FTHistorian Student Manual 3-8-2018

FactoryTalk Historian
Student Manual
Version: March 8, 2018
For Rockwell and Partner Use Only!

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Copyright © 2017 Rockwell Automation, Inc.

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FactoryTalk, FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition (ME), FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition (SE),
FactoryTalk Live Data, FactoryTalk Services Platform, FactoryTalk VantagePoint, FactoryTalk View,
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Table of Contents
Lesson 1 – FactoryTalk Historian (SE and ME) ........................................................................................................ 7
Lab 1 – FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition (SE) Configuration .......................................................................... 25
Part A – Overview of FactoryTalk Directory and Application ........................................................................... 25
Part B – Basic FactoryTalk Historian SE Configuration ................................................................................... 27
Lab 2 – FTLD Interface Configuration ................................................................................................................ 43
Part A – Configuring Security and AboutPI-SDK to Connect to Server ........................................................... 43
Part B – Configuring Interface Buffering .......................................................................................................... 52
Part C – Configuring Disconnected Startup ..................................................................................................... 61
Lab 3 – Using Discover Historian Points ............................................................................................................ 64
Lesson 2 - Understanding Tags and Using Excel Tag Configurator....................................................................... 75
Lab 1 – Working with FTH Tags in Excel ........................................................................................................... 83
Part A - Configuring CLIENT image to communicate with SERVER ............................................................... 83
Part B - Using the PI Builder Add-In ................................................................................................................ 86
Lesson 3 - Using VantagePoint ............................................................................................................................... 99
Lab 1 – Using VantagePoint to Visualize Historian Data ................................................................................. 100
Part A – Creating VantagePoint FactoryTalk Connector and Importing Historian Tags................................ 100
Part B – Creating and Publishing a VantagePoint Trend .............................................................................. 105
Part C – Creating and Publishing a VantagePoint Excel Report ................................................................... 108
Lesson 4 - Understanding and Using Exception and Compression ..................................................................... 118
Lab 1 – Using Exception and Compression: .................................................................................................... 124
Part A - Filter Less with Exception/Compression........................................................................................... 124
Part B - Filter More with Exception/Compression .......................................................................................... 127
Lesson 5 - FactoryTalk Historian Tag Types ........................................................................................................ 132
Lab 1 – FactoryTalk Historian Tag Types ........................................................................................................ 136
Part A - Polled versus Advised Collection Modes.......................................................................................... 136
Part B - Event Tags ........................................................................................................................................ 139
Part C - Output Tags ...................................................................................................................................... 141
Lesson 6 - Using Performance Equations and Totalizers ..................................................................................... 144
Lab 1 – Performance Equations ....................................................................................................................... 153
Part A – Simple Conversion Calculation ........................................................................................................ 153
Part B – Using a Performance Equation Function ......................................................................................... 156
Lab 2 - Totalizers .............................................................................................................................................. 161
Part A – Summary Calculation Totalizer Example ......................................................................................... 161
Part B – Count Events Totalizer Example ..................................................................................................... 164
Lesson 7 - Working with Digital States.................................................................................................................. 168
Lab 1 – Creating Digital State Sets, Assigning Tags and Displaying States ................................................... 168
Part A - Configuring Digital State ................................................................................................................... 168
Part B - Create Tag in Historian Using Digital State ...................................................................................... 170
Part C - Displaying with VantagePoint ........................................................................................................... 176
Lesson 8 – Using Asset Framework and Event Frames ....................................................................................... 180
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Lab 1 – Asset Framework ................................................................................................................................ 184
Part A – Adding Historian Points for Use with Asset Framework .................................................................. 184
Part B – Introduction to Asset Framework ..................................................................................................... 189
Part C – Create an Asset Framework Element Template ............................................................................. 206
Part D – Use a Template to create an Element ............................................................................................. 209
Part E – Enhancing the Asset Framework ..................................................................................................... 215
Part F – Visualizing Asset Framework Data within FactoryTalk VantagePoint ............................................. 220
Lab 2 – Event Frames ...................................................................................................................................... 227
Part A – Create Event Frame Template ........................................................................................................ 227
Part B – Add Event Frame Generation to Element Template ........................................................................ 236
Part C – View Generated Event Frames in PI System Explorer .................................................................... 240
Part D – Visualizing Event Frame Data in VantagePoint ............................................................................... 244
Lab 3 – Asset-Based Analytics......................................................................................................................... 259
Part A – Create an Expression Analysis for Line 1 ........................................................................................ 259
Part B – Add Analysis for Line 2 .................................................................................................................... 275
Lesson 9 - Using Health Points and Performance Monitor Tags .......................................................................... 280
Lab 1 – Using FTLD Health Points and Historian Server Performance Monitor Tags ..................................... 281
Lesson 10 - Using and Displaying Audit Information ............................................................................................ 286
Lab 1 – Auditing FactoryTalk Historian ............................................................................................................ 289
Part A - Enable Auditing of your PI Server .................................................................................................... 289
Part B - Make Changes and Use Audit Viewer to Examine the Activity ........................................................ 292
Lesson 11 - Using Archive Management Tools .................................................................................................... 298
Lab 1 – Managing FactoryTalk Historian Archives........................................................................................... 301
Lesson 12 - Scheduling Backups of Historian Data .............................................................................................. 306
Lab 1 – FactoryTalk Historian Backups ........................................................................................................... 308
Part A - Create a Scheduled Task to Perform Backups ................................................................................ 308
Part B - Creating a pisitebackup.bat file to Backup to Remote Computer ..................................................... 314
Lesson 13 - Using FactoryTalk View SE Trend to Display Historian Data ........................................................... 318
Lab 1 – Using FactoryTalk View SE Trend to Display Historian Data ............................................................. 319
Lesson 14 - Backfilling Data into a FactoryTalk Historian SE Server ................................................................... 326
Lab 1 - Backfilling Data into a FactoryTalk Historian SE Server ...................................................................... 327
Part A - Overview of Data to Backfill and Historian SE Configuration ........................................................... 327
Part B - Configure, Run and See Results of UFL Interface ........................................................................... 337
Lesson 15 - FactoryTalk Historian SE High Availability ........................................................................................ 348
Lab 1 - Interface Buffering ................................................................................................................................ 356
Lab 2 - Interface Redundancy .......................................................................................................................... 363
Part A – Configuring Buffering and Initial CLIENT Interface Configuration ................................................... 363
Part B - Create Shared Folder ....................................................................................................................... 377
Part C – Configuring Interfaces for Failover .................................................................................................. 380
Part D – Modifying FTLD Service Properties ................................................................................................. 383
Part E – Finishing up and Testing the Interface Redundancy ....................................................................... 385
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Lab 3 – Using a Collective ................................................................................................................................ 390
Part A – Confirming and Adding Security Mappings...................................................................................... 390
Part B – Creating Collective Preparation ....................................................................................................... 395
Part C - Creating the Collective ..................................................................................................................... 397
Part D - Testing and Using the Collective ...................................................................................................... 403
Appendix A - Installing FactoryTalk Historian SE ................................................................................................. 410
Appendix B - FactoryTalk Historian Time Format ................................................................................................. 424
Appendix C - Using FactoryTalk Historian DataLink ............................................................................................. 426
Lab 1 – Using FactoryTalk Historian DataLink ................................................................................................. 427
Part A – DataLink Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 427
Part B - Archived data and Digital tags .......................................................................................................... 435
Part C - Time Filtered Function ...................................................................................................................... 438
Appendix D - Using FactoryTalk Historian ProcessBook ...................................................................................... 444
Lab 1 – Using FactoryTalk Historian ProcessBook .......................................................................................... 444
Part A – Single-page ProcessBook ............................................................................................................... 444
Part B - Multi-Trend Layout ............................................................................................................................ 450
Part C – Multi-Page ProcessBook ................................................................................................................. 457
Appendix E - Introduction to SQC Charts in ProcessBook ................................................................................... 466
Lab 1 - SQC Charting in ProcessBook ............................................................................................................. 466
Appendix F - Accessing FactoryTalk Historian SE Data via OLEDB .................................................................... 478
Lab 1 – Accessing FactoryTalk Historian SE Data via OLEDB ....................................................................... 480
Part A - Using PIOLEDB.msc ........................................................................................................................ 480
Part B - Using PIOLEDBTester.exe ............................................................................................................... 483
Part C - Using Microsoft Reporting Services ................................................................................................. 484
Appendix G – FactoryTalk Historian Advanced Calculation Engine (ACE) Overview .......................................... 498
Appendix H – FactoryTalk Historian to Historian Interface Overview ................................................................... 506
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Lesson 1 – FactoryTalk Historian (SE and ME)
What you will learn:

• Understand key features/concepts of FactoryTalk Historian SE and ME
• Configure FactoryTalk Historian Server
• Configure FactoryTalk Historian Distributed Interface
FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition (SE)

FactoryTalk Historian SE is a scalable and integrated solution. It redefines the options for
manufacturers who want to maximize their ability to collect and analyze process data. Use
FactoryTalk Historian to capture data across your enterprise while serving the data to plant
applications. This allows for fast and reliable data capture at the controller level and at high speeds
and low intervals.
• Historians are utilized across many industries and applications: – Consumer Products,
Food and Beverage, Automotive, Life Sciences
– Continuous Process, Packaging, Material Routing
• Key benefits of a Historian:
– Capture and process high-speed, time-series data
– Store in a central (Site or Enterprise) data repository for future analysis
• Historical data is used for:
– Analysis through calculations, statistical processes, quality controls – Supports
business and operational analysis:
• Trends and graphs of data
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FactoryTalk Historian SE provides the capability to collect, store, analyze, and visualize data using a
powerful engine and a set of reporting tools such as time-series trends, bar charts, pie charts, pareto
and tabular trends, and an easy method of generating reports using Microsoft Excel. It also uses
compressed storage data algorithms to contain a vast amount of data in a small format. You can
retrieve data spanning a long or short time span quickly.
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FactoryTalk Historian SE is closely integrated with the following Rockwell Automation’s FactoryTalk
Services Platform and Applications.
• FactoryTalk Live Data (FTLD) A direct data interface to FTLD delivers native FTLD data
directly to FactoryTalk Historian SE without requiring intermediate interfaces and standards
such as OPC.
• FactoryTalk Directory FactoryTalk Historian SE uses FactoryTalk Directory to look up data
points for configuring points to historize. The FactoryTalk Directory is also used for auto
discovering controller data sources and tags in the initial configuration process.
• FactoryTalk Activation FactoryTalk Historian SE is activated by Rockwell Automation's
central licensing system based on the FactoryTalk Activation Server.
• FactoryTalk Diagnostics Because of FactoryTalk Historian SE close integration with
FactoryTalk Diagnostics, all system and diagnostics messages from FactoryTalk Historian
SE are centrally stored and maintained in the FactoryTalk Diagnostics database.
• FactoryTalk Audit All FactoryTalk Historian SE Server auditing messages are stored and
available in the FactoryTalk Audit database.
• FactoryTalk View SE Trending FactoryTalk View Site Edition natively trends data from
FactoryTalk Historian SE.
• FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition (ME) FactoryTalk Historian ME provides a Data
Transfer service to allow its logged data to be transferred to the FactoryTalk Historian SE for
long-term storage and analysis.
• FactoryTalk VantagePoint the data from multiple FactoryTalk Historian SE Servers and
FactoryTalk Historian ME Servers can be brought together into a single information
management and decision support system using FactoryTalk VantagePoint.
• FactoryTalk Batch The event journal data from your FactoryTalk Batch system can be
collected through the FactoryTalk Batch Interface and stored within FactoryTalk Historian
SE.
Ordering Information
FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition
A FactoryTalk® Historian Site Edition server includes a data point-limited license, calculation engine
(performance equations, totalizers and SQC alarms), Batch database, and Analytics Framework
(AF). Additionally, server licenses include RSLinx® Enterprise and FactoryTalk Administration
Console
Communication to Rockwell Automation controllers is via FactoryTalk® Live Data using RSLinx
Enterprise. Communication to third-party devices can either be through FactoryTalk Live Data –
using a third-party OPC server (purchased separately) configured as a FactoryTalk Live Data server
or through one of the third-party Historian interfaces listed below.
All Historian SE Server catalog items include a bundled version of FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI
software with one named user client license. FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI offers a single solution
for advanced trending, Microsoft Excel reporting and dashboards with the capability of publishing all
these different trends and reports in a web portal that can be viewed with just a web browser.
Additional VantagePoint Client licensing can be purchased separately.
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FactoryTalk Historian SE Servers
With the introduction of Historian SE v5.01, the first 5,000 tags can be from any data source
(Rockwell or 3rd party). In the case where there is a higher utilization of 3rd party tags, 3rd party
only tag licenses are available.
Example 1:
• 500 Data points
• 1,000 Data points
• Total: 1,500 tag licensing
• All 1,500 tags can be used for 3rd party devices
Example 2:
• Total: 15,000 tag licensing
• Up to 5,000 tags can be used for 3rd party devices
Example 3:
Customer wants 10,000 3rd party tag licenses. You will need to order:
• 9518-HSE5K - 5,000 tags (Rockwell or 3rd party)
• 9518-HSE5K3ADD - (additional 5,000 3rd party tags)
Description: Part Number:

