selected for you when you open the
Component Scripting dialog from a button.

Other Tabs
While we will not be using any of the other tabs except the last one, it’s worth taking a
moment to discuss what each one does.
Navigation The Navigation tab allows us to navigate somewhere–most often, another
window—when the button is clicked.

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Set Tag Value You can use this tab to set a specific Tag to a given value when the
button is clicked.
SQL Update Trigger a query to the database to update values on clicking the button.
Set Property Change the property of a component to a different value when clicking
the button.
Script Editor Write your own code. This is the tab we will use for the remainder of this
section of the class.

Add Variables to the Script

Now that we have an understanding of the dialog box, let’s revisit variables. First, we’ll
recreate the basic variables we had in our Script Console.
1. Double-click the Button.
2. Click Script Editor.
3. Enter firstName =
4. Enter your first name, enclosed in quotation marks.
5. Press Enter.
6. Enter lastName =
7. Enter your last name, enclosed in quotation marks.
8. Press Enter.
9. Enter aNumber = 42
10. Press Enter.
11. Enter isAdmin = True
12. Press Enter.
13. Enter print firstName, lastName, aNumber, isAdmin

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Testing Code on a Button

In order to execute the code attached to a Button to test it, we first need to save the
information in the dialog box. The normal way of doing this is to click OK, which you
should know from all of your other computer use saves the changes made in the dialog
and closes it. However, we also have an Apply button. Clicking that saves the changes
in the dialog but leaves it open. This is particularly helpful because the Component
Scripting dialog is what is known as a non-modal dialog, which is just fancy computer-
speak for “a dialog box that can stay open because we can still interact with the rest of
the program.”
1. Click Apply.

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2. Move the Component Scripting dialog box so that you can see the rest of
Designer.
3. Click .
4. Click the Button.
Clicking the Button executes its code ... but where did it go?
When we used the print statement in the Script Console, the results showed up in the
console. But when we try to use it on a component on a window, we need to open a
console for the statement to write to.

The Console Panel

We have a Console Panel in Designer that, among other things, can display the results
of executing a print statement. Even though it’s opened from the Tools menu, it acts like
any other panel, so we have the ability to dock it in place.
1. Click Tools.
2. Click Console.

3. Press and hold your mouse on the Console’s title bar.

4. Drag the console so that it docks at the bottom of the screen.

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The console does not only display print statements. Every time Designer starts, a lot of
information is printed to the console, which is what you see in it now. The console will
also display errors if they occur. So that we can focus in on our print statement, let’s
clear the console, then run our code again.
5. Click Clear.
6. Click the Button.

This time, you will see the result of the print statement in the console.

Basic Math
While advanced math requires a bit more work, basic mathematical operations can be
executed directly in Python.
Python supports a fairly standard set of mathematical operators:
+ Addition
- Subtraction
* Multiplication
/ Division
% Modulo. This might require a small bit of explanation. The modulo is the remainder
of a division problem. Think back to when you first learned division: you learned that
5 divided by 2 is 2 with a remainder 1. The modulo operator simply solves a division
problem, but rather than returning the result as a decimal, as the division operator does,
it just returns that remainder. So, 5 % 2 would return 1. You may be surprised at just how
often this is useful in programming. In fact, we will see an example of its use before we
finish this chapter.
Let’s take a quick look at doing math in Python.

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1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Select all of the code.

Note: The keyboard shortcut Ctrl-a will select all code.

3. Press Ctrl-/ to add comment characters to the beginning of every line.

4. Click to deselect the code.
5. Press Enter after the last line.
6. Enter add = 10+32
7. Press Enter.
8. Enter subtract = 52-10
9. Press Enter.
10. Enter multiply = 7 * 6
11. Press Enter.
12. Enter divide = 420/10
13. Press Enter.
14. Enter modulo = 8814%43
15. Press Enter.
16. Enter print add, subtract, multiply, divide, modulo
17. Click Apply.
18. If necessary, move the Component Scripting dialog.
19. Click Clear.
20. Click the Button.
The answer to all of those problems is, of course, 42.

Conditional Processing
Programming is, ultimately, just about getting computers to do what we want. And that
will inevitably require decision making.

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In Python, you can create an if block to perform basic binary logic; that is, evaluate
a value and do something if that evaluation is true, and something else (or possible
nothing) if it is false.

Whitespace and Code Blocks

This is where Python’s use of whitespace becomes critical. So far, we have only used
code statements, which are single lines. But now, we need more than one line to
express our code: at a minimum, the if statement needs to be on a line, and the code to
execute if the statement is true on a second line. But in order for Python to know that
the second line is related to the first, that second line must be indented.
It is unimportant how much indentation you use, and also, it does not matter if you
indent using the tab key or by pressing the spacebar one or more times. All that matters
is consistency: if you use tab to indent in one place, you need to use it to indent the
same amount for every other related line.
In addition, that first line—the one with the actual if statement—needs to end with a
colon.

Comparison Operators
Just as Python uses a set of symbols to do math, it uses a set of symbols to perform
comparisons. All of these comparisons will result in either True or False.
== Two equal signs means “equal to.” Note that we need two equal signs here—one
equal sign, as we have already seen, assigns a value to a variable.
> Greater than
< Less than
>= Greater than or equal to
>= Less than or equal to
!= Not equal to

Writing a Basic If Statement

Let’s create a new button, so that we can keep the code we have already written for
future reference. However, rather than getting a brand new button, we can simply
duplicate the button we already have, and then replace the code.
1. Click OK to close the existing Component Scripting dialog.

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2. Click .
3. Click the Button.
4. Press and hold Ctrl on your keyboard.
5. Drag the Button down.
6. Release Ctrl.
7. Double-click the value of the Button’s Text property.
8. Enter If.
9. Press Enter.
10. Double-click the Button.
11. Click in the code.
12. Press Ctrl+A on your keyboard.
13. Press Delete.
14. Enter var = 42
15. Press Enter.
16. Enter if var < 42:
17. Enter print "var is less than the answer."
18. Ensure your code looks like this:
var = 42

if(var < 42):

print “var is less than the answer.”

19. Click Apply.

20. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
21. Click .
22. Click .
23. Click the Button.
Nothing should be output to the console, because the condition is false, so print never
executes.

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Else
In this case, we have a single test. If that test is true, the print statement executes. If it’s
false, nothing happens.
But what if we do want something to happen? In that case, you can add an else
statement.
Pay close attention to whitespace. The else statement needs to be at the same level of
indentation as if, and the statement to execute on else needs to be indented the same
amount as the statement to execute when the if statement is true.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter else: as the last line of code.
3. Press Enter.
4. Enter print "var is greater than the answer"
5. Ensure your code looks like this:
var = 42

if(var < 42):

print "var is less than the answer."

else:

print "var is greater than the answer."

6. Click Apply.
7. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
8. Click .
9. Click the Button.
This time we get something to print because of the else allowing for some logic on
when the condition is not met.

Elif
Lastly, you can use elif to add multiple conditions. Short for “else if”, elif allows you to
check another condition when the previous one is not met. This form can optionally
have a catch-all else clause at the end.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.

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2. Enter elif (var == 42): on line 4.
3. Press Enter.
4. Enter print "var is the answer"
5. Ensure your code looks like this:
var = 42

if(var < 42):

print "var is less than the answer."

elif(var == 42):

print "var is the answer."

else:

print "var is greater than the answer."

6. Click Apply.
7. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
8. Click .
9. Click the Button.
Try changing the value of var to see how it impacts which condition is true.

Lists
Lists are one of the most important concepts to understand, not just for Python in
general but for using Python in Ignition.
Whereas variables store a single piece of data, lists allow us to store multiple data points
in a single object that can be then be referenced as a whole, but also still referenced as
individual pieces as well.
To examine lists, we will create a new button and add code to it.
1. Click OK to close the existing Component Scripting dialog.
2. Click .
3. Click the Button.
4. Press and hold Ctrl on your keyboard.
5. Drag the Button down.
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6. Release Ctrl.
7. Double-click the value of the Button’s Text property.
8. Enter Lists.
9. Press Enter.
10. Double-click the Button.
11. Click in the code.
12. Press Ctrl+A on your keyboard.
13. Press Delete.
14. Enter nums = range(5)
15. Press Enter.
16. Enter print nums
17. Click Apply.
18. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
19. Click .
20. Click the Button.
The range function in Python creates a list of integers. The lists starts at zero, and
contains the number of integers you specify inside the parentheses; in this case, we get
a total of five items in the list, ranging from 0-4.
Note how the output looks: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
Of particular importance are the square brackets. These are used whenever we are
creating a list.
You can also use a list that you create.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter # at the beginning of the print statement to comment it out.
3. Enter ships = ["Enterprise", "Galactica", "Serenity"]
4. Enter print ships
5. Ensure your code looks like this:
nums = range(5)

#print nums
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ships = ["Enterprise", "Galactica", "Serenity"]

print ships

6. Click Apply.
7. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
8. Click .
9. Click the Button.
The list will appear in the Console window. Note that Ignition replaces the double
quotes with single quotes. Python accepts either, so this does not matter; when you
create the list, you can as easily use single quotes.

Referencing Items in a List

You can reference an item in a list by using its index number. Python uses zero-indexing,
meaning that the first item in the list is at index 0, and second at index 1, and so forth.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter # at the beginning of the print statement to comment it out.
3. Enter print ships[1]
4. Click Apply.
5. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
6. Click .
7. Click the Button.
You will see that the second item in the list is printed.

Adding to the List

You can add items to a list with the append() function. This function is called on the
list using dot notation: you type the name of the list, then a period (dot), and then the
function. We will see many more uses of dot notation as we get more advanced in
Python.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter # at the beginning of the print statement to comment it out.
3. Enter ships.append("Falcon")

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4. Enter print ships
5. Click Apply.
6. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
7. Click .
8. Click the Button.

Lists With Multiple Types

Python lists can contain items of different data types. They can even contain other lists.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter # at the beginning of the print statement to comment it out.
3. Enter stuff = [1, “banana”, 3.14, ships]
4. Enter print stuff
5. Click Apply.
6. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
7. Click .
8. Click the Button.
You will see that the new list contains a integer, a string, a decimal, and the other list.
You can reference an item in a nested list by providing the index of the nested list, then
the index of the item in that list.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter # at the beginning of the print statement to comment it out.
3. Enter print stuff[3][2]
4. Click Apply.
5. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
6. Click .
7. Click the Button.

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Loops
Like any other programming language, Python allows us to execute one or more lines
of code repeatedly with a loop. Unlike other languages, though, Python really only
contains two types of loops, and in Ignition, we primarily only rely on one.

For Loop
The for loop in Python has one purpose: looping over a list. Because of this, we will
continue to work with the Lists button from the prior section.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter # at the beginning of the print statement to comment it out.
3. Enter for num in nums:
This line initializes the for loop. We are creating a new variable, num, which will
represent each item as the loop iterates.
Note the colon at the end of the line. We are going to create a code block here, and the
colon is part of what designates that what follows will be a block, just like we did with
our if code blocks. And, just like the if, the code that we want to execute within the for
loop must be indented.
4. Press Enter.
5. Enter print num
6. Click Apply.
7. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
8. Click .
9. Click the Button.
You will see each number from the numbers list print on its own line, because each
number is executing in a separate print statement.
While this example is simply printing the items in a list with a for loop, you can in practice
do anything you want to the items in the loop. We will see examples of this later.

String Formatting
Often, you may need to take multiple strings and combine them, or push a variable into
a string that will later be displayed to the user. There are a few different ways of doing

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this: string concatenation and string formatting. Concatenation is basically a fancy word
for “add”, so string concatenation adds several strings together using the plus symbol.
String formatting, on the other hand, allows you to enter values into specific points into
the string.
1. Click OK to close the existing Component Scripting dialog.
2. Click .
3. Click the Button.
4. Press and hold Ctrl on your keyboard.
5. Drag the Button down.
6. Release Ctrl.
7. Double-click the value of the Button’s Text property.
8. Enter Strings.
9. Press Enter.
10. Double-click the Button.
11. Click in the code.
12. Press Ctrl+A on your keyboard.
13. Press Delete.
14. Enter temp = 75
15. Press Enter.
16. Enter city = "Folsom"
17. Enter print "The temperature in " + city + " is currently " + temp
+ " degrees."