FT Historian Site Edition - 250 tags 9518-HSE250
FT Historian Site Edition - 500 tags 9518-HSE500
FT Historian Site Edition - 1,000 tags 9518-HSE1K
FT Historian Site Edition - 2,500 tags 9518-HSE2K5
FT Historian Site Edition - 5,000 tags 9518-HSE5KM
(Product Manager approval required)

(Product Manager approval required)
FT Historian SE Server – 2,000 3rd Party Tags 9518-HSE2K3ADD

FT Historian SE Server – 5,000 3rd Party Tags 9518-HSE5K3ADDM
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FactoryTalk Historian SE – Advanced Server Option
FactoryTalk® Historian SE Advanced Server License adds the following capability: Data Access
(OPC DA and HDA servers, OLE DB Provider, JDBC data provider and web services), Advanced
Computation Engine (ACE), and Notifications for using Microsoft® Lync Unified Communication
Server.
With the purchase of Advance Server Option (9518-HSEADV) you will get the following client
licensing (Please refer to Client Access Licensing section for more details):
- 5 named users CAL license
- Unlimited users CAL license (ONLY for FT Historian SE - 250 tags or 500 tags)
New with Historian v4.0 you can purchase OLEDB or OPC DA/HDA data access separately. The
bundled client licensing is the same as Advance Server Option
FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition Advanced Server 9518-HSEADV

FactoryTalk Historian OPC Connectivity 9518-HSEOPC
FactoryTalk Historian OLEDB Connectivity 9518-HSEOLEDB
FactoryTalk Historian to Historian Interface

Use this interface to replicate data from one Historian SE to another Historian SE server.
The destination (target) server requires the license count to be at least the sum of the tag licensing
that exists on each source server even if you are only replicating a subset of tags from the source(s).
Example:
- Historian SE (Source 1) has 5k tags, Historian SE (Source 2) has 10k tags, so Historian SE
(Destination) needs licensing for 15k tags (combine total of two source servers)
You must purchase this interface when aggregating Historian ME data to a Historian SE collective.
In this case, you only require activation at the destination for the number of tags that are being
transferred to the collective. You can continue to use the built in Data Transfer mechanism in
Historian ME when connected to a Historian SE server (non-collective).
Historian to Historian Interface 9518-HINSE2SE
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FactoryTalk Historian SE Batch Interface
The FactoryTalk Historian SE Batch Interface provides a connection to the FactoryTalk Batch event
journal (EVT file) to capture batch execution in realtime. These events are stored in the Historian
archive (specifically Historian Batch Database and Historian Module Database) and can be
displayed in ProcessBook when used with the BatchView Client component to show batch
operations down to the individual phase operations.
FactoryTalk Historian Batch Interface - 1 Batch Unit 9518-HINFTB01
FactoryTalk Historian Batch Interface - 3 Batch Units 9518-HINFTB03
FactoryTalk Historian SE – Client Access Licensing

Data Access components (OLEDB, JDBC, Web services, etc.) that are part of the Advance Server
Option, require client licensing to consume data from the Historian database. The licensing model is
similar to SQL Server licensing from Microsoft where we have two options: CAL - named user based
and CAL – unlimited users. With the purchase of Advance Server Option (9518-HSEADV), or the
“stand-alone” OPC and OLEDB options (9518-HSEOPC and 9518-HSEOLEDB), you will get the
following client licensing (pick one):
- 5 named users CAL license
- Unlimited users CAL license (ONLY for FT Historian SE - 250 tags or 500 tags)
The following catalog items can be purchased for additional data access client licensing
Historian Client Access License - 1 Named User 9518-HCALENE
Historian Client Access License - Unlimited Users for 1,000 Tags 9518-HCAL1KENF
Historian Client Access License - Unlimited Users for 2,500 Tags 9518-HCAL2K5ENF
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FactoryTalk Historian SE Client Tools
The FactoryTalk Historian ProcessBook application allows you to build ProcessBooks, which are
collections of “display entries.” These display entries show your data from one or more historian
systems – with displays including components such as values, trends, SQC/SPC charts etc.
The FactoryTalk Historian ActiveView Runtime client license enables ProcessBook content
(including BatchView) to be hosted/displayed from within Microsoft® Internet Explorer®, FactoryTalk
View SE or any other ActiveX container.
The FactoryTalk® Historian DataLink Excel reporting tool provides a Historian add-on for Microsoft®
Excel.
The FactoryTalk® Historian BatchView client allows users to visualize batch events from the
Historian Batch database in Historian – batch trends, Gantt charts comparing multiple batches etc.
FactoryTalk Historian ProcessBook Authoring Client – Single User 9518-HPBENE
FactoryTalk Historian DataLink Excel Reporting Tool – Single User 9518-HDLENE
FactoryTalk Historian Historian ActiveView Client - Single User 9518-HAVENE
FactoryTalk Historian BatchView Add-in - Single User 9518-HBAVENE
FactoryTalk Historian SQC ProcessBook Add-in – Single User 9518-HSAENE
(SQC Add-in intended for pre-3.2 versions of ProcessBook)
Third-Party Interfaces (Current as of Historian 5.01)

Historian Interface for OPC HDA – media only 9518-OPCHDA
Historian Interface for ODBC – media only 9518-HINRELDB
Historian Interface for Universal File Loader – media only 9518-HINUNIFILE
FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition

Enhance your data management capabilities with the powerful high-speed data collection and
analysis engine of FactoryTalk Historian ME and the extensive series of Microsoft-compatible
reporting tools in the FactoryTalk Suite as well as a built in thin client Web UI for configuration. With
the Historian ME modules data collection speeds, more than 10 times faster than traditional data
collection rates, data collection can now be an integrated part of more applications.
FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition is an embedded appliance module in a ControlLogix form
factor, and as such is comprised of both hardware and software. The Software comes pre-installed
on the module, and can be updated with firmware updates using ControlFlash.
ControlLogix Guidelines and Requirements: ControlLogix version 13.x and up supported; AOP is
supported with version 15.x and up; connect up to maximum four (4) controllers in the same
ControlLogix chassis; Maximum two Historian ME’s in a single chassis.
FactoryTalk Services support includes backplane data connector, FactoryTalk Security Integration,
and FactoryTalk Directory Integration.
FactoryTalk Historian ME 1GB Module (Hardware w/ME Historian) 1756-HIST1G

FactoryTalk Historian ME 2GB Module (Hardware w/ME Historian) 1756-HIST2G
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FactoryTalk Historian SE System Requirements (v 5.0)
The hardware required with FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition depends on the demands an
application places on the system. The greater the demand, the more powerful a system is required.
In any application, faster processors and more memory will result in better performance. In addition,
there should always be sufficient disk space to provide virtual memory that is at least twice the size
of the physical memory.
FactoryTalk Historian SE Server Machine

System Requirements:
• Minimum: Processor(s) with the total of 4 cores, 2.2 GHz, 8GB RAM.
• Recommended: Processor(s) with the total of 4 cores, 2.2 GHz, 12-16 GB RAM.
Note: The processor specification refers to physical cores rather than logical
(hyperthreaded), or 100%-allocated virtual CPUs.
Hardware:
• 100 Megabit or faster Ethernet card.
• Network cable.
• Concentrator if using twisted pair wiring.
• TCP/IP protocol.
• SVGA TrueColor monitor with 1 MB of video RAM and 1024x768 resolution.
Operating Systems:
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 (see Rockwell Automation Knowledgebase
AID 629553)
FactoryTalk Historian Live Data Interface Machine

Hardware:
• Minimum: 2.9 GHz dual-core processor, 2GB RAM
Operating Systems:
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional with Service Pack 1 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard R2 (64-bit)
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FactoryTalk Historian Client Machine
Hardware:
• 100 Megabit or faster Ethernet card.
• Network cable.
• Concentrator if using twisted pair wiring.
• TCP/IP protocol.
• SVGA TrueColor monitor with 1 MB of video RAM and 1024x768 resolution.
• Minimum: Intel Pentium III, 600Mhz, 512MB RAM.
• Recommended: Intel Celeron, 3GHz or higher, 1GB RAM or more.
Operating Systems:
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional with Service Pack 1 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Standard R2 (64-bit)
Other Software:
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 with Service Pack 2, IE7, IE8
• Microsoft Excel 2007 or newer for FactoryTalk Historian DataLink
• Microsoft Excel 2003 or newer for System Management Tools (SMT)
FactoryTalk Historian Asset Framework

Hardware:
• Processor: a single quad-core processor, minimum 2.2 GHz
Operating Systems:
• Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 SP1 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows 2012 Standard (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows 2012 Standard R2 (64-bit)
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SQL Server Requirements (SQL Server required by Asset Framework):
Supported SQL Server editions:
• Express
• Standard
Supported SQL Server versions:
• Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express with Service Pack 3
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Standard with Service Pack 3
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express with Service Pack 2
Required SQL Server components:
• Database Engine
• Agent (backup and replication) Required Memory:
• 1GB for databases with up to 50000 elements
• 4 GB for databases with up to 200000 elements
System Limits
Historian SE licenses are available in the following counts:
• 250; 500; 1,000; 2,500; 5,000; 10,000; 20,000; 50,000; 100,000
The licenses are additive, so to support 7,500 tags, licenses for 5,000 + 2,500 tags, or a single
license for 10,000 tags, could be purchased. With these “additive” tags, up to 20% or 1,000,
whichever is greater, can be used for 3rd party tags. To support Server High Availability (i.e., a
Collective), quantity 2 of each license must be purchased. There are no additional licenses required
for FTLD Interface Node redundancy.
Specific 3rd party tag licenses are available in the following counts.
• 2,000: 5,000: 10,000: 20,000
Performance and Scalability:

Historian SE v3.x Historian SE v4.0
Max Tag Count/Server 100,000 500,000

Max Events/Server 50,000 events/sec 100,000 events/sec
Max Tag Count/Interface 20,000 50,000
Max Events/Interface 20,000 events/sec 25,000 events/sec
In addition to the above, the maximum number of Historian SE servers supported within the same
FactoryTalk Directory was 1 with Historian SE v3.x, but now is 2 with Historian SE v4.0
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Architecture Examples
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FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition (ME)
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The Virtual Machines
In this class, there are three virtual machine images. The first is called SERVER. This image is both
the Historian and VantagePoint Server for the class. It will also host the SoftLogix controllers,
RSLogix software and RSLinx Classic and Enterprise. It is already loaded with the following
software products:
• FactoryTalk Services Platform
• FactoryTalk Activation Manager
• FactoryTalk Network Directory
• Microsoft SQL Server
• FactoryTalk VantagePoint Server
• Microsoft Excel
• FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition Server
• RSLogix 5000
• SoftLogix 5800
• RSLinx Classic
• RSLinx Enterprise
The second virtual machine image is called DATA. This image will serve as a FactoryTalk View SE
Server and FactoryTalk Live Data Interface. It is already loaded with the following software
products:
• FactoryTalk Historian Live Data Interface
• FactoryTalk View SE Server
The third virtual machine image is called CLIENT. This image will host the clients that will connect
to FactoryTalk Historian and VantagePoint Servers. It is already loaded with the following software
products:
• Microsoft Excel
• FactoryTalk Historian Live Data Interface (for Redundant Interface exercise)
• ProcessBook
• DataLink
• VantagePoint Dashboard Builder (Xcelsius)
• VantagePoint Clients
The fourth virtual machine image is called SERVER2. This image will only need to be running for
the Collectives lab and will serve as the Secondary Server in the Collective. It is already loaded with
the following software products:
• FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition Server
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Lab 1 – FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition (SE) Configuration
Before you begin:
• Images need to be fully running…Server started first until running (“started” dialog appears),
Data next until running and finally Client until running
Part A – Overview of FactoryTalk Directory and Application

The Server image you are using in this training has a FactoryTalk Historian SE Server already
installed. This Server install also installs a “local” FactoryTalk Live Data Interface on this image as
well. Separately, pre-installed on the Data image is another FactoryTalk Historian Live Data
Interface. Although the Server and Interfaces have already been installed, no configurations have
been done.
Before continuing, if you haven’t already done so, please review Appendix A for examples of the
installation process/procedure.
1. Verify that you are on the SERVER image::
2. Verify that SoftLogix is running with two controllers. In the controller applications used in this
training, one controller is running a simulated “BreadLine1” (BL1) and the other a “BreadLine2”
(BL2). Each BreadLine is made of three workcells…Mixer, Proof_Oven and Packaging. These
simulated applications will provide us with data to collect, such as Oven Temperatures, Steps in
the workcell cycles, etc.
3. Open the FactoryTalk Administration Console by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell
Software > FactoryTalk Administration Console. Select Network directory.
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4. Observe the following in the FactoryTalk Directory:
• The “host” of the FactoryTalk Networked directory is “THIS COMPUTER”. Other images we
will use during this training “point” to the FactoryTalk Directory on this computer.
• There are several applications, one we will specifically use named RA Foods already
created in this Directory.
• Under Connections (click on the + sign to open the tree), there is a folder to identify
FactoryTalk Historian SE Servers (Historical Data), but none are present at this time
(nothing in the folder).
5. Do the following steps:

a. Open the RA Foods application.
b. Notice a Data Server named RSLE. This is an instance of RSLinx Enterprise installed on
the Server image.
c. Double-click on Communication Setup under RSLE.
d. If you click on BL1, you will see that BL1 is a shortcut for the controller in Slot 2 of the
SoftLogix Chassis.
e. Click on BL2 to see it is a shortcut to the controller in Slot 3.
f. In this training you will be collecting data coming from FactoryTalk, with application of RA
Foods, Data Server of RSLE and shortcuts of BL1 and BL2.
6. Close FactoryTalk Administration Console
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Part B – Basic FactoryTalk Historian SE Configuration
1. Before we add our FactoryTalk Historian Server to the FactoryTalk Directory, it is a good idea to
check and make sure it is up and running and able to be “connected to”. Select Start > All
Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > FactoryTalk Historian SE
System > AboutPI-SDK
Note: May be very slow to open (2-3 minutes) – please be patient! ☺
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a. Click Connections.
b. Check the SERVER box.
Note: The AboutPI-SDK Utility at default assumes that there is a FactoryTalk Historian
Server on the same computer (image) that it is installed on. So, “SERVER” was here
automatically at default as this is the name of this computer (image) and also the
name of the FactoryTalk Historian Server.
c. You should see a SERVER connected as piadmin message and get no errors. Note: The
three images you are using are all configured with an automatic logon of the user
“Administrator” with password of “rockwell". Later in this training you will learn
about Mapping users to FactoryTalk Historian Groups, Users or Identities. Without
doing any Mappings, whatever user is logged into the Historian Server computer is
assumed to be a “piadmin” user, with unrestricted rights to the FactoryTalk Historian
Server.
d. Close the AboutPI-SDK.
3. The above results indicate that the FactoryTalk Historian Server can be found and “connected
to”. If not already running, start the FactoryTalk Administration Console and select Network
directory.
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4. Expand the Connections tree.
5. Right-click on Historical Data and select New Historian Server Connection…

a. Notice default name of Production Historian that will be used.
b. Click Test Server Connection button (grayed out in below graphic).
c. Look for green checkmark and Server found message.
d. Click Finish.
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7. You have added a FactoryTalk Historian Server to your FactoryTalk Directory. Expand the
Historical Data tree, right-click on Production Historian and click on Properties…

a. Click the Licensing tab.
b. Specify to use 1 of the FHSE.50K activations
c. Specify to use 1 FHSE.Advanced activation
d. When both above assignments have been made, click Apply
Note: In the above dialog, licenses or activations that appear are as follows:
• FTBAInt.10 – This is activation for the FactoryTalk Batch Interface – 10 Batch Units
• FHSE.50K – This is Historian 3.0 and later license for up to 50,000 tags. Of these tags,
up to 10,000 (20%) could be used for 3rd party verses Rockwell Automation devices
(tags).
• FHSE.Advanced – This is version 3.0 and later Advanced Server option.
• FHSE.H2H – This is FactoryTalk Historian To Historian Interface option.
• FHLD.5000 – Version 2.2 license for up to 5000 Rockwell Automation devices (tags).
Historian 3.0 and later would recognize and be able to use this license.
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9. Click the Point Sources tab. This tab would be used to allocate a maximum number of points
to a specific interface type or point source. FTLD are standard Rockwell tags, and currently all
50,000 tags are configured to be used for Rockwell tags. If intending to use 3rd party tags with
their own unique point source, or tags coming from a FactoryTalk Historian ME module via Data
Transfer using point source FTMS, allocations of maximum number of such tags would be made
here. Click OK when ready to proceed.
10. Whenever changes are made to FactoryTalk Historian licensing assignments, you should stop
and restart the Server. If a “real system” already collecting data, you might not want to do
this…after a delay of up to 20 minutes or so the changes made to licenses would be recognized.
Stop the FactoryTalk Historian server by selecting Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software
> FactoryTalk Historian SE > Stop FactoryTalk Historian SE
11. Wait for all services to stop and the dialog to automatically close.
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12. When the “stop” dialog closes (be patient!), start FactoryTalk Historian again by selecting Start >
All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > Start FactoryTalk
Historian SE
13. Wait for all services to start and the dialog to automatically close.
14. Back in the Administration Console, under Production Historian, right-click on FTLD1 and
click on Properties…
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15. When a FactoryTalk Historian Server is installed, it automatically installs a FactoryTalk Live Data
(FTLD) Interface on the same computer. Notice the ID of 1 assigned to this interface, which is
where the FTLD1 under Production Historian came from. Also notice that it indicates this
interface is on the SERVER computer. If you wanted to use this interface, you could now click
the Start button (don’t!) and proceed. We don’t want to use this “local” interface during this
training, because it would not support interface buffering or redundancy. We have to have an
interface on a separate computer to use those features. So, to continue, click Cancel without
having made any changes.
16. Next, right-click FTLD1 and click on Delete.
17. Click Yes.
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18. Right-click on Production Historian and click New Data Collection Interface…
19. We want to tell FactoryTalk Historian Server to use a FTLD interface that we’ve got installed on
the Data image. By using an interface on a separate computer, interface buffering and
redundancy can be used. Do the following steps in this order:
a. Verify that the interface ID that will be used is 1. Since you deleted the interface that was
there at default, and was named FTLD1, this new interface will take that ID and FTLD1
name.
b. Change “Computer hosting the interface” to DATA.
c. Click Apply (already selected in below graphic, so grayed out).
d. Click Start (already selected in below graphic, so grayed out).
e. Verify that you see the “Started” status (Under “Service Status”). The FTLD interface on the
Data image is now configured to be able to collect data for FactoryTalk Historian. f. Click
OK.
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20. To “test” data collection by the FTLD1 interface, right-click on the RA Foods application and
select Add Individual Historian Points…
21. Notice that options except for Default scan rate and From application are grayed out at this
time. The default scan class is 1, which is 1 second. There are 10 different scan classes you
could pick from (1-10) in a default configuration (click the down arrow to see them listed), but it is
possible to add more and even edit/delete existing ones. Leaving the scan class at 1, click
Browse Tags…
22. After a delay of maybe 30-45 seconds, a Tag Browser should appear. This capability to
Browse Tags is coming from RSLinx Enterprise, the Data Server we are using in our
FactoryTalk
Application. After this initial delay to bring up the Tag Browser, it should appear faster next time.
23. In the Tag Browser, you see the RA Foods application with BL1 and BL2 shortcuts listed under
it. These are the two shortcuts you observed in the FactoryTalk Directory earlier, each one
“pointing” to a different controller in the SoftLogix chassis. Under the RA Foods application,
navigate to BL1 > Online and click on Program:Proof_Oven
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24. In the pane on the right, scroll down and use Ctrl-click to pick the tags SimpleMachineStep and
SimpleTempZone1. Be careful not pick the SimpleTempSetPtZone1 tag by mistake!
25. Do the following steps in this order:

a. Click Add Tag(s) to List.
b. Verify tags appear on “Selected tag(s) list. Note the “full” tag names will include shortcut
name (BL1), program name from within the controller (Program:Proof_Oven) and then the
actual names of the tags from within the program.
c. Click OK.
26. Review the different information about the tags listed, and then click OK.
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27. To see the tags being collected within FactoryTalk Historian, start System Management Tools
(SMT) by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE >
System Management Tools

a. Move and/or resize the SMT as desired.
b. Check the box to connect to the FactoryTalk Historian Server named SERVER.
c. Under Data, click on Current Values.
d. Click the Search icon to select one or more tags to view their current data.
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29. Click the Search button. Without any filters to limit your search, every tag in your FactoryTalk
Historian server will be shown alphabetically by their name. In this server there are many more
tags than what you initially see, and you’d have to scroll down to find them all.
30. To make tags easier to find, you usually would want to use some of the optional filters like Tag
Mask and/or Point Source. In the Tag Mask field, you would specify the exact tag name you are
looking for, or a “partial” tag name with asterisks (*) for wildcards.
31. The Point Source for our FactoryTalk Live Data tags will be FTLD. Do the following steps in this
order:
a. To limit our search to these tags, specify FTLD for Point Source and click Search.
b. Use Ctrl-click to select both tags then click OK.
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32. Click the Start Updating button. You should see the values of the tags occasionally change.
Over approximately a one minute time period, the MachineStep increments from 0 to 5 and
then resets. When the machine is in step 2, the TempZone1 part of the oven is active, and it’s
value rapidly increases, and then drops down to approximately 65 again after that step. Watch
your tags’ values for a few minutes to observe this repeatable behavior.
33. To see some “archived values”, click Archive Editor and then the Search icon.
34. The same “blank” Search dialog will appear. You could specify a Tag Mask and/or Point
Source to filter your search. As an alternative, since we just recently did a specific search and
want to do the same one again, in the upper-right corner of this dialog click Favorites > Last
Search. Note that you can Save as well as Organize Searches in this area as well.
35. Click Select All and then OK.
36. The last two hours of values in the archives with their time stamps should be shown. Two hours
because the default Start Time is *-2h and End Time is *. The asterisk (*) in FactoryTalk
Historian Time refers to “now” or “current time”. See Appendix B for more information and
examples of syntax used with FactoryTalk Historian Time.
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37. Observe these items:
a. The drop-down list to the left of the Search icon will let you pick from either of the two tags
you added from the Search dialog. But, because of the long tag names it is sometimes hard
to see which tag you’ve picked in this field.
b. The “full” tag name is shown at the top, so you can look here to see what tag you’ve
selected.
c. Since you just recently added this tag to Historian, you might have a Pt Created (Point
Created), following by the values of this tag that are in the archive along with their
timestamps.
d. Interesting to note that although you saw the MachineStep tag going from 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
over and over again, not all of the values were captured in the archive. At default, tags you
add to Historian from the Administration Console have a certain amount of filtering assigned
to them, called Exception and Compression. Adjustments can be made to filter “more” or
“less” from the defaults, and you will spend more time learning about this later in this course.
38. Use the drop-down box to pick the TempZone1 tag and observe its archived values ranging
from approximately 65 to almost 400.
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39. Go to Operation > Licensing and then under Resources open PointSourceLimit.FTLD. Here
is where you can see what licenses you have for the FTLD point source. In our case, 50,000
are possible and so far we’ve used 2 with 49,998 left.
40. One other item to be aware of is under Security > Mappings & Trusts and then the Trusts tab.
For Interfaces to have access to the FactoryTalk Historian Server, it is very common that one or
more Trusts have to already exist or be created. It is good to be aware that installing
FactoryTalk Historian Server automatically includes two Trusts for the FTLD interfaces to work.
FTLDE refers to the FTLD interface application and pibufss.exe is the PI Buffer Subsystem
application that allows the FTLD interface to buffer data. Adding any other interfaces to your
FactoryTalk
Historian Server would require you to add correct Trusts (specified in interface documentation).
41. Close SMT and Administration Console (if still open).
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[Optional] Create SERVER Desktop Shortcuts
The installation of FactoryTalk Historian created a new “Start” menu program group. There are
several utilities in that group which will be used throughout this course. You may wish copy one or
more these shortcuts onto your desktop to provide easier access during the course.
If you wish to create desktop icons, simply Ctrl-drag and drop the shortcuts from the “Start” menu
onto the desktop:
IMPORTANT NOTE: Using “Stop FactoryTalk Historian SE” Shortcut