18. Click Apply.

19. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
20. Click .
21. Click .
22. Click the Button.
You will receive the follow error.

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This error is occurring because we are trying to combine two datatypes in a single
statement: we have a series of strings, and an integer.

Type Casting
There are two solutions to this issue.
First, we can use type casting, which means forcing Python to convert a variable from
one type to another. This is possible in this situation, but an integer and a string are
compatible; in other words, it’s possible to treat an integer as a string. In fact, almost any
type can be cast to a string. The opposite, however, is not always possible: while you
can write 42 as a string, you cannot write platypus as a number.
Type casting is performed by using a set of functions in Python. Each of the basic data
types has a corresponding type function.
Let’s go ahead and fix that first example using type casting.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter str( before temp on line 3.
3. Enter a closing parenthesis after temp
4. Ensure your code looks like this:

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temp = 93

city = “Rocklin”

print “The temperature in “ + city + “ is currently “ + str(temp) + “

degrees.”

5. Click Apply.
6. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
7. Click .
8. Click the Button.
You will now see the statement print correctly, without error.

Python String Formatting

Type casting exists in almost every programming language, but Python has a special
way of formatting strings that is unique to the language.
This technique allows us to input special placeholders in a string, and then follow the
string with a special function that allows you to replace the placeholders with formatted
variables.
1. Return to the Component Scripting window.
2. Enter print “The temperature in %s is currently %i
degrees.”%(city, temp)

The first placeholder, %s, designates that the value we will put in its place will be
a string. The second placeholder, %i, will need to be replaced by an integer. Then,
following the string, we put another percent symbol, and in a pair of parentheses, we
put the values we want to use to replace the placeholders. Note that the order matters:
the list of values replaces the placeholders in order, left to right.
3. Click Apply.
4. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
5. Click .
6. Click the Button.
When you run the code this time, you will see two identical sentences, showing that the
more traditional programming method of using type casting and the Pythonic method of
string formatting give you the same result.

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Both print statements will display the same sentence in the Console using different
methods to create them.

Note: String formatting is one of the things that changed most significantly from
Python 2 to Python 3. It’s important to remember that in Ignition, we are using Python
2.7. So, if you search on line for help with string formatting, you are likely to get a lot
of results that use newer techniques that will not work in Ignition. A useful resource
is pyformat.info, which is a website that not only shows all of the possibilities for
string formatting, but also designates which techniques works in the “old style” (i.e.,
Python 2, and thus Ignition) and which ones are new to Python 3. Note that Inductive
Automation is not affiliated with this website in any way and is only providing the link
as an additional resource.

Python in Ignition
So far, we have only looked at generic Python. Everything we have done so far could be
done in any code editor and executed against a stand-alone installation of Python. Now,
we want to look at how we can write Python code that is specific to Ignition.

System Functions
The Ignition scripting API, which is available under the module name “system”, is full
of functions that are useful when designing projects in Ignition. These functions are
not part of the standard Python language, but are instead built into Ignition to ease the
execution of certain common tasks and interact with various systems in Ignition. In the
example below, we cover some of the things that you can do with system functions.
1. Click OK to close the existing Component Scripting dialog.
2. Click .
3. Click the Button.
4. Press and hold Ctrl on your keyboard.
5. Drag the Button down.
6. Release Ctrl.
7. Double-click the value of the Button’s Text property.
8. Enter System.
9. Press Enter.

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10. Double-click the Button.
11. Click in the code.
12. Press Ctrl+A on your keyboard.
13. Press Delete.
14. Enter system. Be sure to type the period.
Now that we are working with Ignition-specific code, we will start to see code hints.
These will help us write code by typing less, which also allows us to avoid typos.
15. Enter g immediately after the period.
16. Press Enter.
Because gui was selected (as the only item) on the code hints, the script completed the
rest for us, including the period we will need for the next step.
17. Enter m immediately after the period.
18. Press Enter.
Again, typing just the first letter was enough to select the item we need.
The messageBox function opens a modal message box on the screen, which is a fancy
way of saying a dialog box that we must deal with before we can do anything else. The
function takes two parameters: a message, and a title. Title is optional, so we are going
to delete it.
19. Replace message with "Hello, world."
20. Delete , title
21. Ensure your code looks like this:
system.gui.messageBox("Hello world")

22. Click Apply.

23. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
24. Click .
25. Click .
26. Click the Button.
The message box will appear. You will need to click OK to close it.
There is also a lot of information we can get from these system functions.

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1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter # at the beginning of the messageBox statement to comment it out.
3. Enter print system.util.getGatewayAddress() You can use the code hints
to save some keystrokes.
4. Be sure your code looks like this:
#system.gui.messageBox("Hello world")

print system.util.getGatewayAddress()

5. Click Apply.
6. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
7. Click .
8. Click the Button.
You should see your Gateway address, http://localhost:8088, printed in the Console.
9. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
10. Enter # at the beginning of line 2 to comment it out.
11. Enter print system.user.getUsers()
12. Enter "default" to replace the userSource placeholder between the
parentheses.
13. Be sure your code looks like this:
#system.gui.messageBox("Hello world")
#print system.util.getGatewayAddress()

print system.user.getUsers(userSource)

14. Click Apply.

15. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
16. Click .
17. Click the Button.
You should see something similar to this in the Console:
[User[username=admin, firstname=null, lastname=null, roles=[Administrator]],
User[username=guest, firstname=null, lastname=null, roles=[]], User[username=oper,
firstname=null, lastname=null, roles=[Operator]]]

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Ask yourself: what does this look like in Python?
Hopefully, you said, “a list of lists.” And you would be right.
Of course, an important aspect of most Ignition projects is working with Tags, and we do
have ways we can access Tags in scripting.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Enter # at the beginning of line 3 to comment it out.
3. Enter Tags = system.Tags.readBlocking()
The required parameter for the readBlocking function is a list of Tag paths. (You can see
this from the black tooltip that appears when you first type this code.) So, to specify the
Tags we want, we first need a list.
4. Enter [] to replace the TagPaths placeholder between the parentheses.
Unfortunately, the code hints don’t state this, but each Tag path within the list needs to
be passed as a string.
5. Enter "" inside the square brackets.
We could enter the paths to the Tags we want, but it’d be easier (and less prone to error)
if we instead copied them from the Tag Browser.
6. Expand GenSim in the Tag Browser.
7. Expand Ramps.
8. Right-click Ramp0.
9. Click Copy Path.
10. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
11. Right-click between the quotes you entered in step 48.
12. Click Paste.
Let’s take advanTage of the function accepting a list of Tags and add a second one.
13. Enter , "" after the closing quotation mark.
14. Expand DairySim in the Tag Browser.
15. Expand Overview.
16. Expand Motor 1.
17. Right-click Amps.

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18. Click Copy Path.
19. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
20. Right-click between the quotes you entered in step 56.
21. Click Paste.
22. Click at the end of the line.
23. Press Enter.
24. Enter print tags
25. Be sure your code looks like this:
#system.gui.messageBox("Hello world")
#print system.util.getGatewayAddress()

#print system.user.getUsers("default")

tags = system.tag.readBlocking(["[default]_GenSim_/Ramp/
Ramp0","[default]_DairySim_/Overview/Motor 1/Amps"])

print tags

Note: The path should be written on one line.

26. Click Apply.

27. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
28. Click .
29. Click the Button.
You should see results similar to this:
[[7.5439, Good, Mon Jul 29 13:08:34 PDT 2024 (1722283714688)],
[98.7552879530954, Good, Mon Jul 29 13:08:33 PDT 2024 (1722283713675)]]
Again, ask yourself: what does that look like?
Once again, “a list of lists.” But, whereas getUsers did in fact return a list of lists, this
result is a bit trickier.
Let’s try to use list syntax to get the first value out of that result—the value of Ramp0.
1. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
2. Add [0][0] to the last line of code.

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3. Ensure your code looks like this:
#system.gui.messageBox("Hello world")

#print system.util.getGatewayAddress()

#print system.user.getUsers("default")

tags = system.tag.readBlocking(["[default]_GenSim_/Ramp/
Ramp0","[default]_DairySim_/Overview/Motor 1/Amps"])

print tags[0][0]

4. Click Apply.
5. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
6. Click .
7. Click the Button.
You will get an error. Let’s examine the error to see what’s wrong.

8. Click Details on the error dialog box.

9. If necessary, expand the width of the dialog to see the whole message.

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The error message should say, TypeError: ‘com.inductiveautomation.ignition.

common.model.values.BasicQualifiedValue’ object is unsubscriptable.
What does that mean? We could just tell you, but you’re likely to encounter many errors
as you learn Python in Ignition, so it’s worth exploring our on line documentation to find
the answer.

Using the Documentation

As we’ve now seen, many times we will try to do something that looks right, but results
in an error. Thankfully, the system functions in Ignition are all well documented.
1. Open the Gateway web page in a browser.
2. Click Home.
3. Click Open Appendix.

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The documentation appendix provides a complete reference to Ignition components,

Expression Functions, System Functions, and Reference Pages, as well as a link to
documentation for older versions of Ignition.
We know that we are working with system functions, so the answer to fixing that error
can be found by following links in that section.
4. Click System Functions.
5. Click system.tag.
6. Click readBlocking.
7. Scroll to the Returns section.
We can see here that the readBlocking function does not in fact return a list of lists, but
rather, a list of something called QualifiedValue objects. What is that? Well, thankfully,
there’s a cross reference right on that page.
8. Click Scripting Object Reference.
This page, which will automatically scroll to the section that explains a QualifiedValue
object, shows us that even though this object looks like a list, it is in fact a special
thing within Ignition. We can also see that it has three properties: value, quality,
and timestamp. If you go back to Designer and look at the original output from the

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readBlocking Tag, each of the two Tags is returning three things: the Tag’s value, its
quality (“Good”), and a timestamp of when the function read the Tag.
This tells us what we need to know in order to output that value: it’s not the zero index
of the list (because it isn’t a list); instead, we can use value.
9. Return to Designer.
10. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
11. Delete the last [0]
12. Enter .value Be sure to type the period.
13. Ensure your code looks like this:
tags = system.tag.readBlocking(["[default]GenSim/Ramp/Ramp0",
"[default]DairySim/Overview/Motor 1/Amps"])

print tags[0].value

14. Click Apply.

15. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
16. Click .
17. Click the Button.
There are certain aspects of code that you will memorize through repeated use, but the
vast majority will be things you need to look up. Remember that our documentation is
there to answer many of those questions. You can also use the user forums—there’s also
a link on the Gateway home page to those—to ask for help if you can’t find the answer
you need in the documentation.

Reading Component Values

So far, all of our scripts have been attached to buttons, and have relied on the code
within the button to do what we need. However, it is of course entirely possible to write
code that takes information from one component and uses it in another component.
Let’s start with a fairly simple example: we will add a text field and a button. Our user will
be able to type something into the text field, and then click the button to have whatever
was typed appear in a message box.
1. Click OK to close the existing Component Scripting dialog.
2. Click .

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3. Expand the Components Palette.
4. Drag a Text Field component to the window.
5. Click a Button.
6. Press and hold Ctrl on your keyboard.
7. Drag the Button down.
8. Release Ctrl.
9. Double-click the value of the Button’s Text property.
10. Enter Read Text.
11. Press Enter.
12. Double-click the Button.
13. Click in the code.
14. Press Ctrl+A on your keyboard.
15. Press Delete.
16. Enter message =
17. Click .
18. Expand Root Container.
19. Expand Text Field.
20. Click Text.
21. Click OK.
22. Press Enter.
23. Type system.gui.messageBox(message, title)
24. Delete , title
25. Ensure your code looks like this:
message = event.source.parent.getComponent('Text Field').text

system.gui.messageBox(message)

26. Click Apply.

27. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
28. Enter something in the Text Field.
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29. Click .
30. Click the Button.

You will see the text you entered in the message box.

Note: Rather than creating a variable for the message, then passing that text to the
messageBox function, it is possible to write that code on one line:
system.gui.messageBox(event.source.parent.getComponent('Text Field').text)

Component Extension Functions

Most of the more complex components have a set of Extension Functions, which are
pre-defined functions you can use to expand on the functionality of the component.
One useful extension function is in the Power Table, where we can fairly easily add code
to change the table so that it has alternating row colors, which will make large tables
easier to read.
1. Click OK to close the existing Component Scripting dialog.
2. Click .
3. Expand the Components Palette.
4. Click in the Filter Box.
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5. Click .
6. Type power.
7. Drag a Power Table to the window.
There are a variety of ways to populate the Power Table with data, but for our purposes,
we can going to use a feature of the table used for sales demos of Ignition.
8. Scroll to the bottom of the property list.
9. Click Test Data.

The Test Data property simply populates the table with random data, separated into
columns based on data types.
10. Right-click the table.
11. Click Scripting.

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The Component Scripting dialog now has a section of Component Functions.

1. Click configureCell.

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Each Extension Function has a checkbox to enable it, a Description to explain what the
function does, a list of the Parameters that are available to the function, and a Script
section to type your code.
2. Click Enabled.
3. Collapse the Description section.
4. Click and drag to select lines 3-8 of the sample code.
5. Press Ctrl+/ on your keyboard to uncomment those lines.
6. Click Apply.
7. Move the Component Scripting dialog out of the way.
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Let’s examine the code line-by-line to understand how it works.

8. Return to the Component Scripting dialog.
9. Click configureCell, if necessary.
Line 3 is an if statement, testing to see if the cell is selected.
Line 4 executes if the cell is selected, and returns a background of the
selectedBackground, which is a property of the table that defaults to light blue.
Line 5 is an else if statement that looks at the rowView of the cell. If you look up at
the Parameters, you will see that the rowView parameter is the index of the current
row in the table. Because it is based on what is displayed on the table, and not on the
underlying dataset, it is effected by sorting, which means that if a user clicks a header
cell to resort the table, the rowView index numbers will remain the same. In other words,
the first visual row of the table is always rowView 0, and second is 1, and so forth.

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This line then uses the modulo operator to see what the value of the remainder is if
we divide by 2. This will be either 0 or 1, depending on if the row is odd or even. In this
case, we’re seeing if it’s 0, and returning a background of white on row 6. See “Basic
Math” on page 359 for a review of the modulo operator.
Line 7 is the else: if the row is not selected, and it’s rowView is not even, this line
executes, and results in line 8 returning a background of gray.

Note: #DDDDDD is a hexadecimal code for a color. See “Editing Colors” on page
115 . A feature of hexadecimal is that anytime all six digits are the same, you get a
shade of gray.

The sample code provided by the extension function lets us set up alternating rows
without typing any code, but let’s expand on this a big further. In addition to the
alternating rows, we also want to highlight certain rows based on the value in the Int
Column. Specifically, we want to make any row have a red background if the value of
the Int Column on that row is over 50.
To figure out if the row matches our criteria, we need to get the value of the cell in the
Int Column. To do this, we’re going to use the self parameter of the function. As you
can see from the Parameters list, self is a reference to the component that is calling
this function—in our case, the Power Table. From there, we can access the table’s
data property, and use the getValueAt() function to return a specific value. Within that
function, we can reference rowIndex, which, according to the Parameters, is a reference
to a row in the underlying dataset of the table, and then provide a reference to the
column by its name. That combination of a row and a column gives us a specific cell in
the table. We can then compare that value to the given criteria.
1. Click at the end of line 4.
2. Press Enter.
3. Press Backspace.
4. Enter elif self.data.getValueAt(rowIndex, "Int Column") > 50:
5. Press Enter.
6. Press Tab.
7. Enter return {'background': 'red'}
8. Ensure your code looks like this. Pay close attention to indentation.
# This example adds alternating background color:

if selected:
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return {'background': self.selectionBackground}

elif self.data.getValueAt(rowIndex, "Int Column") > 50:

return {'background': 'red'}

elif rowView % 2 == 0:

return {'background': 'white'}

else:

return {'background': '#DDDDDD'}

9. Click OK.

The table will now display any row where the Int Column value is greater than 50 in red.
Other rows will continue to alternate between white and gray.

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Client and Gateway Event Scripts

Client and Gateway events are special events not based around components. Many
times, these scripts can execute automatically, without the user needing to perform
some action to trigger them.

Client Events
There are a handful of Client Events that are triggered in the Vision client in response to
actions. Like scripts on components, each script can fire on each client that is currently
running this project. A script executing in the Client is considered to be in the Client
Scope, which means that each client is running a separate instance of the script.
Let’s open the Client Events Scripts dialog box to explore an example.
1. Double-click Client Events in the Project Browser.

2. Click Timer.
3. Click Check Inactivity @5,000ms

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This script is part of the project template that we selected when we first created our
project. It runs every five seconds, and checks how long the client has been inactive. If
it has been inactive for more than five minutes, then it locks the client. This is why we
have to log into the client every time we leave it alone. We could change the number of
seconds—the 5000 at the end of line 3—if we wanted a different inactive time. We can
disable the script altogether, and thus making it so that we do not need to log into to
client at all (except when we are opening it) by double clicking on the script name and
unchecking the Enabled checkbox.

Gateway Events
Gateway Events work a little differently than Client Events, even though many of them
seem similar. While the Client Events are triggered by things happening in the Client, the
Gateway Events are triggered by things running in the Gateway. This means that these

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scripts execute in the Gateway Scope. By running in the Gateway Scope, these scripts
can’t directly affect objects within the Client such as windows and components, but they
also continue to run even if no clients are open.
Gateway Events are accessed from the Scripting module in the Project Browser.

Project Script Library

The Project Script Library is a place where you can create your own script functions.
These functions can be called from anywhere in the project, and are helpful when you
have scripts that you need to use repeatedly.
1. Expand Scripting in the Project Browser.
2. Click Project Library.

3. Enter myScripts in the Name of the script field.

4. Click Create.

5. Enter def myMessage(message):

6. Press Enter.
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7. Enter system.gui.messageBox(message)
8. Ensure your code looks like this:
def myMessage(message):

system.gui.messageBox(message)

9. Click File.
10. Click Save All.
11. Return to the Scripting Window in Vision.
12. Click a Button.
13. Press and hold Ctrl on your keyboard.
14. Drag the Button to create another copy.
15. Release Ctrl.
16. Double-click the current value of the Button’s Text property.
17. Enter Project Script.
18. Press Enter.
19. Double-click the Button.
20. Click in the code.
21. Press Ctrl+A on your keyboard.
22. Press Delete.
23. Enter myScripts.myMessage("This is my Project Script")
24. Click OK.
25. Click .
26. Click the Button.
In this example, we simply made a function that calls the built-in system function to
open a dialog box. That’s not terribly useful, but it hopefully gives you the idea that you
can put your code in the Project Scripting library and then use it anywhere else in your
project.

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 Chapter 19

Perspective

Perspective is a module that allows you to create resources that enable a user
to easily transition from Viewing the project on a computer to Viewing it on a
mobile device. Everything is based around web technologies such as HTML,
CSS, and JavaScript, which allow you to build screens that are displayed in the
web browser and can easily respond to changing screen sizes. Perspective is a
different visualization system than Vision, utilizing different layouts that determine
where components are on the screen, and how they resize. Because Perspective
is launched in the web browser, you essentially build web pages that the user can
navigate to with a URL. These pages can then have many Views on them, and
each View is made up of a series of components.

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Perspective and Web Terms

There are some important terms to understand in working with Perspective. As we will
be using these terms throughout the remainder of this chapter, we want to define them
here.
View The basic thing we create in Perspective are Views. They are similar conceptually
to both Windows and Templates in Vision: we define our interface as a set of Views,
which in turn are made up of components and other, embedded Views.
Page A Page in Perspective is a View that has an assigned Page URL and can therefore
by viewed directly from a web browser.
Session When we launch Perspective in the browser, we are launching a Session.
Conceptually, Sessions are similar to the Client in Vision, and can be thought of in terms
of how the end user interacts with our Perspective application.
HTML HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and is used to define the structure
of a web page. Every web page you have ever visited has been composed in HTML.
While Perspective does ultimately translate components to HTML, you cannot edit HTML
directly in Perspective.
CSS Cascading Style Sheets is the standard for formatting on the web. All formatting,
positioning, sizing, and layout of components and Views in Perspective is done with
CSS. A considerable amount of what you do in Perspective requires working, both
directly and indirectly, with CSS.
JavaScipt A scripting language, conceptually similar to Python, that is widely used on
the web. Like HTML, Perspective relies heavily on JavaScript, but does not require that
you directly interact with it. Scripting in Perspective, while not covered in this course, is
still done in Python.
JSON JSON, which stands for JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight, plain-
text format for describing data. Almost all data in Perspective, including component
properties, is handled with JSON.

Creating a View
A View allows us to visualize components on the screen and display data. At a basic
level, a View in Perspective is similar to a Window in Vision.
However, the process of creating a View is different. Whereas in Vision we simply need
to decide if we are going to create a Main Window, a Popup Window, a Docked Window,

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or a Template, in Perspective we always simply create Views. But there are three very
important decisions we need to make when we first create the View.

Name
The name of the View is the same as the Name of a Window in Vision. You can give your
Views any name that makes sense.

Root Container Enter

Because Perspective relies on web technologies, layout is dramatically more complex
than it is in Vision. When creating a View, you need to decide which container type you
will use, which will dictate how you lay out the components in the View and how the
View will behave in the browser window.

Note: You cannot change the Root Container Enter after you create a View. Always
carefully consider the needs of the View before selecting a container type.

While there are a total of six container types available in Perspective, we are only going
to explore three of them in this course:
Coordinate Container This container allows you to place components in arbitrary
locations in the View and freely move and resize them. This container most closely
mimics the way layout is handled in Vision.
Breakpoint Container The Breakpoint Container allows you to embed Views at
specific screen widths, and have the browser automaticlaly switch between them. See
"Breakpoint Layout" on page 429.
Flex Container This container relies on an underlying web technology known as
Flexbox. It allows you to create Views that can work on the widest variety of screen
sizes, but is also the most complex. See ""Understanding the Flex Container" on page
404.

Page URL
To access a View in the browser, it must have a URL. Remember that in Perspective, we
are essentially creating a web site.
Every site needs a home page, which is a page that can be accessed by just typing the
URL of the web site. For example, you can access the home page of our web site by
visiting inductiveautomation.com.

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In Perspective, the URL of the home page will be set to a slash. Any other page needs to
have a URL unique to the site.
It is also possible to create a View that you intend to only embed within other Views,
and not be directly accessible in a browser. In that case, can you opt not to set a page
URL.
Unlike the Root Container Enter, you can change your mind later: you can add or
remove URLs on pages at any time.

Creating Our First View

Let’s begin exploring how Perspective works by creating a View that will be very similar
to the first Window we created in Vision.
1. Click Perspective in the Project Browser.
2. Click Create New View.
3. Enter Coordinate in the Name field.
4. Ensure Root Container Type is set to Coordinate Container.
5. Check Page URL.
6. Ensure the field contains only a /.
7. Click Create View.

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Now that we have the View created, we can start adding components.
You will see that the layout of the Perspective module is like what we customized the
Vision layout to look like: we have our Project Browser and Tag Browser on the left, and
the Property Editor and Components Panel on the right. By default, the Components
Panel collapses.
8. Mouse over Perspective Components to expand the panel.
9. Click in the Search box.
10. Enter tank.
11. Drag a Cylindrical Tank to the View.
12. Click the Search box.
13. Click .
14. Enter slider.
15. Drag a Slider to the View.
16. Click the Search box.
17. Click .
18. Enter label.
19. Drag a Label to the View.
20. Click File.
21. Click Save All.

Positioning and Sizing Components

When using the Coordinate Container, you can freely drag components to any spot on
the View. In this respect, the Coordinate Container works similarly to Vision Windows if
layout is set to Anchored by default.
There are, however, a few key differences.