When using version 2.xx and earlier of FactoryTalk Historian, it was always strongly recommended
to shut down FTHistorian using this shortcut (to batch file pisrvstop.bat) prior to shutting down
Windows to prevent data corruption. Rockwell Automation Knowledgebase AID 48286 (FactoryTalk
Historian SE: How to perform a graceful Server shutdown) discusses how to edit the Group Policy to
automate the execution of the stop batch file during a Windows shutdown.
With version 3.x and newer of FactoryTalk Historian SE, running this stop batch file is not
necessarily required for a clean shutdown of the Server. However, if/when possible it is still
considered a best practice.
This lab is complete
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Lab 2 – FTLD Interface Configuration
Before you begin:
• Need to have successfully completed configurations and added tags specified in Lesson 1, Lab 1.
When you started Lab 1, a FactoryTalk Historian Server was already installed on the Server image,
and Historian Live Data Interface installed on the Data image. Lab 1 walked you through
configurations in the FactoryTalk Administration Console to add a Historian Server and Interface to
the FactoryTalk Directory. It also had you add a couple of tags to Historian from the Administration
Console, and use System Management Tools (SMT) to look at Current versus Archived data for
those tags.
Assuming you successfully completed Lab 1, you know that there is a running FactoryTalk Live Data
Interface on the Data image and it is actively collecting tags from one of the SoftLogix controllers
and sending data from those tags to the Historian Server which is archiving them.
In the different parts of Lab 2, you will look at some of the recommended steps to configure a
FactoryTalk Live Data Interface. Some are options, but strongly recommended and encouraged that
you do on your own FactoryTalk Historian Server systems. You will start by making changes
necessary for the AboutPI-SDK on the Data image to “connect” to the FactoryTalk Historian Server
on the Server image. This “connection”, with required “rights” assigned, will be necessary to allow
the current logged in user on the Data image to be able to use tools “remotely” such as System
Management Tools (SMT) and the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU).
Part A – Configuring Security and AboutPI-SDK to Connect to Server

1. Go to the Data image.
2. Select Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > FactoryTalk
Historian SE System > AboutPI-SDK.
Note: May be very slow to open – be patient!
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a. Click on Connections
b. Click on DATA (you will get an error described in next step)
4. After performing the above steps, you should have received the below error. In this case, you
are using the AboutPI-SDK in its default state. And at default, the AboutPI-SDK assumes
there is a Historian Server installed on the same computer it is installed on, the computer (or
image) named DATA. We do not have a Historian Server on the DATA image, but an Interface.
So, we need to modify the AboutPI-SDK so that it looks for a Historian Server on the image
where we have it installed, the Server image. Click OK on the following dialog to close it.
Notice the “Connection to DATA failed” message that then appears at the bottom of your
AboutPI-SDK.
5. Under Connections, click on Add Server…

a. Enter Network Path or Fully Qualified name of SERVER.
b. Click the “+” sign to open up additional options (has been done below, so showing “-“.
c. Uncheck the Confirm checkbox. This is not really a “required step” at this point, but in this
lab will prevent the AboutPI-SDK from trying to connect as soon as we add this server…we
want to wait a bit to actually try to connect.
d. Click OK.
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7. Now, you should see both DATA and SERVER servers listed. Again, DATA is not really a valid
server so we should get rid of it from this list. Right-click on it and select Remove selected
Server.
8. Click Yes.
9. Now, with the only server listed the “valid” one we have installed on the SERVER image, check
the box next to SERVER (if you get an error, just continue to the next step).
10. You should have received the below error. You have correctly specified a FactoryTalk Historian
server to connect to named SERVER, but in order for the server to allow you to connect, it
needs to know “who you are” and that you “have proper access”. In other words, we have to
make one or more FactoryTalk Historian security setting changes to allow the current user on
this DATA image (Administrator is logged in at default) to have a “connection to” or “access to”
the Historian Server. Click OK to continue. Note the Collection to SERVER failed message
that then appears at bottom of AboutPI-SDK.
11. Go to the Server image.
In order to give individual Users access to the FactoryTalk Historian Server, we have to make some
configuration additions/changes related to Security. This is also required for applications other than
those installed on the FactoryTalk Historian Server itself to be given access. In the last several
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steps you have seen that at this time you can’t access the Historian Server from the AboutPI-SDK
installed on the DATA image.
A standard practice is to create Windows Groups that individual Windows Users can be members of.
In FactoryTalk Historian Server, these Windows Groups can then be mapped to existing FactoryTalk
Historian Security Groups depending on what levels of access you want individual Users within the
Windows Groups to have. Individual Historian Security groups that exist at default for the purposes
of these mappings are:
• FTHAdministrators
• FTHEngineers
• FTHSupervisors
• FTHOperators
See FactoryTalk Historian SE Installation and Configuration Guide for more details regarding
these groups, their levels of access and other security-related information.
12. On the Server image, right-click on Computer and select Manage.
13. Go to Configuration > Local Users and Groups > Groups. Note the two groups that have
already been created on this image, WIN_FTHAdministrators and WIN_FTHEngineers.
There is nothing “special” about these names, you could call these groups whatever you want. What
will be important is that we will put Users in these Windows Groups that we want to be considered
either FTHAdministrators or FTHEngineers, and then map these two Windows Groups to the
Historian Groups using the SMT.
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In our case, we only have one user, Administrator. The Administrator User is the current user
logged into each image you are currently using…Data, Server and Client. So, whatever “rights” we
give the groups Administrator belongs to, will be the “rights” available from each image.
Also, be aware that in our case, since we are using a Windows Workgroup, we have these exact
same Windows Groups configured on each image, as well as the same Administrator User with
same password on each image. Administrator is the default logged in user. These Windows
Groups and Administrator user will be “common” to each image.
Note: Besides FTHAdministrators and FTHEngineers, there is a Historian Group named
FTHSupervisors. This is the only group that can edit archived values of FTLD tags. We
are not going to be including FTHSupervisors in our security mappings, but be aware that
in a “real application” you may want to consider mapping appropriate persons to this
group as well.
14. Click Users, then right-click on Administrator and select Properties.
15. Click the Member Of tab. You will see that on this image, the Administrator user has been
preconfigured as a member of the Windows Groups WIN_FTHAdministrators and
WIN_FTHEngineers groups. Again, there is nothing special about the names of these groups.
For the purpose of this training, we are configuring the Administrator user to belong to these
Windows Groups and will in the next steps be mapping these Windows Groups to FactoryTalk
Historian Groups to give the Administrator user the privileges/access needed for future labs to
work.
16. Close the Administrator Properties and Server Manager dialogs.
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17. Start the SMT if not already open. Go to Security > Mappings & Trusts and on the Mappings
tab click the New button.
18. This dialog is used to Map Windows Users and/or Groups to a FactoryTalk Historian User,
Group or Identity. Start by clicking the Browse button for Windows Account.
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19. Enter WIN_FTHAdministrators and click the Check Names button.
20. It will add SERVER in front of the User Name. Click OK.
21. Now click the Browse button for the PI Identity.
22. Note that you can select Type of Identities, Groups, Users or All. There are pre-configured
Identities, Groups and Users in a FactoryTalk Historian Server that have specific “rights” or
“capabilities” within the server. Things like “who can create or edit tags” and “who can only
view”, is decided by what FactoryTalk Historian Identity, Group or User individual Windows
Users or Groups are mapped to. See FactoryTalk Historian SE Installation and
Configuration Guide for more details on setting up security with mappings.
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23. Do these steps in this order:
a. First, select Type of PI Groups
b. Then, select the FTHAdministrators group.
c. Click OK when done.
24. Click Create to accept this mapping and you will see it listed on your Mappings tab.
25. Select New… to add another mapping.
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26. Following previous steps 18 – 24, create another mapping of Windows Group
WIN_FTHEngineers to PI Group of FTHEngineers. Click Create when done.
27. You Mappings tab should now appear as follows. Important – check carefully!
28. Close the SMT.

29. Return to the DATA image.
30. Click the SERVER checkbox again. Since these mapping have been added and Administrator
is logged onto this image, you are connecting as FTHAdministrators, FTHEngineers and
PIWorld (“everyone”).
31. Close the AboutPI-SDK.
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Part B – Configuring Interface Buffering
Interface Buffering is a recommended option to allow your FTLD interface to continue collecting and
storing data in local buffer files if/when the server is not available. The interface will occasionally
check to see if the server “becomes” available, and when so it sends it the buffered data.
1. Still on the DATA image, open the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU) by going to Start > All
Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > Interface Configuration
Utility
2. Note that you could get to a Connection Manager to check or add/delete connections similar to
what you earlier did with AboutPI-SDK by selecting Interface > SDK Connections. Close the
Connection Manager if you opened it.
3. Using the drop-down arrow, select the FTLD1 interface that the ICU already knows is
configured and running on this image. Remember, earlier on the Server image, using the
FactoryTalk Administration Console, you added an FTLD Interface to the Server that is on the
Data image and known as FTLD1. This is why the ICU already “knows” about this interface.
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4. Note the following visible on the default General area of the ICU:
a. You are in the General area of the ICU.
b. This interface uses Point Source of FTLD.
c. Interface ID is 1.
d. The interface is collecting tags for a server named SERVER.
e. In the Scan Class area you can view and even edit, add and delete scan classes.
f. The interface is currently Ready and Running.
5. To configure this interface for buffering, select Tools > Buffering.
6. The PI Buffer Subsystem has not yet been enabled. Select Yes on the dialog that appears.
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7. The rest of the buffering configuration will be done in the PI ICU. Read this message and then
click OK.
8. In the PI ICU, select Service from the list on the left. The ICU recommends that the Interface
Service should have a dependency on the PI Buffer Subsystem. It recommends that this
dependency be created. Select Yes from the dialog that appears.
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9. After telling the ICU to create the dependency, you will see the pibufss added to the list of
service dependencies.
11. The Buffering Manager appears showing the buffering system status, and some statistics.
Click on Settings to configure the options for the buffering system.
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12. The Buffering Settings dialog allows you to set Global and Server specific settings for
buffering. Select the Show advanced global configuration link.
13. We are going to force the system to always buffer data by setting the AF SDK Buffering to
Always buffer. Select Save and close.
14. Close the Buffer Manager.
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15. In the General area of the ICU, there is now a Buffering Status setting and button to Enable
the connection. Click the Enable button.
16. The connection to the server must be configured for the Buffering Subsystem. Type SERVER
into the textbox for Server, and then click Next.
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17. The Buffering Manager needs to be assigned an identity to use to connect to the archive
server. Click Browse to select from the list of identities and groups available.
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18. The following dialog appears, select PI Group, then select FTHEngineers and click OK.
19. The selected identity is assigned to the server connection.
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20. The following message warns that the connection is using an administrative level connection
which fails the default security tests. We are going to ignore the warning and use this setting.
Click Yes.
21. The connection to the server is established. Click the Exit add server wizard button and be
returned to the PI ICU.
22. In the ICU, click Apply (it will not be grayed out yet), and then note that the Buffering Status is
now set to On.
23. Leave the ICU open for next steps.
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Part C – Configuring Disconnected Startup
Disconnected Startup is a feature that allows a remote FTLD Interface to start from a local cache file
with or without a valid connection to the host Historian Server. This critical functionality prevents
data loss when an interface needs to start up and it does not have a connection to the Historian
Server. Disconnected startup also provides the added benefit of faster Interface startups (even with
a valid connection the Historian Server). As a rule, using Disconnected Startup is recommended.
However, it is not enabled by default.
To properly enable Disconnected Startup on the default configuration of a FTLD Interface, a conflict
must be resolved between the Cache synchronization period of 250 milliseconds and three default
high speed scan classes:
• Scan Class 2 (0.05 sec) Scan Class 3 (0.1 sec)
• Scan Class 4 (0.25 sec)
These three high speed scan classes are typically too fast for most Data Servers, so if deleted they
probably won’t be “missed”. If data collection faster than .5 seconds is required, one could consider
using a FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition (ME) module which can reliably collect data from a
ControlLogix processor at scan rates as fast as 10 milliseconds.
1. On the left side of the ICU, click on the General section. In the Scan Classes area, select
these scan frequencies one at a time and delete them with the “X” (Remove selected scan
class) icon.
• Scan Frequency 0.05 sec (be aware when this one is deleted, the ones below will “move up”
the list)
• Scan Frequency 0.1 sec (same comment as above)
• Scan Frequency 0.25 sec
Note: Be aware that you started with scan classes 1-10 and when you are done you only
have scan classes 1-7. Scan Frequencies that used to be numbered 5-10 would now be
numbered 2-7. In a “real” application, if the FTH System is new (i.e., no tags configured),
you simply use the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU) to delete the three scan classes
from the interface as you have above. However, if the FTH System is existing (i.e., tags
are already configured), then all tags should first be changed to use scan class 1 (1.0
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sec) prior to deleting the three scan classes from the interface. Then, after the three
conflicting scan classes have been deleted, the system's existing tags can be modified a
second time to use the remaining 7 scan classes (now numbered 2-7).
2. Click Apply in the lower-right corner of the dialog and then OK on the message that appears.