Smart Guides
Unlike in Vision, Perspective includes a feature known as Smart Guides. As you drag
a component in the View, you will see red guides appear that help you to line up
components with each other and with the View as a whole. These will greatly speed up
your design, as aligning and spacing components is much easier.
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Anchors and Rotation
Every component that you add to a View in a Coordinate Container has a cross-hair in
its center. You may accidentally drag this instead of the component when trying to move
things, particularly on smaller components like Labels.
This cross-hair is the component's Anchor. It is the point around which an component
will rotate. All components can be freely rotated by clicking and dragging the handle
that rises out of the top of the component. While it may appear at first that objects rotate
around their center, in fact they are rotating around their anchor. Drag the anchor to
another spot—it doesn’t even need to be on the component itself–and then rotate the
component again.
Let’s set up our three components so that they are nicely aligned and spaced.
1. Drag the Cylindrical Tank to that its center is 100 pixels from the left edge of the
View and its top is 20 pixels from the top edge of the View.

2. Drag the Slider so that it is centered and 20 pixels below the Tank.

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3. Drag the right edge of the Label to the right to make it approximately twice as
wide as it started.
4. Drag the Label so that it is centered and 20 pixels below the Slider.

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Coordinate Layout Scaling
The coordinate container by default in a Fixed mode, which works similarly to Vision’s
anchored mode. Each component will have a set x and y location and widths and
heights that do not change, regardless of the size of the View.
In Percentage mode, the layout works similarly to Vision’s relative mode. The
components will be give x, y, width, and height that is a percenTage of its position on the
View, which allows it to grow and shrink with the View.
You can change this mode by clicking on the background of the View, or on the View in
the Project Browser, then change the property on the Property Editor.

Bindings in Perspective
Fundamentally, creating bindings between components in Perspective is the same as it
is in Vision. There are just a few minor interface differences.

Perspective Properties
The Perspective Property Editor more logically organized than the Property Editor in
Vision. Every component has its properties divided into several categories, just like in
Vision, but all components have the same set of categories, and within those categories,
properties are organized based on how frequently we think they’ll get used, so the
properties you need will generally be towards the top of the list.
Props The basic properties of the components. The vasy majority of the time, the
property you are looking for will be there.
Position The properties needed to position the component. In a Coordinate Container,
you will see properties such as width, height, x and y, and rotation. Other container
types will have other properties in this category.
Custom Just like in Vision, you can add custom properties to components.
Meta Other properties, such as the Name of the component, can be found here. We
will not explore these properties in this course, although they can be useful in more
advanced projects.

Adding Bindings
In Vision, every property has button to the right of its value. At first glance, this
button appears to be missing in Perspective, but it is there. You will see an apparently

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empty column running down the left side of the Property Editor. If you move your mouse
over this column for any property, the button will appear. Once a binding has been
added to a property, the icon will appear at all times.
Let’s go ahead and bind the Tank’s value to the Slider’s value, and also get the Label to
display the value with an expression, just like we did in Vision.
1. Click the Tank.
2. Click for the Tank’s value.

3. Click Property.
4. Click .
5. Expand root.
6. Expand slider.
7. Click value.
8. Click OK.

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9. Click OK.

Note: The Edit Binding dialog box in Perspective has a great additional feature:
Binding Preview. Always check this to make sure that the binding is working before
clicking OK.

10. Click the Label.

11. Click for the Label’s text property.
12. Click Expression.
13. Click .
14. Expand root.
15. Expand slider.
16. Click value.
17. Enter + “ gallons”
18. Ensure your expression looks like this:
{../Slider.props.value} + “ gallons”

19. Click OK.

20. Click .
21. Drag the slider.
Both the tank and the label will change accordingly.
22. Click File.
23. Click Save As.

Tag Bindings
Tag bindings work the same way that they do in Vision, and we can utilize a lot of the
drag and drop functionality that we are used to. Just as with Vision, you can drag and
drop a Tag directly onto a View, or you can add a component and drag and drop a Tag
on it, or you can add a component and manually create the binding. Unlike in Vision,
though, Perspective does not add additional bindings when you drag and drop a Tag
directly onto the View, so there is not appreciable difference between any of these
methods.

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Previewing in the Browser

Just as it is a good idea to test Vision Windows directly in the Client, you will want to test
your Perspective pages in a browser.
You can do this from Designer, just like you can in Vision.
1. Click Tools.
2. Click Launch Perspective...
3. Click Launch Session.
Whichever page you have designated with a Page URL of / will open.
Notice the web address we’re visiting:
localhost:8088/data/perspective/client/CoreClass
The first part of that is, of course, our Gateway address. After that, all Perspective
sessions will have /data/perspective/client. That will be followed by the name of your
project, and then the page URL. Modern browsers hide a slash at the end of a URL, but
it is there.

Perspective Views as Templates

Technically, Perspective does not have Templates in the same sense that Vision does.
Instead of creating something that is specifically a Template, in Perspective any View
can be embedded in another View. Thus, we get the functionality of Templates without
the limitations.
Often, you will not assign a Page URL to a View that you intend to use as a Template,
although assigning a Page URL does not limit the functionality of the View in any way.
You can use any Root Container Enter for Views that you plan to use as Templates. In
our example below, we will use a Flex Container.
We are going to create a View for our Motors that we can then embed in other Views.
1. Click Perspective in the Project Browser.
2. Click Create New View.
3. Enter MotorView in the Name field.
4. Select Flex Container in the Root Container Type list.

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Note: Remember that you cannot change the Root Container Enter after the fact. Be
certain you have the correct option selected here.

5. Leave Page URL unchecked.

6. Click Create View.

Understanding the Flex Container

The Flex Container is based on the CSS technology known as Flexbox. It was created
in response to the need to create responsive layouts­—web layouts that can work on
a variety of different screen sizes. Hence its name: it creates flexible layouts that can
rearrange and resize parts of a page to fit on larger or smaller displays.
Since its release in 2009, Flexbox has become a standard for page layout on the web.
Flex allows you to create one-dimensional layouts by laying out components in either
rows or columns. As such, you cannot directly drag components to specific positions
when using Flex; every component must be next to each other component, either
horizontally or vertically. The direction is determined by the Direction property, which
can be found at the top of the Property Editor.
Each Flex container has two axes: a main axis and a secondary axis. If the Direction is
set to row, the main axis is horizontal and the secondary vertical; if set to column, the

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axes are reversed. All components are laid out along the main axis, and aligned on the
secondary axis.
You also cannot directly resize components when using Flex. Instead, all component
sizing is handled via the following three properties, all of which are found in the Position
category of the Property Editor.
Grow This property allows a component to grow along the main axis, both in initial
sizing and if the container grows in response to being displayed in a larger window.
The value of Grow is a unitless, positive integer. If set to 0, the component will not
grow. If set to any other number, the container will attempt to distribute the size of the
container as a ratio of each component’s Grow value. In other words, if there are three
components in a container, and each has a Grow of 1, they should all equally sized. If
one has a Grow of 1 and the other two are each 2, then the first will be given 1/3 of the
space of the container, and the other two half of the remaining space.
Shrink Shrink works the same as Grow, but in the opposite direction: if the container
gets smaller, the space for the components will be redistributed based on this value.
Basis The starting size of the component, before remaining space is distributed. This
can be set as a specific length, using any valid CSS unit of measurement (most often,
pixels or percents.) If set to 0, extra space around the component will not be factored
into its size; if set to auto, it will be.

Note: All components default to a Grow of 0, Shrink of 1, and Basis to an arbitrary size
determined by the developers.

Add Components
Now that we have our View with the proper root container, let’s add components to it.
1. Click Perspective Components.
2. Enter label in the Search box.
3. Drag a Label into the View.
Because this is a Flex Container, it does not matter where you drop the Label­­­—it will
automatically snap to the top of the container and stretch across its width.
4. Click Perspective Components.
5. Click to clear the previous search.
6. Enter multi in the Search box.

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7. Drag a Multi-State Button into the View.

8. Click File.
9. Click Save All.

Nested Containers
As stated above, the Flex Container allows for one-dimensional layout: everything must
either be in a single row or a single column. But of course, there are plenty of times
when you want more complex layouts. In our case, having the first two components
stack vertically is fine, but below the Multi-State Button, we want a Label next to an LED.
To do this, we need to nest a container.
All the Perspective Root Container types also exist as components that can be nested
within our layouts. Any container type can be nested within any other container type,
but some care should be given to consider how they might interact. For example, the
Flex container is designed to allow its components to grow and shrink as the size of
the outer container changes. The Coordinate container, on the other hand, when set
to Fixed mode, is designed to be a static layout that will not change as the screen size
changes. Therefore, nesting a Flex container inside a Coordinate container allows you
to use the flexible layout properties of Flex, but you lose the flexible scaling.
1. Click Perspective Components.
2. Enter flex in the Search box.
3. Drag Row to the View.

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Note: You will notice that there appear to be three Flex components: Flex, Row,
and Column. These are all the same. Row and Column are just copies of the Flex
component with the Direction property preset to the stated value. Many components
in Perspective show multiple copies like this, but it never matters if you drag the
preset to the View, or drag a different variant and then change the property.

Deep Selection
Once you begin nesting containers, you will run into a problem: we need to explicitly tell
Perspective which container we want to set properties on and add new components to.
The Project Browser displays a crosshair icon­— —next to a container as a visual
indicator as to which container is currently deeply selected. The container’s properties
are reflected at the top of the Perspective Property Editor, and new components will be
added to that container.
You can deeply select a new container by right-clicking it and clicking Deep Select. You
can also double-click the container in the View or click it while press the Shift and Alt
keys on your keyboard.
Once a container is deeply selected, the outer container and its contents will grey out,
providing an additional visual clue that you have the correct container selected.
1. Double-click the new Flex Container to deep select it.
2. Click Perspective Components.
3. Enter label in the Search box.
4. Drag a Label to the nested container.

5. Click Perspective Components.

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6. Enter led in the Search Box.
7. Drag an LED Display to the nested container.

8. Double-click outside of the nested container. Ensure that root has on the
Project Browser.
9. Click Perspective Components.
10. Enter coordinate in the search box.
11. Drag a Coordinate container to the View.

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12. Double-click the Coordinate container to Deep Select it.
13. Click Tools.
14. Click Symbol Factory.
15. Click Motors.
16. Drag Simple Motor 4 into the Coordinate container.

17. Close the Symbol Factory.

18. Click File.
19. Click Save All.

Perspective View Parameters

When we created this View, the intent was to embed it in other Views; in essence,
treat it as a Template. In Vision, we were able to assign parameters to be passed into
Templates to control what they display. In Perspective, we can do the same.

Note: Perspective parameters are set on the View itself, not its root container.

1. Click MotorView on the Project Browser.

2. Click Add View Parameter on the Perspective Property Editor.

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Custom Property Types
At first glance, adding parameters to Perspective seems more complex than Vision.
Rather than simply typing the name of the parameter and setting its datatype, we have
three seemingly odd choices when adding a parameter in Perspective. These choices
are because the underlying data for all properties in Perspective is not Java as it is in
Vision, but rather, JSON.
Value A simple value, such as we have been using for parameters throughout the
course. You will need to provide a key—the name of the parameter—and a default value.
Object A complex data type that can contain multiple keys and values. Using objects as
parameters is beyond the scope of this course.
Array Another complex type, where values are referenced by position rather than
name. Conceptually similar to lists in Python, but like Objects, using Arrays as
parameters are beyond the scope of this class.
1. Click Value.

2. Enter motorNum in the key field.

3. Press Tab.
4. Enter 1 in the value field.

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Perspective Expressions
Expressions in Perspective as essentially the same as they are in Vision. There is a slight
difference in how the path to the View Parameter looks, but as we will be selecting that
from a dialog box rather than typing it, that difference does not really matter too much.
1. Click the Label at the top of the View.
2. Click for the Label’s text property.
3. Click Expression.
4. Enter "Motor " +
5. Click .
6. Expand View.
7. Expand params.
8. Click motorNum.
9. Click OK.
10. Ensure your expression looks like this:
"Motor " + {View.params.motorNum}

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Previewing Bindings
One very helpful feature of the Perspective Edit Binding dialog box is the Binding
Preview at the bottom, which lets you confirm that your binding is correct before you
close the dialog box. Be sure to get in the habit of checking this when working in
Perspective, as it will save you a lot of time.
1. Confirm that the Binding Preview shows Motor 1.
2. Click OK.