a. Click on Disconnected Startup on the left side of the ICU.
b. Check the checkbox for Enable disconnected startup (with point caching).
c. Click Apply
4. Read this message and click OK.
5. Restart the interface by clicking the Restart interface service button.
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6. Look for Ready and Running messages at the bottom.
7. Close the ICU on the DATA image.
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Lab 3 – Using Discover Historian Points
Before you begin:
• Need to have successfully completed configurations and added tags specified in Lesson 1, Lab 1.
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Often times there are many tags from different sources that you would like to archive with Historian.
From the FactoryTalk Administration Console you can select to Add Individual Historian Points,
which will let you browse for one tag at a time from the FactoryTalk Directory. Another option is to
Discover Historian Points, which you will use in this lab to bring in potentially many tags from
many different sources…a very powerful tool to easily add tags to your Historian system. Both
FactoryTalk Historian SE as well as ME support a similar Discover Historian Points functionality.
2. If not already open, start the FactoryTalk Administration Console by selecting Start > All
Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Administration Console
3. Select Network directory and OK.
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4. Do the following steps.
a. Browse through the RA Foods application and under the RSLE Server double-click on
Communication Setup.
b. Notice that there are two shortcuts, BL1 and BL2. Each of these is pointing to a different
controller.
c. Click on BL2 and then BL1 again and notice either the controller in Slot 2 or 3 is assigned.
5. Right-click on the RA Foods at the top of the tree and select Discover Historian Points.

a. We only want to discover points that are accessed by Linx Enterprise, so de-select the
other three sources.
b. Click Edit Discovery Rules.
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7. A dialog will appear and there will be no rule definition files created at default. Click Rule File
Management…
8. Click New to create a new Rule file.

9. Enter Rule File Name of Tags to Discover and click OK.
10. Select the Active checkbox for this Rule file and click the Open button to make this rule file the
“Current” file.
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11. Note the path and actual xml file name being created. Click New to define the rules this file will
use to Discover Historian Points.
12. Identify two items to look for, tags that have either StorageDint OR Shift_Timer in their names.
Click a “+” sign that appears in order to select the “or” option. Your dialog should appear as
follows (do NOT click OK yet!).
13. While tags are being “discovered”, a configuration file can be used to set specific tag attributes.
Rather than use the “Default Configuration”, select <New Configuration…> with the drop-down
box.
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14. A dialog will appear. Do the following steps in this order:
a. Enter File Name of Discovered Tag Attributes.
b. On the General tab, enter Description of Tag was Discovered.
c. Enter Eng Units of ms.
15. On the Archive tab, notice the specific attributes that could be changed from the default as
these tags are “Discovered”. Do not make any changes and click OK.
16. Click OK.
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17. The Rule Editor dialog should appear as follows. Click Save, then Close (the Close button will
appear after you click Save).
18. On the Discover Historian Points dialog, click Next > to start the Discovery process.
19. A dialog such as the following will appear during the Discovery process.
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20. When Discovery has completed, you should get a dialog like this that indicates 16 discovered
points were found that have names containing either Shift_Timer or StorageDint.
Note: In the dialog being displayed, notice that some of the tags are coming from the
controller with shortcut of BL1, and other tags are in the controller with shortcut of BL2.
In this example, all of these tags are “controller-scoped”, but if tags would have been
“program-scoped”, they would have been found as well. This discovery process could
be a huge time saver compared with finding points to add one-at-a-time using “Add
Individual Historian Points” or some other method.
21. Do the following steps
a. Click on None to de-select all of the tags that were discovered.
b. Select only the [BL1]Shift_Timer.ACC and [BL1]StorageDint1 tags.
c. Select Confirm Points.
22. You should see Added 2 points to Production Historian (FTLD1) towards the top of the dialog
that is still open. Click OK.
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23. If not already running, start System Management Tools (SMT).
24. Select Points > Point Builder and then the Search icon.
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a. Specify Point Source of ftld.
b. Click Search.
c. Go to the bottom of the list and use Ctrl-clicks to select the two discovered tags.
d. Click OK.
26. Clicking on either tag (one at a time), you should see the Descriptor and Eng Units you
specified in the Configuration file that was used with your Rule file. Note that if you had
discovered hundreds or thousands of points, rather than just two, they all would have been
discovered and brought into Historian with a common set of configuration attributes.
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27. Close the SMT and Administration Console.
This lab and lesson is complete
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Lesson 2 - Understanding Tags and Using Excel Tag
Configurator

After completing this lesson, you should be able to:
• Understand concepts, terminology and definitions of tags and their attributes.
• Use the Tag Configurator in Microsoft Excel to perform bulk tag creation and manipulation
Understanding Tags
Points, sometimes also called tags, are the basic building blocks of a Historian system, because
they are how you track the events that comprise your data history. When the System Manager or
Field Services Engineer installs a Historian Server, he creates a Historian Point for every source of
data that the Historian System needs to track.
Each point has more than 50 attributes that define exactly how the data should be collected for that
point. These attributes determine how frequently the point gets new values, the data type of the
point values (whether integer or string, for example), who is allowed to view and/or edit the point,
and so on. The Historian Base Subsystem stores points and their attributes in the Point Database.
The System Management Tools (SMT) contains many tools used to manage the Historian
System:
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During the Lesson 1 lab, you used the SMT tools of Data > Archive Editor and Data > Current
Values to verify that Historian was “connected” to the CLX controller and able to read and record tag
values.
The SMT also has a very important tool for creating, monitoring and/or editing the configuration of
tags. This tool is Points > Point Builder.
When Points > Point Builder is selected, such as in above graphic, the right portion will allow you
to create new tags or edit existing tags after using the search feature. A number of tabs that appear
for the editing of the tags are:
• General
• Archive
• Classic
• Security
• System
The tabs that are most often used to monitor and/or edit Tags that come from our FactoryTalk Live Data
(FTLD) Interfaces are as follows. Note: Not all tabs and fields are listed below. See online help and/or
other FactoryTalk Historian SE reference manuals for additional details.
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General Tab:
Name:
The Tag attribute specifies the name of the point/tag. Many Historian users use the terms tag and
point interchangeably, which is fine. Technically though, the tag is actually just the name of the
point. Follow these rules for naming Historian points:
• The name must be unique on the Historian Server
• Tag name length limited to 256 characters
• The first character must be alphanumeric, the underscore (_), or the percent sign (%)
• No control characters are allowed; such as linefeeds or tabs
• The following characters are not allowed: * ’ ? ; { } [ ] | \ ` ‘ “
Point Source:
Identifies the source interface for this tag. Tags coming from FactoryTalk Live Data will be identified
with FTLD.
Engineering Units (Eng Units):

The Engineering Units field is optional.
Extended Descriptor (Exdesc):

The Extended Descriptor field is not used for most FTLD tags. However, for an “Event Triggered
Input” tag, this field will store the “event” that triggers the read of this type of tag.
Source Tag:
For a standard FTLD “input” tag, the Source Tag field is not used. If a tag is configured as an
Output Tag, the Source Tag field identifies the tag that will be used as the source of the data to be
output
(written) and also acts as a “trigger tag” (the source tag changing triggers a “write” of the source tags
value to the destination tag).
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Archive Tab:
Typical Value:
Documents an example of a reasonable value for this point. For a numeric tag, it must be greater
than or equal to the zero, and less than or equal to the zero plus the span.
Zero:
Indicates a point’s lowest possible value. Zero does not have to be the same as the instrument zero,
but that is usually a logical choice. This attribute is required for all numeric data type points and is
critically important for float16 points.
Span:
The difference between the top of the range and the bottom of the range. This attribute is required
for all numeric data type points.
The care with which one should set the Zero and Span attributes depends upon a variety of factors.
For example, the Zero and Span affect the very values that are stored in the archive for float16
Historian points. The Zero and Span are used by the Historian Data Archive, various client
applications, and some interfaces, as described below.
• If the PointType attribute is float16, the Zero and Span attributes determine the maximum
and minimum values that can be stored in the Historian Archive for that point. If a value
below Zero is sent to the Historian point, the digital state Under Range is written to the
Historian point instead of the value. If a value above Zero+Span is sent to the Historian
point, then the digital state Over Range is written to the Historian point. The actual value that
is stored in the archive for float16 points is a scaled integer between 0 and 32767. For
example, if the Zero is 0 and the Span is 100 and a value of 50 is sent to the Historian point,
then the value is stored as 16383. If the Zero or Span is changed for the Historian point,
then the actual value that is stored in the Archive is not changed, but the scaled value that is
displayed will be different.
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• For point types other than float16, the Zero and Span attributes do not affect the values that
are stored in the Archive. Values below Zero and values above Zero+Span can be archived
with no problem.
• The Zero and Span Attributes should never be changed for digital Historian points. They are
set internally by the Historian Server. Changing the Zero and Span for digital points will
invalidate the point configuration.
• The Zero and Span Attributes affect the displays for some client applications. In
HistorianProcessBook for example, one can choose to scale the y-axis of trended data
according to the "database." If this option is chosen, then the Zero and Span for the
Historian point is used to scale the y-axis.
• Some interfaces use the Zero and Span attributes to scale the values that are sent to
Historian. This scaling has nothing to do with the scaling of the stored archive values for
float16 Historian points that is done by the Historian Archive. One should consult the
interface-specific documentation to determine whether any scaling of incoming or outgoing
values is performed.
Scan:
Interfaces that honor this attribute will not update points whose scan flag is set to OFF.
Archiving:
The archiving flag must be set to ON (1) for a point to be archived. This flag can be set to OFF (0) to
stop archiving of a point.
Step:
The step flag affects only numeric points. It defines how numeric archived values are interpolated.
The default behavior, step OFF (0), treats archived values as a continuous signal. Adjacent archived
values are linearly interpolated. For example, at 12:00:00, the value 101.0 is archived and at
12:01:00, the value 102.0 is archived. A request for the archive value at 12:00:30 would return
101.5.
A step flag of ON (1) treats the archived values discretely. Adjacent archived values are not
interpolated; an archived value is assumed constant until the next archived value.
Shutdown:
In some cases, it is useful to record when the Archive was shut down. That way there is a clear
indication of a gap in the data collection. Points may be configured so that Historian will
automatically add a shutdown event with the timestamp of the Historian Server shutdown. These
events are called shutdown events.
The shutdown flag for a point is set to TRUE (1) to indicate that shutdown events should be
recorded for this tag. The default is TRUE.
For points collected from interfaces on distributed collection nodes, set this flag to FALSE (0)
because data buffering will retain the data until the home node is running again. Therefore, there are
no data gaps to identify with shutdown events.
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Compressing:
The compression flag should be set to ON (1) for most points. With compression off, every value
sent to the Snapshot is saved in the archive.
Compression should be turned on for all real-time points in the system. Compression affects digital
points, since a new value is recorded only when the current value changes.
Exception Deviation and Compression Deviation:

Exception reporting specifications determine which events the interface sends to Historian and
which it discards. These options/features will be discussed in much more detail in a future lesson.
Classic Tab:
Location 1 - 5:
The uses of “Location” fields are based on the type of Point Source of a tag. In the case of FTLD
Point Sources, the Locations are used as follows:
• Location1: Defines the Interface ID (FTLDx, where x is the ID). The DEFAULT is 1,
typically used when the Interface is installed on the FTHSE Server. If Interfaces are installed
remotely (on non-FTHSE computer, typically on a remote FTView SE and/or RSLinx
Enterprise computer), then you would reference that Interface ID (typically 2 or larger).
• Location2: Not used
• Location3: Tag type
o 0: Polled or Event Trigger Input point
o 1: Unsolicited/Advised Input point (default)
o 2: Output point
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• Location4: Scan class number (DEFAULT is 1, equates to 1 second scan rate). The scan
class number is defined in the Data Collection Interface Properties. This is found in the
FactoryTalk Administration Console (FTAC) > System > Connections > Historical Data
> Production Historian > FTLD1:
Right-click on Properties and select Scan Classes tab which appears as follows. Note that the
below are the “default” scan classes. If you have deleted or added any scan classes to your
system, your actual list may appear different.
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• Location5:
o 0: Polled from cache (default)
o 1: Polled from device (only use for event triggered tags)
Instrument Tag:
For a standard Polled or Advised Mode FTLD tag, the Instrument Tag field is identifying the actual
location from where the data from this tag is coming from. If using “Discover Historian Points…” or
“Add Individual Historian Points…” wizards, the contents of the Instrument Tag field will
automatically match the name of the tag. However, names of tags can be modified, which often
would be desirable. If the name of a tag is modified, the Instrument Tag field would still point to the
“actual” source of data, the original tag in the CLX processor, for example.
For a tag configured as Output Mode, the Instrument Tag field identifies where the data from the
Source Tag is being “written to” (the “destination” of the data transfer).
If Tags are no longer needed:

Decommissioning Points:
Typically, to decommission a point, you set the Scan attribute to 0 (off):
1. Open SMT and select the PI Server for that point.
2. In the System Management plug-ins list, under Points, choose Point Builder.
3. Search for the point.
4. Click the Archive tab.
5. Under Scan, click Off.
Deleting Points:
When you delete a point, you lose all data for that point, so you break any client displays that use
the point. Further, once you delete a point, you can't get it back. If you are unsure about the purpose
of a point’s existence or about the need for any historical data associated with it, it’s safer to
decommission the point rather than deleting it.
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Lab 1 – Working with FTH Tags in Excel
Before you begin:
• Historian and Interface should be configured as per Lesson 1.
• The following tags must be added manually to the FactoryTalk Historian server, or imported
from file Tags Added in Lesson 1 Labs.xlsx in C:\Class Files\FTH Tags\ on the Client
image. The first two Parts of this Lab establish a connection from the Client image to the
FactoryTalk Historian Server and then add the PI Tag Configurator add-in to Excel. The
tags could be exported from the .xlsx file after Part B.
o RAFoods:RSLE:BL1.Program:Proof_Oven.SimpleMachineStep
o RA Foods:RSLE:BL1.Program:Proof_Oven.SimpleTempZone1
o RA Foods:RSLE:BL1.Shift_Timer.ACC
o RA Foods:RSLE:BL1.StorageDint1
Part A - Configuring CLIENT image to communicate with SERVER

1. Verify that you are on the CLIENT image by checking the hostname on the background image:
2. Launch the AboutPI-SDK:

Note: May be very slow to open, please be patient!
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3. Select Connections.
4. Note that at default the AboutPI-SDK assumes it will be communicating with a Historian server
on the same image (computer) that it is installed on.
5. Select Connections > Add Server…

a. Identify the server as SERVER.
b. After clicking the “+”, uncheck Confirm (this is not a “required” step at this point, but when
unchecked, instead of connecting as soon as you click OK we will wait for a few more steps
before actually testing our connection).
c. Click OK.
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7. Right-click on CLIENT and select Remove selected Server (requires Yes response).
8. Click on the SERVER checkbox and verify connection to SERVER without errors. This is
working because of the Mappings done in Lesson 1, Lab2, and the fact that the same
Administrator user is the current logged in user on this CLIENT image. Review Lesson 1, Lab
2, for additional information on this topic.
9. Close the PI SDK Utility.
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Part B - Using the PI Builder Add-In
1. First, open Microsoft Excel. Then, in Excel, open the BA2 Tags.xls file located in C:\Class
Files. This is a file that was "imported" from another FactoryTalk Historian Server and we are
going to export them into your current Historian Server. Using PI Builder in this way
demonstrates the capability of “saving” tag configurations if you need to “restore” them later, or,
“copying” tags from one FactoryTalk Historian Server and possibly using them later as a basis of
tags to create in a different FactoryTalk Historian Server.
Note: The text at the top of the columns indicates what information (attribute) is contained in the
cells below. Items such as the name of the Tag, if archiving is on or off, when this tag was last
changed and by who, settings for Compression (deviation, percent and max), etc., are contained
within this spreadsheet.
2. We want to add these tags to the FactoryTalk Historian system for use in a later exercise. Go to
the PI Builder tab and select the Data Server of SERVER.
3. Once Data Server of SERVER is specified, click the Publish button.
4. On the Publish Options dialog, change to Edit Mode of Create Only and then click the OK
button.
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5. Verify results and click Close.
6. These tags will start being collected within a couple of minutes. Create a new workbook to work
with by clicking File > New.
7. Select Blank Workbook and then Create.
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8. We are going to import into Excel one of the tags that we added to Historian in the previous lab.
On the PI Builder tab, click PI Points > Find PI Points.
9. Click the Show or hide extra search features button.
10. Set the Name to *Temp* and Point Source to FTLD. Note that the Tag Mask includes two
asterisks (*) which are “wildcards”. The text Temp (not case sensitive) could be located
anywhere in the tag name in this example, as long as Point Source is FTLD (also not case
sensitive). Click the Search button.
11. Click the tag that was found and then the OK button.
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12. The next dialog basically is used to identify “which tag attributes” you would like to display in the
spreadsheet. Collapse the tree views so that only the six main categories are displayed and
select (check) them all. Click OK (not shown below).
13. Click Close.
14. Note that at this time there is only one tag that meets the criteria of Temp in the name and FTLD
Point Source. We want to use PI Builder to create additional tags in Historian and edit them as
a “group” (rather than one at a time as you might do with Point Builder in the SMT). Begin by
selecting the entire Row 2, right-clicking and selecting Copy.
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15. Click and drag to select Rows 3, 4 and 5. Right-click and select Paste (click the “first” Paste
option).
16. Press Esc to get rid of the dotted line around the first row and click an empty cell to “de-select”
rows 3-5. You should have four identical rows as follows.
17. The first thing we want to do is configure this spreadsheet so that when you export it the tag you
started with will be “edited”, and three new, similar tags will be “created”. In the Name column,
containing the tag “names”, change the 2nd, 3rd and 4th tag names as follows (…TempZone2, 3
and 4).
18. Scroll to the right and note that column AF is identified as instrumenttag. There are some
syntax differences, but the content is very similar to the default tag names. You can modify tag
names, but the instrument tags are critical to “point at” the specific sources of tags, even if you
do change the tag names in Historian. In this column, make similar changes so that the 2 nd, 3rd
and 4th tags are coming from different tags in the controller.
Note: All of the above tags already exist in our SoftLogix controller identified with
shortcut of BL1 in RSLinx Enterprise. The procedure you are using is another example of
how you might add tags to Historian that “come from” or “point to” existing tags in a
controller.
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The other methods you’ve used so far are Add Individual Historian Points and Discover
Historian Points, both accessed from the FactoryTalk Administration Console.
19. Now let’s make some changes to some of the other attributes of these tags before exporting.
Look at columns T and W. You will learn more about this later in the class, but these columns
are storing the amount of Exception Deviation that will be used to potentially filter the tag values
between the values coming into the FTLD Interface and the values that the Interface will pass on
to the Historian Server Snapshot (considered the “current values” in the Historian). Excdev
(exception deviation) is in “units”, where excdevpercent (exception deviation percent) is in
“percent of span”. At default, the attribute of span for a tag, which is assumed to be the tag’s
“range”, is a value of 100. So, at default with these tags, excdev of 0.25 “matches” the
excdevpercent of 0.25%.
20. Just as an example, change the excdev values slightly to 0.26.
21. Now, as mentioned earlier, both excdev and excdevpercent control the amount of Exception
Deviation that these tags will use. Very important to realize that the excdevpercent attribute
has precedence or would “override” the excdev attribute (one of them would have to override
the other since they control the same function). So, in order for our new excdev values to be
used, right-click on and delete the entire excdevpercent column (column W).
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22. Don’t make any changes, but note that Columns P and S are “similar” attributes for the amount
of Compression Deviation, another type of filtering you will learn more about later. In this case
as well, compdevpercent would override compdev, so if you wanted to use this worksheet to
modify the amount of compdev, you would need to delete the column compdevpercent so it
wouldn’t override.
23. One last modification to make in these tags is the step attribute. In our simulated TempZone
temperatures, there are times when the values are not changing and when they do they will
quickly ramp up. In order to give a trend of this data a more “accurate” representation, turn “on”
the step attributes by changing from 0 to 1. See beginning of this lesson for a more complete
description of the step attribute.
Note: We are changing the excdev attribute of these tags to 0.26 and step attribute to 1
for the purposes of this training. In the “real world”, you would need to determine proper
settings for these and all other attributes based on the situation.
24. To export these tags to Historian, click the Publish button.
25. Since we are editing one tag and creating three (we started by importing the *TempZone1 tag),
be sure to select Edit Mode of Create and Edit. You will get errors if you only say Edit and
some of the tags don’t exist yet, or if you say Create and one or more tags already exist. Then,
click OK.
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26. You should get these results. Click Close.
27. Close Excel and don’t save any workbooks.

28. Start System Management Tools (SMT).
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a. If not already checked, check the Historian Server named SERVER.
b. Select Points > Point Builder.
c. Click the Search button.

a. Enter Tag Mask of *Temp*
b. Enter Point Source of FTLD
c. Click Search
d. Note tags TempZone1 through TempZone4 now exist in Historian
e. Click Select All
f. Click OK
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27. Note that one at a time, each tag can be “selected” by clicking on in the list above, and individual
attributes for selected tag appear below with tabs “categorizing” the attributes.
28. Note the Save icon above the list of tags. If you edited any attributes of “selected” tags (don’t at
the moment), you would need to be sure and click Save before going to any other tag or your
changes will be lost!
29. Select any one of these tags and look at the Archive tab. You should see the two edits we
made to each of these tags.
• Exception Deviation of 0.26
• Step of On
30. Confirm all four of your TempZone tags have the above attributes set to 0.26 and On.
31. Close the SMT.
This lab is complete, but read next few pages for additional information
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Changing Tag Names
(Do not do these steps…read for informational purposes only)
Note that many tag names resulting from using the Discover Historian Points… and Add Individual
Historian Points… can be very long, including FactoryTalk Application, Area and Server names such
as the ones you’ve just been working with in this lab:
If you don’t want to work with these long, somewhat “complex” names, one option available to you is
in the SMT Point Builder. By selecting the Rename button, you can rename the tag. All of the data
previously archived will still be associated with this tag: For example, in the dialog box below, after
clicking the Rename button, the new name of TempZone1 is being given to the tag originally named
RA Foods:RSLE:BL1.Program:Proof_Oven.SimpleTempZone1.
If wanting to change many names at once, the PI Tag Configurator or PI Builder (as of FactoryTalk
Historian 5.01) in Excel could be very useful.
However, if one attempts to change the names in the tag field and export the tags to Historian as an
Edit, there would be errors because the exporting function would be looking for tags with these
exact names to already exist.
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The example below shows what would happen if tag names were manually changed in Column B
and you tried to Edit the tags by exporting. You would get errors because the export feature is
thinking these tag names should already exist.
Note: This section is showing examples using PI Tag Configurator, which required naming a
column “NewTag” in the Excel spreadsheet before exporting. Be aware that the newer Excel Add-
in of PI Builder (as of FactoryTalk Historian 5.01), allows what one might consider a more
appropriate column name for this purpose…”NewName”.
Bulk-changing of tag names in Excel can be done, but what must occur is an inserted column
identified as NewTag.
• Names entered into that column will be the new names for the tags, and data previously
archived will still be associated with those tags.
• If a row in that column is left “empty”, that tag name will not be affected.
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In the following example, notice the NewTag column that has been inserted and the four tags have
new, “reduced-length” tag names specified. When exported, all four of these tags were “edited”, all
given new (or modified) tag names.
Important to realize that the instrumenttag column, identified as column Z in the below, would
remain with the original, “full” tag names. The instrumenttag setting for a tag identifies the actual
address and/or location of the data.
Note: If you had time and actually followed this procedure to change your “Temp” tag names,
please change them back as the original names will be used in future exercises. Sorry for
any inconvenience, but congratulations for your great initiative! ☺
This lesson is complete
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Lesson 3 - Using VantagePoint