Perspective Indirect Tag Bindings

Just as in Vision Template, Perspective Views can use indirect Tag bindings to bind
based on parameters. See "Indirect Tag Bindings" on page 169 for a reView of indirect
bindings.
There is a slight interface difference between Perspective and Vision when creating
indirect bindings, and the way that the path to the parameter is specified is different as
well, but the concept behind what we are trying to achieve is the same.
1. Click the Multi-State Button.
2. Click for controlValue.
3. Click Tag.
4. Click Indirect.
5. Click .
6. Expand Tags.
7. Expand Motors.
8. Expand Motor 1.
9. Click HOA.
10. Click OK.

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11. Click in the Tag path.

12. Delete 1.
13. Click .
14. Expand View.
15. Expand params.
16. Click motorNum.
17. Click OK.
18. Check Bidirectional.

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19. Confirm the Binding PreView shows a value of 0, 1, or 2.
20. Click OK.
21. Right-click controlValue.
22. Click Copy Binding.

Note: Be sure to click Copy Binding, not Copy. Because properties in Perspective are
stored in JSON files, any property can be copied and pasted. In this case, we need to
ensure that we only copy the binding, not the entire controlValue property.

23. Right-click indicatorValue.

24. Click Paste Binding.
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25. Double-click the nested Flex container with the Label and LED.
26. Click the Label.
27. Click in the text property value to edit the text.
28. Enter Amps.
29. Click the LED display.
30. Click for the value property.
31. Click Tag.
32. Click Indirect.
33. Click .
34. Expand Tags.
35. Expand Motors.
36. Expand Motor 1.
37. Click Amps.
38. Click OK.
39. Click in the Tag path.
40. Delete 1.
41. Click .
42. Expand View.
43. Expand params.
44. Click motorNum.
45. Click OK.
Confirm the Binding PreView shows a proper value. It should be a large decimal number
that is updating every second.
46. Click OK.

Adjusting Layout Properties

Now that we have all our components in place and the bindings set up, we want to
adjust the properties of the Components and nested Containers so that the layout looks
good.
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Remember that the three properties we need to adjust are Grow, Shrink, and Basis.
ReView the definitions above if you need to.
In our case, we are going to set both Grow and Shrink to the same value, so that their
proportions continue to work properly whether we expand or shrink the window. We will
also adjust Basis as needed.
1. Click MotorView in the Project Browser.
2. Enter 400 in the width property.
3. Enter 500 in the height property.
4. Click the Label showing the motor name.
5. Enter 0 in the shrink property.
6. Enter 50px in the basis property.

Note: Be sure to type px for the units. There are no default units in Perspective, so we
need to ensure that we enter them when necessary.

7. Click the Multi-State Button.

8. Enter 1 in the grow property.
9. Enter 75px in the basis property.
10. Click the nested Flex Container.
11. Enter 0 in the shrink property.
12. Enter 50px in the basis property.
13. Double-click the nested Flex Container.
14. Click the Label.

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15. Enter 1 in the grow property.
16. Click the LED Display.
17. Enter 1 in the grow property.
18. Click outside the nested Flex Container.
19. Click the nested Coordinate Container.
20. Enter 1 in the grow property.
21. Double-click the nested Coordinate Container.
22. If necessary, drag and resize the motor to visually center it within the Coordinate
Container.

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Color Overlay
The final step in setting up this Template is to add the color overlay on the motor image,
just as we did in Vision. When we added the motor, we placed it in a Coordinator
container. While we could have added the Symbol Factory image directly to the View,
doing so would not have allowed us to place a copy of the image on top of the original,
a necessary step in setting up the color overlay. Only a Coordinate container allows us
to place components on top of other components like this.
1. Right-click the motor image.
2. Click Flatten.

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This creates a copy of the image that is solid, but semi-transparent, grey. You’ll see in
the Project Browser that there are now two Simple motor components.
3. Click Simple motor 5 in the Project Browser.
4. Expand elements in the Perspective Property Editor.

We’ve mentioned previously that Perspective properties are stored using JSON. Any
time a property has nested sub-properties, they are represented as an array, which
is the equivalent of a list in Python, or as an object, which is like a list but has named
values, rather than values represented by index numbers. You will see examples of both
in the following steps.
5. Expand 0.
6. Expand fill.
7. Click for the paint property.

8. Click Tag.
9. Click Indirect.

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10. Click .
11. Expand Motors.
12. Expand Motor 1.
13. Click HOA.
14. Click OK.
15. Delete the 1 in the Tag Path.
16. Click .
17. Expand View.
18. Expand params.
19. Click motorNum.
20. Click OK.

21. Click Add Transform +.

22. Click Map.
23. Click Add Transform >.

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24. If necessary, make the dialog box taller.

25. Click three times.
26. Select Color from the Output Type list.

27. Double-click in the Input column in the top row.

28. Enter 2.

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29. Click the paint bucket in the top cell of the Output column.
30. Click a yellow color.
31. Set Alpha (transparency) to 40.

32. Double-click in the Input column in the second row.

33. Enter 1.
34. Click the paint bucket in the second cell of the Output column.
35. Click a green color.
36. Set Alpha (transparency) to 40.
37. Double-click in the Input column in the third row.
38. Enter 0.
39. Click the paint bucket in the third cell of the Output column.
40. Click a red color.
41. Set Alpha (transparency) to 40.
42. Click OK.

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Resizing the Coordinate Container

If we resize the MotorView, we will see that the components inside Flex containers
resize based on the properties we set. The motor image, however, is in a Coordinate
container with a fixed size, so it does not resize. We can fix that, however, by changing
the mode property of the Coordinate container.
1. Click the nested Coordinate container.
2. Select percent from the mode list.
3. Click MotorView.
4. Resize the View.

Embedding Views
Now that we have a reusable View, we can add it to any other Views in the project. To
add it to a larger View, we need to embed it. Perspective provides a variety of ways to
embed Views, but we will examine only two: the Embedded View component, and the
Carousel component.

Embedded View Component

The Embedded View component most closely resembles the way to added Templates
to Windows in Vision. The Embedded View component allows you to select a
single other View and display it. Of course, you can have multiple Embedded View
components on a View to display multiple other Views, or the same View multiple times.
1. Open the Coordinate View.

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2. Click Perspective Components.
3. Enter embed in the Search box.
4. Drag an Embedded View to the View.

5. Select MotorView from the View Path property list.

6. Click OK.

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Adding a Parameter
In order to get the Embedded View to display the motor that we want, we need to add a
parameter to the component.
7. Click Add Object Member under the params property.
8. Select parameters.
9. Select motorNum.

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Duplicate the View

Now that we have the Embedded View set up to display Motor 1, we can duplicate the
component to display another motor.
10. Press Ctrl on your keyboard.
11. Drag the Embedded View component.
12. Enter a different value in the motorNum property.

Carousel Component
Another way to display multiple Views on other Views is to use the Carousel
component. You have probably seen carousels on web sites before. In fact,
inductiveautomation.com has one on our home page. (Our website is not built in
Perspective, but because Perspective is just building web pages, we can see similarities
between what we do on our site and what can be done in Perspective.) Carousels allow
web sites to “stack” multiple pieces of content in one place, and then have the content
scroll in and out … as if it were going around a carousel. The Perspective component
does the same: it allows us to stack multiple copies of a View (or a component), or even
multiple different Views, on top of each other, and then scroll through them, one at a
time.
While a Carousel could be used on any View, we are going to create a new View that
will only contain the Carousel.
1. Click Perspective in the Project Browser.
2. Click Create New View.
3. Enter Carousel in the name field.
4. Select Flex Container from the Root Container Type list.
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5. Leave Page URL unchecked.
6. Click Create View.

7. Click Perspective Components.

8. Enter carousel in the Search box.
9. Drag a Carousel to the View.
10. Enter 1 for the grow property.
Like the Embedded View, the Carousel has a ViewPath property to set the View to
be displayed. However, the Carousel’s ViewPath is part of an array, as the component
assumes we will have more than one View being displayed in it.
11. Expand Views.
12. Expand 0.
13. Select MotorView from the ViewPath list.
14. Click OK.

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15. Expand viewParams.

16. Click Add Object Member.
17. Select Parameters.
18. Select motorNum.
19. Enter a value.
We can add additional Views to the Carousel by adding elements to the View array.
20. Mouse over views.
21. Click .

A new element is added to the array, so now we can configure its parameters.
1. Expand 1.
2. Select MotorView from the viewPath list.
3. Expand viewParams.
4. Click Add Object Member.
5. Select Parameters.
6. Select motorNum.
7. Enter a value.

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That works, but it is a hassle to have to set the View and add the parameters each time.
Let’s try a different approach. Instead of adding a new member to the array, we can
duplicate one we already have.
8. Right-click 1.
9. Click Duplicate.

You will see that we now have a new element in the array, 2. It already have the
ViewPath assigned and the motorNum parameter added, so we can simply change its
value to another motor.
You can in theory add as many elements to the Carousel as you want, but we are going
to stop at 3.

Breakpoint Layout
The biggest challenge modern web designers face is the need to create sites that will
display properly on any size screen, from tiny mobile devices to huge billboards, and
everything in between. We have already discussed the idea of responsive design and
have seen how Flex containers can help.
Responsive design is based around a concept known as “breakpoints:” designers
create layouts to fit one screen, and then as that screen gets bigger or smaller, there
will be points where the layout breaks. At that point, there are several techniques to
fix the layout to fit the new screen, and in Perspective, we have a container specifically
designed for this purpose: the aptly named Breakpoint container.
The Breakpoint container allows you to embed two other Views: one for large screens,
and a second for small screens. We have created two Views for this purpose: we will
use the Coordinate View for the large breakpoint, and the Carousel for the small.
1. Click Perspective in the Project Browser.
2. Click Create New View.
3. Enter Breakpoint in the name field.

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4. Select Breakpoint Container from the Root Container Enter list.
5. Click Page URL. We'll accept the default URL.
6. Click Create View.

Look at the top of the Perspective Property Editor. The Breakpoint container has three
key properties: the breakpoint, and large and small children. The Breakpoint is where
you determine the size at which the container will switch between the large and small
Views. For our purposes, we are going to leave the Breakpoint at its default 640px, but
for most layouts, this will be too small and will need to be changed.
Before you embed a View, you need to be sure that you have the correct Child selected.
This is the only visual indicator as to which Child you are embedding the View into, so
it’s important to pay close attention to your selection.
Each Child View can only contain a single component, so most often, you will place an
embedded View
1. Click Large.

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2. Click Perspective Components.

3. Enter embed in the Search box.
4. Drag an Embedded View component to the View.
5. Select Coordinate from the path list.
6. Click OK.

7. Click Small.

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8. Click Perspective Components.
9. Enter embed in the Search box.
10. Drag an Embedded View component to the View.
11. Select Carousel from the Path list.
12. Click OK.
13. Click File.
14. Click Save All.

Preview a Specific View

You can preview a specific View in the browser without needing to create navigation.
1. Click Perspective in the Project Browser.
2. Right-click Breaktpoint.
3. Click Launch URL.

4. Change the size of your browser to see your breakpoint change

Styles
As noted above, all formatting on the web is done using Cascading Style Sheets, or
CSS. Because Perspective is ultimately creating web sites, formatting in Perspective is
also done with CSS.

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CSS is designed around the idea of separating content from presentation. In
Perspective, the content is our components. We need to create styles to define our
formatting, and then we can apply those styles to components. Style definitions in
Perspective are called classes.
Each class can be applied to any number of components. This dramatically increases
the maintainability of your project, as you can redefine a class at any point and every
component that class is applied to will automatically update.
You should name classes based on how they will be used rather than how they look. So,
motorLabel is a better name than redBoldLabel.