• Importing Historian Site Edition tags into VantagePoint
• Create simple VantagePoint trend using Site Edition data
• Create simple VantagePoint Excel report using Site Edition data
• View created VantagePoint reports in the VantagePoint Portal
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Lab 1 – Using VantagePoint to Visualize Historian Data
Before you begin:
• FactoryTalk Historian and Interface configured as per Lesson 1
• Tags exist in Historian from Lesson 1 and 2, or imported from Tags as of end of Lesson 2
Lab.xlsx file from C:\Class Files\FTH Tags on CLIENT image
Part A – Creating VantagePoint FactoryTalk Connector and Importing Historian Tags

1. Go to the Client image:
2. Select Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk VantagePoint > Manager.
3. If the first time running the VantagePoint Manager, you may get this message. Click Run.
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4. Expand the folders System > Sources. Right-click on FactoryTalk and select New > Item…
5. The FactoryTalk Connector in VantagePoint (the “thing” you are creating) will need a FactoryTalk
User that has access to FactoryTalk resources that it needs. You could either “point” to an
existing user that has required privileges, or let the below wizard create its own user. Go ahead
and create a new user by leaving User name of VantagePoint, specify password of rockwell and
click Next.
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6. When asked, select Yes, please (very polite software, eh?) and click Finish.
7. Select I would like to import FactoryTalk Historian tags and click Next (Next button not shown
below):
8. Check the box for Production Historian and click Next (Next button not shown below):
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9. The next dialog is used when importing FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition (ME) tags. You
would need to specify the Historian ME connector in the FactoryTalk Directory (one would need to
have been created to communicate with the ME module), RSLinx Enterprise shortcut to the
Controller the ME module is reading from, and the slot the Controller is in. We are importing from
a FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition server, so just click Finish (not shown below).
10. When tags are imported, you should get following message. Note that you are not really
“importing” any data…you are just creating “references” in VantagePoint to the Historian tags, so
when VantagePoint is asked to provide a report based on data from Historian tags, it will know
where to “find them”. Click OK.
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11. Go to System > Sources > FactoryTalk > local host > Historians > Production Historian and
click on Tags. You will see references to the tags in your Site Edition Server displayed in the
pane below. If you scroll down the list you will see the BL1 tags that are in Historian at this time.
12. Close VantagePoint Manager.
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Part B – Creating and Publishing a VantagePoint Trend
1. Open FactoryTalk VantagePoint Trend.
2. Again, if first time running Trend you will get the following. Click Run.
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3. In the Model tree, go to System > Sources > FactoryTalk > localhost > Historians >
Production Historian > Tags and double-click on the …TempZone1 and …TempZone2 tags
(one at a time) to add them to the trend display on the right. You could also drag and drop them
onto the trend surface.
4. Click the Live Mode and Stack Y-axes tools:
5. You should see the pens on the trend separated, each with their own Y-axes.
6. Select File > Publish.
7. Click on MyEnterprise and select the New Folder icon. Name the new folder MyPlant.
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• Create another folder in the MyPlant folder named Reports
• With the Reports folder selected, enter report name of MyPlant Oven TempZone Trend
Click Publish
9. Close VantagePoint Trend.
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Part C – Creating and Publishing a VantagePoint Excel Report
IMPORTANT NOTE
When launching Microsoft Excel, do not activate it. When the following screen appears, click
Cancel.
This screen will appear every time Excel is launched. It does not need to be activated
for any of these lab exercises. Always click CANCEL when this window appears.
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1. Start Microsoft Excel 2010. (do not activate it! See previous page)
2. Select File > Open and open C:\Class Files\MyPlant Oven TempZone Summary
Template.xlsx
3. Click on Sheet2. You will see a partially created report intending to show Minimum, Average and
Maximum values of data that needs to be populated on Sheet1.
4. Select Sheet1 and click on cell C3, which has a fill color of red. Click on VantagePoint tab, then
Insert.
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5. Select History and then Next button (the Next button is not shown below):

a. Go to System > Sources > FactoryTalk > localhost > Historians > Production Historian
> Tags
b. Click on the …TempZone1 tag and add it to the list on the right with the > button c. Click
Next
7. Click Use this Period (Last 5 minutes) and then the Next button (the Next button is not shown
below).
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a. Click Narrow data format
b. Check Skip advanced options
c. Click Next.
9. Uncheck TagName and Quality String, leaving Datetime and Value checked, and then click
Finish.
10. Your Sheet1 should be populated with the last 5 minutes of data for the …TempZone1 tag in
columns C and D:
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11. Click on cell F3 which has a fill color of green and select VantagePoint > Insert.
12. Verify History is selected and click Next.

13. Click New... to select a new tag.
14. Select the …TempZone2 tag, click the > button to move it to the right, and then click Next:
15. Use the Last 5 minutes time period and click Next
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a. Select Narrow
b. Check Skip advanced options
c. Click Next
17. Uncheck TagName and Quality String and click Finish.
18. You should now see …TempZone2 timestamps and values in columns F and G:
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19. Click the Sheet2 tab. Your “template” should be displaying a “summary report” based on data
VantagePoint has populated on Sheet1 for the …TempZone1 and …TempZone2 tags.
20. With Sheet2 being displayed, select VantagePoint > Publish.
21. Select A report with no parameters and click Next (the Next button is not shown below):
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22. Go to MyEnterprise > MyPlant > Reports and specify name of MyPlant Oven TempZone
Summary and click Next.
23. Click Finish and then close Excel 2010. Save the changes to your workbook.
24. Open VantagePoint Portal.
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25. Go to Reports > MyEnterprise.
26. Select the MyPlant Oven TempZone Trend report (select Run to run application if asked the first
time).
27. Select the MyPlant Oven TempZone Summary report.
28. Close the VantagePoint Portal.
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a. Go to the SERVER image. The VantagePoint Server is actually installed on this image. You
were accessing the VantagePoint Manager, Trend and Excel reporting functionality from the
CLIENT image, but publishing reports to the VantagePoint Server.
b. Open the VantagePoint Portal on this image from Start > All Programs > Rockwell
Software > FactoryTalk VantagePoint > Portal.
c. Select Reports > MyEnterprise.
d. Display your MyPlant Oven TempZone Trend and Excel reports in the VantagePoint Portal
on this image.
Note: FactoryTalk Historian SE includes a “bundled” version of VantagePoint EMI that you
are using to create report, publish to the VantagePoint model and view from one or more
computers (images) that have access to the VantagePoint Server. This “bundled” version
includes one Named User, so only one person is licensed to create and view these reports.
Additional licenses can be purchased, so “many” persons potentially could create and
view reports made with FactoryTalk Historian SE data. Isn’t that AWESOME!? ☺
30. Close VantagePoint Portal.
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Lesson 4 - Understanding and Using Exception and
Compression

• Edit exception testing to a tag
• Edit compression testing to a tag
• Trending and displaying the values of tags from the archives to see the differences caused by
exception and compression
Exception Specifications
Most Historian interfaces use Exception Specifications to determine whether the raw values that they
receive are sent to the Snapshot Subsystem. The interface-specific documentation must be consulted
to determine whether or not the interface uses the exception specifications.
The exception specifications consist of the following attributes:
Attribute Name Point Class Type Default Value Limits

ExcMin Base uint16 0 seconds 0 to 65535
ExcMax Base uint16 600 seconds 0 to 65535
ExcDev Base float32 1 eng unit 0 to Span
ExcDevPercent Base float32 1 % of Span 0 to 100
Note: When adding FTLD points using “Add Individual Historian Points…” or “Discover Historian
Points…” from the FactoryTalk Administration Console, the default for ExcDev is .25 engineering
units and ExcDevPercent is .25% of Span.
ExcMin is the exception minimum time, ExcMax is the exception maximum time, ExcDev is the
exception deviation in engineering units, and ExcDevPercent is the exception deviation in units of
percent of span. ExcDev and ExcDevPercent are related by
ExcDev = ExcDevPercent * Span / 100 where Span is defined by the Span attribute. If either
ExcDev or ExcDevPercent is changed, the other is automatically updated to be compatible. If both
are changed at once, the change to ExcDevPercent takes precedence.
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Raw values from an interface pass the exception test when the following conditions are met:
The difference between the new value and the last value that passed exception is greater than
ExcDev.
AND
The difference between the timestamp of the new value and the timestamp of the last value
that passed exception is greater than ExcMin, where ExcMin has units of seconds.
OR
The difference between the timestamp of the new value and timestamp of the last value that
passed exception is greater than ExcMax, where ExcMax has units of seconds.
The last value that passed the exception test is called the "old value." The next value that passes the
exception test is called the "new value." In between the "old value" and the "new value" there may be
several values that are received that do not pass the exception test. The last of these values that are
received between the "old value" and "new value" is called the "previous value." There will not be a
"previous value" if the interface did not receive a value between the "old value" and the "new value."
When a new value passes exception, the "previous value" (if it exists) and the "new value" will be sent
to the Snapshot Subsystem. The "new value" will then become the "old value," and the cycle
continues. Note that the "previous value" will be sent to Historian even if it was received before
ExcMin seconds has expired. ExcMin applies only to the "new value."
The time between exceptions can be greater than ExcMax if no new values are received by the
interface for a point.
Exception Test Examples
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Compression Specifications
The compression specifications determine whether events from the Snapshot Subsystem are
archived or discarded. If the compressing attribute is set to OFF, then the compression specifications
are ignored, and all events that are sent to the Snapshot Subsystem are archived in Historian. The
compression specifications are always ignored for digital Historian Points. The compression
specifications consist of the following attributes:

CompMin base uint16 0 seconds 0 to 65535
CompMax base uint16 28800 seconds 0 to 65535
CompDev base float32 2 eng units 0 to Span
CompDevPercent base float32 2 % of Span 0 to 100
Note: When adding points using “Add Individual Historian Points…” or “Discover Historian Points…”
from the FactoryTalk Administration Console, the default for CompDev is .5 engineering units and
CompDevPercent is .5% of Span.
CompMin is the compression minimum time, and CompMax is the compression maximum time.
CompDev is the compression deviation in engineering units and CompDevPercent is the
compression deviation in units of percent of span. CompDevPercent and CompDev are related by
CompDev = CompDevPercent * Span / 100 where Span is defined by the Span attribute of the
point. If either CompDev or CompDevPercent is changed, Historian automatically recalculates the
other attribute. If both attributes are edited simultaneously, the change to CompDevPercent takes
precedence.
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Compressing Attribute
The compression attribute should be set to ON (1) for most points. When compression is OFF (0),
every value that is sent to the Snapshot Subsystem is saved in the Archive. When compression is
ON, only the values that deviate significantly from the current trend are archived. See the description
of the compression algorithm for more detail.
Compression should be turned on for all real-time points in the system. Compression even affects
digital points, since a new value is recorded only when the current value changes or when the
compression maximum is exceeded. Sampled data, such as laboratory tested data, are typical
noncompressed points.