Creating a Class
We create classes from the Styles object in the Project Browser.
1. Right-click Styles on the Project Browser.
2. Click New Style.
3. Enter motorLabel.
4. Click Create Style Class.

There are many properties available in CSS, and only a small subset of them are
available in the Edit Style dialog box. For our purposes, we are only going to focus on a
few properties, mostly relating to text formatting.
5. Click Text.
6. Select a font from the Font Family list.
7. Enter 18px in the Size field.

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Note: There is not default unit of measurement in CSS, so you must always specify the
units you are using. Pixels (px) and percents (%) are the most common and easiest to
understand units. There are many resources available online to describe CSS’s other
units.

8. Select bold from the Weight list.

9. Click OK.

Applying a Class
Now that we have a style class defined, we can apply to it components in our Views.
10. Double-click MotorView.
11. Double-click the nested Flex container.
12. Click the Label.

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13. Select motorLabel from the classes list.

The label will update to display with the properties from the style.

Creating Another Class

Let’s create a second class, to style the header in our MotorView.
1. Right-click Styles on the Project Browser.
2. Click New Style.
3. Enter motorHeader.
4. Click Create Style Class.
5. Click Text.
6. Select a font from the Font Family list.
7. Enter 36px in the Size field.
8. Select bold from the Weight list.
9. Click OK.
10. Double-click MotorView.
11. Click the Label at the top of the View.
12. Select motorHeader from the classes list.

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Edit a Class
We can return to a class to edit it at any time.
We want to edit the class for our header to change its appearance when the user moves
their mouse over the header.
13. Double-click motorHeader.
14. Click Text.

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15. Click the white box in the Color field.
16. Click a dark blue color.

To get a mouseover effect, we need to add an element state to the class. This will define
a set of style properties that we can have the browser automatically apply when a state
is met.
17. Click .
18. Select Element State.

19. Select hover from the Element State list.

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20. Click Text.

21. Click the white box in the Color field.
22. Click a bright color.

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23. Click Background. You may need to scroll down.
24. Click the white box in the Background color field.
25. Click a dark blue color.

26. Click OK.

27. Return to the MotorView.
28. Move your mouse over the header.

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Element states apply automatically and can be preViewed even in Design mode.

Best Practice: Always Use Classes

It is possible to style components directly by applying CSS properties via the menu
next to Styles on the Perspective Property Editor. However, this practice is not
recommended. The real power of CSS is its separation of formatting from content.
By applying your formatting exclusively through classes, you can update the visual
look and feel of your project by merely editing the classes. If you apply styles directly,
however, you will have to open each individual View, find each component, and
change its styles. In addition, if you apply styles directly to components and then
apply a class to the same component, the locally-applied styles will override the class
wherever they conflict (this is the “cascading” part of CSS’s name.)

Perspective Security
With Perspective running in the web browser, security is handled differently than it is
in Vision Clients. Identity Providers are used to authenticate users in a Perspective
Session. An Identity Provider (IdP) is a system that maintains user information and can
authenticate users across multiple applications. There are two main systems that IdPs
use: OpenID and SAML. Each IdP uses one of those systems and Ignition can connect to
either type.
While Ignition can be connected to third party IdPs, Ignition’s User Sources can also be
used as an IdP. If you go into the Identity Providers page in the Gateway Webpage, you
will notice that an IdP already exists called default. This IdP is linked to the User Source
called default and will authenticate all the users in that User Source.

Security Levels
Security Levels are a new security system that works with the user information provided
by the IdP to grant users certain permissions that can then later be applied to a
Perspective project. One advanTage of Security Levels is that they are not solely roles-
based and can instead utilize other information to determine what permissions a user
should have.
We will begin to explore Perspective Security by creating our own Security Levels to
match the roles we have in our user source.
1. Open the Gateway webpage.

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2. Log in.
3. Click Config.
4. Click Security Levels under the Security heading.

5. Click Roles.
6. Click + Add Security Level.

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7. Enter Administrator in the Name field.

8. Click Roles.
9. Click + Add Security Level.
10. Enter Operator in the Name field.
11. Click Roles.
12. Click + Add Security Level.
13. Enter Manager in the Name field.
14. Click Save.

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Security in the Perspective Project

Now that we have Security Levels set up, we can use them within the project.
15. Return to Designer.
16. Click Project.
17. Click Project Properties.

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18. Click Permissions in the Perspective section.
19. Review the security options.
20. Click OK.

You will see that by default, security on the project is set to Public, meaning anyone
with the URL to the project can access it. We already saw this when we preViewed the
project earlier and did not have to log in.
We have several options to secure our project.
Authenticated will require a log in, but anyone with an account in our IdP will be able to
log in, including our Guest role.
But if you expand Authenticated, you will see an option for Roles. Checking this will also
require a log in but will restrict access to those accounts that are in Roles. In our project,
this would have the affect of locking out our Guest user.
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We can also expand Roles and select one or more roles, which would limit access to
only users in those roles. However, it is important to note the option at the bottom of
the screen: by default, if you select multiple roles, only users in all those roles will have
access. To enable access for users in, for example, either the Administrator or the
Manager role, you would need to select those roles and be sure to select the second
option at the bottom.

Securing a View
Each View can also be secured using Security Levels. Simply right-click on an open
View and select Configure View Permissions. Here you can configure permissions for a
View much like you would for the whole project.

Perspective Navigation
In Vision, you cannot access a Window in the Client unless you specifically create
some way to navigate to it. In Perspective, however, you can navigate to any page (in
other words, any View with a Page URL) by simply typing the appropriate URL into the
browser’s address bar.
That said, it is obviously preferable to provide some kind of navigation in your projects.

Create a Header View

We will want to add our navigation in a way that will ensure that it is visible on all pages
in our project, including pages that we create later. To do this, we will want to add a new
View that we can then dock to the top of every page, in much the same way that we had
a Navigation Window docked in our Vision Client.
1. Click Perspective in the Project Browser.
2. Click Create New View.
3. Enter Header in the Name field.
4. Select Flex Container from the Root Container Enter list.
5. Leave Page URL unchecked.
6. Click Create View.

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7. Resize the View to be approximately 200 pixels tall.

8. Click Perspective Components.
9. Enter label in the Search box.
10. Drag a Label to the View.
11. Enter Acme Co. in the text property.
12. Click Center in the Items section of the Perspective Property Editor.

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Add a Horizontal Menu
1. Click Perspective Components.
2. Enter Menu in the Search box.
3. Drag a Horizontal Menu to the View.

The Horizontal Menu component is a navigation system for Perspective that comes
preset with examples of the things you might want on a menu. The first item contains a
nested menu with a link to an external site. The second is a link to an external site with
an icon. The third shows that items can be disabled, and then final item is a normal link
to a page inside our project. All of these are set by properties in the items array, so we
can alter this menu to serve our needs by changing those items.

Edit the Menu

First, we want to remove the nested menu and have the first item simply point to our
home page.
1. Expand 0 under the items array.
2. Enter / in the target field.
The target property sets the URL that the user will be taken to when clicking this link.
Unfortunately, all URLs, including those within our project, must be manually typed in
this field.
This menu has a nested item because its items property has an array element in it. We
need to delete that to remove the nested item.
3. Expand items.
4. Right-click 0.
5. Click Delete.

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6. Enter Home in the label field.

Now, we can modify the second item to remove the icon and provide a link to another
page within our project.
7. Expand 1.
8. Enter /breakpoint in the target field.
9. Expand icon.
10. Delete the text in the path field.
11. Enter Breakpoint in the label field.

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Right now, those are the only two pages we have in our project, so we’ll delete the other
two items in the menu.
12. Right-click 2.
13. Click Delete.

14. Right-click 3.
15. Click Delete.
If you decide later you need more pages in your menu, you can simply add new items
by clicking the + next to items, or you could duplicate an existing item in the array.

Style the Header Text

Next, we will create a style to format the heading text.
1. Right-click Styles in the Project Browser.
2. Click New Style…
3. Enter header in the Name field.
4. Click Create Style Class.
5. Click Text.
6. Select a font from the Font family list.
7. Enter 300% in the Size field.
We also want to force some space around this text, which we can do by adding a margin
to the header.
8. Click Margin and Padding.
9. Enter 50px in the top margin field.
10. Enter 50px in the bottom margin field.

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11. Click OK.

12. Click the Label.
13. Select header from the classes list.
14. Click File.
15. Click Save All.

Dock a View in Shared Settings

The final step is to make our header appear at the top of every page. We can do this by
docking it in the Perspective Page Settings.
1. Click Perspective in the Project Browser.
2. Click Shared Settings.
3. Click Add in the top section.
4. Click Header.
5. Click OK.

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6. Click File.
7. Click Save All.
8. Right-click /.
9. Click Launch URL.
The page will open in the browser, with the header docked at the top. You can click
items in the navigation to move between pages.

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 Chapter 20

Reporting

The Reporting module creates rich, dynamic PDF reports from any data. The
Ignition Reporting Module is a standalone reporting solution that simplifies and
enhances the reporting process from beginning to end. You can generate reports
from existing files or create them from scratch. Pull data from a variety of sources,
and design reports with a simple to use interface. Add charts, graphs, tables,
crosstabs, shapes, and other components for visual impact. Save your reports
in PDF, HTML, CSV, and RTF file formats, and set up automatic scheduling and
delivery.

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Creating a Basic PDF Report

The Reports Module lets you create dynamic PDF reports. Earlier in the class, we
created a Transaction Group to store data from a certain set of Tags in the database.
Now, we can use that data to create a report.

Verify the Data

Before we try to create the report, we want to verify that the Transaction Group is
running and properly storing data.
1. Click Transaction Group in the Project Browser.
2. Click History.
Ensure that the Transaction Group is running. If it isn’t, click Enabled, then save the
project.
If the Transaction Group is running but not storing data (make sure that the Total
executions and DB writes fields are updating), check the trigger. If necessary, change
the value of the TempF Tag in the Tag Browser so that the Transaction Group starts
executing.

Create a Report
Now that we know we will have data, we need to switch to the Report module, and
create a new report.
1. Click Reports in the Project Browser.
2. Enter Basic Report in the Name of the report field.
3. Ensure that Blank Report is selected.
4. Click Create.

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Report Module Tabs

You will see five tabs at the top of the Report module.
Report Overview This tab is a collection of useful information about your report. It will
be filled in as the report is generated and used.
Data This tab is where you define the data that goes into your report. You define the
report’s parameters here, as well as create the data sources that will be used for the
report.
Design The primary workspace when creating a report. You will add components
such as tables and charts here, as well as static text elements like headers and page
numbers.
Preview Throughout the design process, you can switch to Preview to make sure the
data is displaying correctly.
Schedule Set up schedules so your report can automatically be printed, saved, or
emailed.

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Adding Data to Your Report

Data for the report comes from two main sources: parameters you can pass in, and
queries.

Report Parameters
Reports default to having two parameters, representing a date range for the report. You
can see these in the top left corner of the Data tab.
The StartDate parameter uses an expression based on the dateArithmetic function. It
takes the current timestamp—now()—and subtracts 8 hours from that.

Note: The expression functions do not contain methods to directly subtract values.
Instead, all of the add functions allow you to add negative numbers for subtraction.

EndDate simply relies on now(). So, if used together, a default report will get the last 8
hours of data. But, remember that these are parameters, and whatever method you use
to call the report can pass different values in for each. We will examine some of those
possibilities as we move forward.
It is also possible to add additional parameters to your report if needed.

Report Data Sources

There are 8 main sources for the data in a report.
Named Query Named queries provide ways that you can save SQL statements into the
project for reuse. They are beyond the scope of this course.
SQL Query This allows you to directly write SQL to query the database. We will use a
SQL Query in this example.
Basic SQL Query The Basic SQL Query also allows you to directly write SQL to query
the database. This is an older method for writing queries that is maintained for legacy
use.
Tag Historian Query As was stated in Chapter 11, the Tag Historian is not designed to
be queried directly. Instead, we can use the Tag Historian Query type to retrieve that
data.
Tag Calculation Query This query also relies on the Tag Historian, but allows you
to perform calculations such as sum, average, and the like. Using this data source is
beyond the scope of this class.

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Alarm Journal Query While the tables created for the Alarm Journal can be queried
directly, this provides a simpler interface for working with that data. Using this data
source is beyond the scope of this class.
Script It’s possible to write a Python script to retrieve data. This can be used if you need
to get data from multiple sources or pre-process the data, but using this data source is
beyond the scope of this class.
Static CSV Rather than retrieving data from a database, you can import a static CSV file,
such as a file created in Excel, and use it for reports. Using this data source is beyond
the scope of this class.

Create a Query
For our report, we want to use the SQL Query.
1. Click Data.
2. Click .
3. Click SQL Query.

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A certain level of knowledge of SQL is necessary to really create reports, but we
can create a simple report with data from a single table—the one being used by our
Transaction Group—with relative ease thanks to the SQL Query Builder tool, which
allows us to create most of the query in an interactive visual interface. We also want to
name our Data Key, which will become the name of the query for the rest of the report.
4. Enter history in the Data Key field.
5. Click Show Builder.

The Query Builder lists all the tables in our database. We can drag tables into the blank
space in the query builder, and then interactively add the fields we want for our query
and change settings on those fields. We do not need any of those settings for our query,
so we won’t worry about that section of the query builder.
1. Drag history from the table list into the blank area of the Query Builder.
2. Check the box next to Realistic0.

Note: Make sure you check the box, and don’t just click on the field name.

3. Check the boxes for Realistic1, Realistic2, Realistic3, Realistic4, and t_stamp.
4. Click Apply.

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While the Query Builder is useful for adding fields to a query (and is particularly useful
for longer, more complex queries that need multiple tables), it unfortunately does not
allow you to filter the table results based on the report’s parameters, so we will need to
write a bit of SQL ourselves.
If you have never written SQL before, don’t worry. It’s a much easier language to deal
with than Python.
Two important things to note about SQL for our purposes: first, the language is case-
insensitive, so while we will be putting SQL keywords in all caps, that isn’t strictly
necessary. And second, SQL is whitespace insensitive. Again, we’ll be spacing out the
query for readability, but it will work without the extra lines.
1. Click at the end of the query.
2. Press Enter.

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3. Enter WHERE t_stamp BETWEEN ? AND ?
The WHERE clause in SQL adds a filter to the query. Because dealing with dates can
be challenging, the language includes a BETWEEN/AND clause that returns data from
the given field between the two given dates. The question marks are not part of SQL.
Instead, they are for Ignition: the SQL Query type uses question marks to represent
parameters to be passed into the query. Once you type these, you will see first one, and
then two additional boxes appear at the bottom of the screen, where we can enter in the
parameters we want the question marks to represent.
4. Click in the Parameter 1 box.
5. Click StartDate.

6. Click in the Parameter 2 box.

7. Click EndDate.
Finally, we want to limit the data being returned. If your Transaction Group has been
running since Tuesday, you likely have many thousands of records by now. While there
might be times when it makes sense to generate a report with a lot of data, we generally
want to try to limit that, as generating an overly large PDF can cause your computer to
hang.
The code we will be adding here is specific to Microsoft SQL Server. While much of SQL
is standard, each database engine employs slight variations in the language, and this is
one such example. If you are using a database other than SQL Server, you will want to
search on line for the proper code to limit results.
8. Enter TOP 1000 after SELECT on the first row of the query.
9. Ensure your final query looks like this:

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SELECT TOP 1000 history.Realistic0,

history.Realistic1,

history.Realistic2,

history.Realistic4,

history.Realistic3,

history.t_stamp

FROM history

WHERE t_stamp BETWEEN ? AND ?

Note: The order in which the fields are listed after SELECT is unimportant.

10. Click File.

11. Click Save All.

Test the Query

Now that we have written our query, let’s test to make sure it is working correctly.
1. Click the Preview tab.

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You will get a blank page but should see the sidebar populating with data. You will
notice an error across the bottom if there is a problem.
Note that the Preview limits the results to 100 records, regardless of how much data
is being returned by the query. When we run the final report, we will get the full 1000
records.

Designing the Report

Now that we have our data source set up and tested, it’s time to design the report.
1. Click Design.
2. Click Text.
3. Click-and-drag in the page to create a text shape.

Note: The text tool in reports is a drawing tool, similar to what we saw in Vision’s
drawing tools (see “Explore the Vision Drawing Tools” on page 112), rather than a
component. So, you need to click the tool, then click-and-drag in the design space,
rather than dragging the tool to the design space.

4. Enter Basic Report.

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Customize the Design Interface
As with other modules, Reports default to having the Property Editor in the bottom left
corner of the screen, and just like before, we can modify the layout of the panels to
make things a bit more useful.
1. Press and hold your mouse down on the title bar of the Property Inspector.
2. Click and drag across the screen to dock the Property Inspector on the right side.

Note: One difference in Reports from other modules is that the Components is not a
movable panel, so you must dock the Property Inspector to its right.

Format Text
Now that our Property Inspector is in a more usable location, we can use it to format the
title.
3. Click the text box on the page.
4. Click on the Property Inspector.
5. Click 48 in the Size box.
6. Click Bold in the Style box.

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7. Click OK.

8. Click in a blank area of the page.

9. Click the text box.
10. Drag the text box to the top left corner of the margins.
11. Resize the text box to stretch across the page and to be just large enough to fit
the text.

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Add Dynamic Text
In addition to static text, our reports can have dynamic text to display things like the date
range represented on the report and the page number. Both of these, and many other
parameters, are accessible in the Key Browser panel.
When combining dynamic text with static text or other dynamic text, Reports use a
special syntax called a Keychain Expression. This represents dynamic references with
the @ symbol, and can be typed directly into text shapes or the Edit Text area of the
Property Inspector.
12. Click Text.
13. Click and drag to draw a text box on the page.
14. Expand Parameters.
15. Drag StartDate to the text box.

16. Click in the text box.

17. Enter a space after @StartDate@.
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18. Enter to.
19. Enter another space.
20. Drag EndDate to the text box.
21. Ensure your text field looks like this:
@StartDate@ to @EndDate@

22. Click Properties.

23. Click the calendar icon on the Date Format property.
24. Click a date format that displays both the date and the time.
25. Click OK.

26. Click a blank area of the report.

27. Click on the text box.
28. Drag and resize the text box to stretch the width of the page and rest below the
header.

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29. Expand Built In in the Key Browser.
30. Drag Page of PageMax to the bottom right corner of the page, just below the
margin.

31. Click Properties.

32. Select Right from the Horizontal Alignment list.
33. Click Preview.
34. Click File.
35. Click Save All.

Add a Chart
We will represent the data being returned by the query in two ways. First, we will chart
the two of the Realistic Tags. Then, we will add a table.
1. Click Design.
2. Drag Timeseries Chart to the Window.
3. Size and position the chart to fill the top half of the page.

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The Timeseries Chart has two pens on it representing sample data. It is best to delete
these pens before adding out own.
4. Click Test1 on the Pens table.
5. Click .
6. Click Test2 on the Pens table.
7. Click .
The order in which you add data to the Timeseries Chart is very important. You must add
the Data key to the chart first, before you add pens. Adding the data key associates a
particular data set with the chart, which it can then use to draw the pens. If you add the
pens first, they will not properly associate with the data key, and will not draw on the
chart. Once you have the data key set, you can drag fields from the Key Browser to the
Pens table.
8. Expand Data Sources in the Key Browser.
9. Drag History to the Data key field in the Chart Options.

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10. Expand history in the Key Browser.

11. Drag Realistic0 to the Pens table.
12. Drag Realistic1 to the Pens table.
13. Click Preview.

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Add a Table
Now that we have some of our data represented in a chart, we want to add all the data
to a table.
Tables in a report will automatically repeat across as many pages as needed to display
all the rows. In our case, this should result in a report that is about 70 pages long,
although if you had to restart your Transaction Group at the beginning of this lesson,
your report may be shorter.
1. Click Design.
2. Drag Table to the page.
3. Position and size the table to fill the bottom half of the page.

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Configure the Table
As with charts, it’s important to make sure to set the Data key for the table before
adding any data to it.
1. Drag history from the Key Browser to the Data key field on Configure Table.

Before we add our data, we want to note that the table initially only has four columns.
Our data, however, has six fields: the five Realistics and t_stamp. So, our next step is to
add columns to the table. To do this, we first need to select the Details row.
2. Double-click history Details on the table.
At the top of the Property Inspector, you will see a Column Count property. We want to
change this to 6. However, you will not immediately see a difference on the table itself.
3. Enter 6 in the Column Count field.
4. Press Enter.

To see the new cells, we need to drag to resize them in the table.

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5. Click in the right-most cell of the row.
6. Drag the small gray bar at the right side of the cell.
7. Repeat this to resize the sixth column.

Add Header and Summary Rows

Deciding how big the columns need to be will require that we look at the actual data to
be displayed, but there are a few more things we want to do first.
We never want unlabeled numbers. To make the table clearer, we want to add a
header row. This row will automatically repeat across every page. We also want to add
a summary row, which will display as the final row of the table on the last page of the
report.
1. Click the blank gray area of the table.
2. Check Header in the Rows section.
3. Check Summary.
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As with the details row, the header and summary rows default to 4 columns. We need to
manually set both of them to 6 columns.
4. Double-click history Header on the table.
5. Enter 6 in the Column Count field.
6. Press Enter.
7. Double-click history Summary on the table.
8. Enter 6 in the Column Count field.
9. Press Enter.
10. Click in the right-most cell of the Summary row.
11. Drag the small gray bar at the right side of the cell.
12. Repeat this to resize the sixth column.
You will notice as you resize a column in one row that it does not resize the same
column in the other rows. While there are times in the advanced reports that while is
useful, for our report we want all the columns to be the same size. We can do that by
synchronizing each row with the row above it.
13. Double-click history Summary.
14. Click Sync Row Above in the Property Inspector.

15. Double-click history Details.

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16. Click Sync Row Above in the Property Inspector.
17. Resize any column in the Summary row.

For now, having that setting enabled is enough. We will size the columns more precisely
once we have data in them.

Add Data
Adding data to the table is pretty easy—we just need to drag the fields from the Key
Browser to the cell on the table’s Details row where we want that data.
1. Drag Realistic0 to the first cell of the Details row.

2. Repeat to drag the other Realistics to the additional cells.

3. Drag t_stamp to the right-most cell.
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4. Enter Realistic 0 in the first cell of the Header row.
5. Repeat to add headers to the other cells.
6. Click Preview.

You will now see the data in the table. You can use the buttons at the bottom of the
screen to preview additional pages.

Add Summary Data

Let’s add summary information.
1. Click Design.
2. Click Show Calculations at the top of the Key Browser.
3. Expand Data Sources.
4. Expand history.
5. Expand Realistic0.

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You will see that enabling the Show Calculations setting gives use summary information
about each field.
6. Drag total to the first cell in the Summary row.
7. Expand Realistic1.
8. Drag average to the second cell in the Summary row.
9. Repeat to add max to the summary row for Realistic2, and min for Realistic3. We
will not add a summary for Realistic4.
10. Click Preview.
11. Click the button.
You will see the summary information for each column at the bottom of the table.

Format the Table

One final step: we want to do a bit of formatting to make the data look better.
1. Click Design.
2. Click the first cell of the Header row.
3. Press and hold Shift.
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4. Click the last cell of the Header row.
5. Click on the Property Inspector.
6. Click t_stamp on the Details row.
7. Click Properties.
8. Click the calendar icon on the Date Format property.
9. Select a date format that shows both date and time.
10. Click OK.
11. Use the gray bars in the Summary row to resize the columns. The columns for
the Realistics can be relatively narrow, giving the t_stamp column room to display
the much longer date.
12. Click Preview.

13. Click File.

14. Click Save All.

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Report Scheduling
You can add as many schedules as you want to your report. Schedules allow you to
make your report automatically save, email, and more at times you specify.

Create a Schedule
We want our report to save to a file every night at 1 am.
1. Click Schedule.
2. Click in the upper right corner.
Below our table are three tabs: Schedule, Parameters, and Actions. We need to work
our way through them to complete the schedule.
The Schedule tab allows you to set how often the report is run using a CRONTAB
scheduling system. CRONTAB is a scheduling system used by system administrators
to specify when jobs should run, as an offset of midnight. In our case, we only need to
change the Hours setting to offset by one hour, or 1 am.
3. Enter 1 in the Hours field.

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Set Parameters
The Parameters tab allows you to change the defaults for the data source’s parameters.
In this case, we want a daily report to show the entire day, not just the last 8 hours, so
we need to enter a different expression for our start and end dates.
1. Click Parameters.
2. Uncheck Default for StartDate.
3. Enter addDays(midnight(now()), -1)
4. Uncheck Default for EndDate.
5. Enter midnight(now())

Set Report Actions

The Actions tab allows us to set a number of actions to happen each time this schedule
is run. In our case, we want to save this report to the hard drive.
1. Click Actions.
2. Click .
3. Click New Save File Action.

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4. Enter a valid file path in the Folder Path field.
The default expression for the File Name takes the name of the report and appends a
time stamp, ensuring that each report will have a unique name. For our purposes, this is
fine.
Rather than wait until 1am to run this report, we can force an immediate execution, and
then go to Windows and view the report.
5. Click .

6. Open Windows File Explorer.

 Ch 20. Reporting
Note: You can use your keyboard to do this by pressing and holding the Windows key
and then pressing E.

Navigate to the folder you set in the Folder Path above.

7. Double-click the report.

Note: You will need Adobe Acrobat or some other tool to read the PDF.

Client Reports
You can allow your users to dynamically view reports on any Window in your Client.
1. Click Vision.
2. Expand Windows.
3. Expand Main Windows.
4. Right-click Empty.
5. Click Duplicate.
6. Right-click Empty (1).
7. Click Rename.
8. Enter Report.
9. Press Enter.
10. Expand the Components Palette.
11. Enter report in the Filter box.
12. Drag a Report Viewer component to the Window.
13. Right-click the Report Viewer.
14. Click Layout.
15. Click Anchored.
16. Click the top, right, and left anchors.
17. Click OK.
18. Select Basic Report from the Report Path list.

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19. Size and position the Report Viewer to display the width of the report. Leave
about an inch of space above it.

Add a Date Range

We want our operators to be able to set the length of time they want to display in the
report. We can do this by adding a Date Range component, and then binding it to the
Report’s parameters.
1. Expand the Components Palette.
2. Enter date in the Filter box.
3. Drag a Date Range component to the Window.
4. Size and position it above the Report Viewer.
5. Right-click the Date Range.
6. Click Layout.
7. Click Anchored.
8. Click the top, right, and left anchors.
9. Click OK.
10. Click the Report Viewer.
11. Click for the Report’s Start Date parameter.
12. Click Property.
13. Expand Date Range.
14. Click Start Date.
15. Click OK.
16. Click for the Report’s End Date Parameter.
17. Click Property.
18. Expand Date Range.
19. Click End Date.
20. Click OK.

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Add the Report Viewer to Navigation
1. Double-click Navigation in the Project Browser.
2. Double-click the Tab Strip.
3. Click an existing tab.
4. Click Add Tab.
5. Select Main Windows/Report from the Window Name list.
6. Enter Report in the Display Name field.
7. Click OK.
8. Click File.
9. Click Save All.
10. Click Tools.
11. Click Launch Project.
12. Click Launch Project (Windowed).
13. Log into the Client.
14. Click Report.
15. Change the date range to see the data update.

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 Chapter 21

Gateway Network

The Gateway Network allows us to connect Gateways to each other so that they
can share data such as Tags, alarms, and history. Making a Gateway Network
Connection is easy.

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Connect to a Gateway
Let’s set up a connection to the instructor’s Gateway.
1. Open the Gateway web page.
2. Log in.
3. Click Config.
4. Click Gateway Network in the Networking section.

One Gateway will make an outgoing connection, while the other Gateway will accept
the incoming connection. In class, you will be making the outgoing connection to the
instructor’s Gateway while they will accept the incoming connection.

Disable SSL
Your instructor will perform the following steps on their Gateway:
1. Click General.
2. Click Require SSL to set it to false.
3. Click Save Changes.
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Set Up the Incoming Gateway
On your Gateway, perform the following steps:
1. Click Outgoing Connections.
2. Click Create new Outgoing Gateway Connection…
3. Enter the Instructor’s Gateway IP address in the Host field.
4. Enter 8088 in the Port field.
5. Click Use SSL to connect to the remote machine to set it to false.

6. Scroll down.
7. Click Create New Outgoing Gateway Connection.

Accept Connections
The Instructor now needs to accept the connections. Watch as they perform these steps
on their Gateway:
1. Click Incoming Connections.

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2. Click More.
3. Click approve.
4. Click Confirm.

Set Up a Remote Tag Provider

Now that the Gateways are connected through the Gateway Network, you can share
data by setting up a Remote Provider.
A Remote Tag Provider allows you to pull a Tag Provider from one Gateway into another,
if both are connected through the Gateway Network.
1. Click Realtime in the Tags section.
2. Click Create new Realtime Tag Provider.
3. Click Remote Tag Provider (Gateway Network).
4. Click Next >.

5. Click your instructor’s Gateway.

6. Click Next.
7. Click default.
8. Click Next.
9. Scroll down.
10. Click Create New Realtime Tag Provider.

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11. Return to Designer.
12. Click Refresh on the Tag Browser.
13. Select the instructor’s Gateway from the dropdown list.

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 Chapter 22

Backups

There are two types of backups in Ignition. Gateway backups consist of everything
in Ignition except the activation status, and includes all projects, Tags, connection
configurations, alarm notification configurations, and more. Project backups are
far less inclusive, and only contain project-scoped resources, such as templates,
windows, views, transaction groups, or reports.

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Gateway Backup
A Gateway backup is an effective way to capture all of the information you need in
order to restore a backup in the case of hardware failure, or to transfer an Ignition
installation from one server to another.
Generally, the only items not included in a Gateway Backup are licenses, modules,
and items stored externally to Ignition, such as database tables and PLC programs.
Restoring from a Gateway backup is considered a replacement operation, in that
the backup copy will overwrite all resources on the target Gateway.

Download a Backup
Let’s download a backup of our Gateway so that you can take all of the work you’ve
done with you after class.
1. Open the Gateway web page.
2. Click Config.
3. Log in.
4. Click Backup/Restore in the System section.

5. Click Download Backup.

Depending on how many resources are in the Gateway, it might take a few moments to
download.

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The backup will be downloaded to your browser’s default download location, which on
Windows is usually the Downloads folder.
The filename for a Gateway backup will be the name of the Gateway, combined with
“Ignition-backup” and a timestamp. Gateway backups have a .gwbk file extension.

Restore a Gateway
Restoring from a backup is done from the same section of the Gateway web page.
Simply select the GWBK file. Note that restoring a backup will always completely
overwrite the existing Gateway, so it is a good idea to always download a new backup
immediately before restoring.

Schedule a Backup
Any time you are developing in Ignition, it is a good idea to take regular backups.
Ignition can even do this for you automatically with the Scheduled Backup Settings.
1. Click Gateway Settings in the System section.

2. Scroll down to the Scheduled Backup Settings.

3. Check Enable Scheduled Backups.
4. Specify a folder to save backups to.

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Ideally, the folder you are saving scheduled backups into will be on a different computer
than the one running Ignition and will be a folder that your IT department includes in
their regular system backup cycle.
5. Specify a Backup Schedule.
The system uses CRONTAB scheduling, which is an offset from midnight. The order
of the numbers is, from left to right, minutes, hours, days, months, day of week.
Our on line documentation has details on working with CRONTAB at https://docs.
inductiveautomation.com/docs/8.1/appendix/reference-pages/crontab-formatting-
reference.
6. Specify the Retention Count.
This setting allows you to set the number of backups to keep in the folder. When this
number is met, the system will automatically delete the oldest backup.
7. Specify the Filename Pattern.
The default pattern is the name of the Gateway, an underscore, the words “Ignition-
backup,” the current version of this Ignition installation, and a timestamp.
8. Click Save Changes.

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Project Backup and Restore

You can also backup your Projects individually. When doing this, remember that
Gateway scoped resources are not part of the project. These backups do not include
Tags, device connections, database connections, user sources, or anything else you
have changed in the Gateway web page.
Project backups can be imported into any Gateway and are an effective way of loading
a project into a new Gateway.
Remember that all projects are backed up with the Gateway is backed up, so this is not
a required step for merely maintaining backups of projects. Instead, it should be seen as
a way to move projects or specific project resources between Gateways.

Backup from the Gateway

You can back up an entire project from the Gateway. This option is quick and easy but
does not allow you to specify which parts of the project are backed up, a filename, or a
backup location.
Projects can be downloaded from the Gateway by anyone with access to the Gateway,
and do not necessarily required Designer access.
1. Click Projects in the System section.

2. Click More.
3. Click Export.
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Your project will be downloaded to the browser’s download location as a ZIP file.

Note: Even though the project file downloads as a regular ZIP file, it is not
recommended that you unzip the file or alter any of the files and folders included in it.
Doing so can damage the backup.

Backup from Designer

You can also make a project backup from the Designer. This gives you considerably
more control of the backup. You can select the filename and location, and decide which
resources within the Project you want to backup.
1. Return to Designer.
2. Click File.
3. Click Export.
4. Select the resources you wish to include in the backup.

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Anything you have changed in the project will be available as a selection. You can use
the All and None links at the bottom to quickly select or deselect every resource.
5. Click Export.
6. Select a save location.
7. If desired, enter a new filename.
8. Click Export.
As with the backup from the Gateway, do not unzip this file or change its contents.

Import a Project Backup

Importing from the Designer uses the same resource selection window as the export
window. The resources from the imported project will be merged into the existing
project.

Backup Tags
Tags are backed up as part of a Gateway backup, but you can also back them up
separately from the Designer. Note that Tag backups only contain the information
necessary to import the Tag back into Designer.

Backup an Individual Tag

You can backup an individual Tag. Note that if the Tag in question is an instance of a
UDT, you will also need to export and then import the UDT definition.
1. Expand GenSim in the Tag Browser.
2. Expand Ramps.
3. Right-click Ramp0.
4. Click Export Tags.

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5. Select a save location.

6. Enter ramp0.json in the File name field.

Note: All Tag exports default to the same name—Tags.json. You will need to rename
files as you download them if you are going to be doing multiple exports.

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7. Click Save.

Examine a Tag Export

Tags export as a JSON file. JSON is a file format for describing data in plain text.
1. Open Firefox.

Note: If you do not have Firefox on your computer, you can download it for free from
mozilla.org. Any modern web browser can open a JSON file, so the following steps
will work in other browses, but Firefox does a better job of formatting the file than
most other browsers.

2. Press Ctrl+O on your keyboard.

3. Navigate to the file location where you saved the Tag export file.
4. Double-click the file.

You will see that the JSON file contains a set of definitions that provide all of the
information needed to import the Tag into Designer.

Import a Tag
In order to demonstrate importing a Tag into Designer, we are going to delete Ramp0,
then import it back into Designer using our backup.
1. Right-click Ramp0.
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2. Click Delete.
3. Click Yes.
4. Right-click Ramp.
5. Select Import Tags.
6. Select Direct.
Direct import simply imports the Tag into the selected folder. Interactive import displays
the same dialog box for importing Tags that we used when we first brought Tags into
Designer. This give you more control when importing multiple Tags.
7. Navigate to the folder you selected when you exported the Tag.
8. Double-click ramp0.json.
The Tag is imported back into Designer.

Export Tag Folders and UDTs

In addition to exporting individual Tags, you can export an entire folder of Tags, and you
can export UDTs. The process for either is the same as for an individual Tag—it’s simply
a matter of what you right-click on in the Tag Browser. If you do not have any Tags
selected when you export, all Tags will be exported.
Importing folders and UDTs is also the same process as importing an individual Tag, but
you will likely find the Interactive option more useful.

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