Compressing Base byte ON (1) OFF (0) or ON (1)
Compression
After leaving the Snapshot, events are evaluated according to the compression specifications to see if
they are significant events. If so, they are sent to the Event Queue. If not, they are discarded. This
process is called compression.
There are three instances where an event will bypass the compression process and be put in the
Event Queue:
• If the Compressing attribute for the point is set to OFF.
• If the timestamp is older than the timestamp of the current snapshot. Such an event is sometimes
termed "out of order."
• If the Status attribute of the Point has changed.
Historian uses a sophisticated compression algorithm to determine which events it needs to keep in
order to provide an accurate data history. The compression method used by Historian allows
Historian to keep orders of magnitude more data online than conventional scanned systems. The
data is also much more detailed than in an archiving system based on averages or periodic samples.
The compression method is called "swinging door compression." Swinging door compression
discards values that fall on a line connecting values that are recorded in the Archive. When a new
value is received by the Snapshot Subsystem, the previous value is recorded only if any of the values
since the last recorded value do not fall within the compression deviation blanket. The deviation
blanket is a parallelogram extending between the last recorded value and the new value with a width
equal to twice the compression deviation specification.
Each point has three attributes that comprise the compression specifications: CompDev
(compression deviation), CompMin (compression minimum time), and CompMax (compression
maximum time). CompDev is half of the width of the deviation blanket (as shown in the illustration).
CompDevPercent is similar to CompDev, but it specifies the compression deviation in percent of span
rather than in engineering units.
Just like exception reporting, compression is a filter. The difference is that the exception specifications
determine which events should be sent to Historian, whereas the compression specifications
determine which of the events sent to Historian should go into the Archive.
CompMin and CompMax are limits that refer to the time between events in the Archive. A new event
is not recorded if the time since the last recorded event is less than the compression minimum time
for the point. A new event is always recorded if the time since the last recorded event is greater than
or equal to the compression maximum time.
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The duration of time between archive events can be greater than the compression maximum time.
However, if the duration of time between events exceeds the compression maximum time the next
event will be archived even if the value is the same as the last event that was archived.
One can adjust the compression parameters to produce efficient archive storage without losing
significant data. The compression maximum time is usually set to one value for all points in the
system. It should be large enough that a point that does not change at all uses very little archive
space. A compression maximum time of one work shift (for example, 8 hours) is often a good choice.
Compression Test Examples
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Lab 1 – Using Exception and Compression:
Before you begin:
• Tags exist in Historian from Lesson 1 and 2, or imported from Tags as of end of Lesson 2
• VantagePoint configured and Historian tags imported as done in Lesson 3
Part A - Filter Less with Exception/Compression
1. Start on the Client image.
2. Start System Management Tools (SMT) by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software
> FactoryTalk Historian SE > System Management Tools
a. Select Points > Point Builder
b. Search for and display the tag ending in *MachineStep
c. Click on this tag in the upper pane to make sure it has focus
d. Click the Archive tab
4. Note that this tag currently has “default” Exception and Compression attributes, unchanged since
you added this tag to Historian from the FactoryTalk Administration Console using Add
Individual Historian Points. Verify these attributes are currently set as follows: a. Exception
Deviation: 0.25 Eng. Units
b. Compressing: On
c. Compression Deviation:0.5 Eng. Units
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a. Select Data > Current Values
b. Search for and display the tag ending in *MachineStep
c. Click Start Updating
6. Verify that the value of this tag is incrementing from 0 to 5 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) over approximately a
one minute period, then resetting to 0 and incrementing to 5 again, repeatedly. Watch at least
one complete “cycle”.

a. Go to Data > Archive Editor
b. Search for the tag that ends in *MachineStep
c. Click Get events to get the last two hours of data in the archives for this tag. Note default
Start time of *-2h (two hours ago) and End time of * (now).
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8. Scroll down the list of Value/Event Time entries. Are you seeing values for this tag of 0, 1, 2, 3,
4 and 5 over and over again? Or, are you seeing "filtered" data "skipping" some of the values
such as in the below example, "filtered" by exception and compression? (“skipping” of values is
what you should be seeing at this time)
9. This behavior is how this tag's values are archived if using "default" exception and compressions
settings. For the purpose of this training, and a more “realistic” set of data for this “step” type of
tag, we want to be sure that all changes in this tag's value are archived.
10. Go back to Point Builder for this tag and change attributes as follows:
a. Exception Deviation: 0
b. Compression Deviation: 0
c. Compressing: Off
11. Click the Save icon and verify receiving "Successfully edited point..." message.
12. Wait two minutes to be sure the FTLD Interface has enough time to put your changes in effect.
13. Did you wait two minutes?? If not, wait. If so, go back to Data > Archive Editor. Click the Get
events button and scroll to the bottom of your Value - Event Time window. You should be
seeing values archived no longer "skipping" or "filtering" data. Be sure to scroll to the
bottom…the results we want to see will only be during the last few minutes, not during the
majority of the two hours of data being shown. Your most recent data should appear as follows
(so “skipping” values):
14. Close the SMT.
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Part B - Filter More with Exception/Compression

2. Start System Management Tools by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software >
FactoryTalk Historian SE > System Management Tools
a. Select Data > Current Values
b. Search for and select the tag ending in *TempZone1
4. Verify that this tag's value remains "static" (unchanging) for approximately 45 seconds, then
changes rapidly for approximately 15 seconds. The value changes from between 65 to around
395 during this time period. This behavior should repeat relatively consistently, creating one
minute "cycles".
5. In System Management Tools (SMT), do the following steps in this order:
b. Search for the tag ending in *TempZone1
c. Change Start time to *-1m to get last one minute of data from archives
d. Click Get events
e. Note that in below graphic the window size is reduced so you don't see all values returned,
but you should be getting around 14-17 events every minute from the archive for this tag
6. Minimize the SMT and start VantagePoint Trend by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell
Software > FactoryTalk VantagePoint > Trend
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7. In the Model, navigate to System > Sources > FactoryTalk > localhost > Historians >
Production Historian > Tags and double-click on or drag the tag ending in TempZone1 to the
plot surface.
8. In the above Trend, you should visually be seeing the behavior you noticed earlier, every 45
seconds the tag ranges between 65 and 395 over a 15 second period.
9. Minimize Trend and go back to the SMT.

a. Go to Points > Point Builder
b. Search for the tag ending in TempZone1
c. Click on the Archive tab
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11. When this tag was originally brought into Historian with the FactoryTalk Administration Console,
the default Exception Deviation was 0.25 and Compression Deviation was 0.5. You edited the
Exception Deviation to be .26 rather than .25. You should be seeing current settings of: a.
Exception Deviation: 0.26
b. Compression Deviation: 0.5
12. Change the settings to the following:
a. Exception Deviation: 10
b. Compression Deviation: 20
13. Note that these settings are in no way "recommended" or necessarily "typical" settings to be used
in any other case except for purposes of this training lab. Your settings should now appear as
follows:
14. Click the Save button and look for "Successfully edited" message in the Session Record:
15. Wait for two minutes and then go to Data > Archive Editor in the SMT and click the Get events
button. If you closed the SMT you will have to again search for the tag ending in *TempZone1.
You should now be seeing only 9-11 events in a one minute period. Earlier you were getting
1417 events.
16. Return to the VantagePoint Trend that you had minimized earlier and review how that previous
trend appeared. Click the Refresh button and you should get an updated trend that looks similar
to what you had seen before.
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17. A key outcome of this lab is that you have seen that by increasing the amount of exception and
compression you have cut the amount of data going into the Historian Archive significantly...from
approximately 17 values every minute to only 11. And, the overall trend of the data looks similar.
Less data stored with similar trend of data over time.
18. Be aware, however, that the amount of data being discarded in this case could be significant in
some cases and care needs to be taken not to filter their data with exception and compression
"too much".
19. To better visualize the changes that have taken place, right-click on the Trend plot surface and
select Properties > Trace:
20. Turn on Point markers and click OK
21. See if you can find where the changes you made to your exception/compression took place (you
may need to change the trend to “Last 10 minutes”). In the below example, you can see that
soon before 1:16:39 PM on 8/6/2012 the changes took place, with less points being archived in
the same amount of time. See especially how the filtering reduced the number of points archived
during the "ramping down" of the value back to the minimum? Can you find this point in your
data?
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22. In Point Builder, set the attributes on the TempZone1 tag back to the following:
a. Exception Deviation: 0.26
b. Compression Deviation: 0.5
23. Be sure to Save your changes.
24. Close the SMT and Trend applications (no need to save the trend).
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Lesson 5 - FactoryTalk Historian Tag Types

• Compare Polled against Advised data collection modes
• Use Event tag to read tag’s value based on an "event" or "trigger"
• Use Output tag to write a value from within FactoryTalk Historian to “outside” Historian,
such as to a CLX controller
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Polled Mode Collection
• Set location 3 = 0 for polled or event mode
• Location 4 stores scan rate
• Poll the data source at scan interval
• ExcMax setting can ensure data goes to Snapshot even if unchanging
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Advised Mode Collection
• Set location 3 = 1 for advised mode
• ExcMax setting cannot ensure unchanging data will go to Snapshot, as interface would
not be receiving updated timestamps from data source (only sent when data changes)
Less network intensive than polled mode at fast scan rates
Event Mode Collection

• Set Location 3 = 0 for polled or event mode
• ExDesc setting stores “trigger” that will control when the Instrument Tag gets read.
Example: EVENT=’tagname’ Increment
• As in above example, EVENT must be all in uppercase and the tagname must be within
single quotes
• Events to select from are Increment, Decrement, Anychange and Nonzero
• Location 5 can be used to identify if tag value should be read from RSLinx cache
(default), or RSLinx should read direct from the device (0=cache, 1=device)
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Output Tags
• Set Location 3 = 2 for output tag
• Source tag is the tag that acts as a source of data and also the “trigger” (the value
changing triggers the write)
• Instrument tag is the destination of the value from the Source tag
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Lab 1 – FactoryTalk Historian Tag Types
Before you begin:
• Tags exist in Historian from end of Lesson 4, or imported from Tags as of end of Lesson 4
Part A - Polled versus Advised Collection Modes

a. Start System Management Tools from Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software >
b. Go to Data > Archive Editor
c. Search for and display the tag ending in *TempZone1
d. Click Get events to see the last 2 hours of archived data for this tag
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3. This tag is remaining relatively "static" or unchanging for 30-45 seconds, and then is changing
rapidly for about 15 seconds. Scroll through the list of Value/Timestamps and see if you can see
a time where there is a "gap" in changing data. The largest gaps should be between when the
tag was “static” at approximately 65 and “jumped” in value. In the below example, there is a 3
second "gap" followed by a 43 second "gap". Try to find similar gap(s) in your data.
4. The reason this tag is currently giving "gaps" in data is that the data is not changing at this time,
or, if it is but only slightly, it is being filtered with exception and compression. There are
applications where it might be required to archive data at some minimum time interval, whether or
not it changes. A Tag Attribute called Exception Deviation Maximum Time (ExcMax) can be used
as the first step to achieve this functionality. Do the following steps in this order: a. In System
Management Tools, go to Points > Point Builder
b. Search for the tag ending in *TempZone1
c. Go to the Archive Tab
d. Change Compressing to Off
e. Change ExcMax to Minutes: 0 and Seconds: 10
5. Click Save icon and look for "Successfully edited point" message.
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6. Go to the Classic Tab, and change Location3 from a 1 (Advised Mode) to a 0 (Polled Mode).
7. Save your change. As Polled Mode, the FTLD Interface is asking RSLinx Enterprise for the value
of the tag at the tag's Scan Rate. This is currently every one second, determined by the 1 in
Location4. The Interface then decides based on the Exception settings, including ExcMax,
whether or not to send the value/timestamp to the Historian Server for possible archival
(depending on Compression settings). When in Advised Mode, RSLinx Enterprise would never
send the value to the Interface, "unless" it had changed since the last time it sent the
value/timestamp. So, the Interface would never have a chance to send the value/timestamp to
the server when it wasn't changing.
8. Go back to Data > Archive Editor and click Get Events.

9. Scroll down to the bottom of the data and look for value/timestamps such as the below. Even
though the tag's value did not change, value/timestamps are archived at least every 10 seconds.
Note that when a value "outside" the 10 second window is archived, the "previous value" is
archived as well. That is why you should be seeing "pairs" of the same value in the archive, one
second apart. The tag was being "polled" every second, and if it didn't change there was a value
archived anyway from "outside" the 10 second window, and its previous value that would have
been "inside" the 10 second window.
Note: It can take up to two minutes for an Interface to put changes in tag configurations
into effect. So, if you do not see data such as the below, wait a minute or so and click Get
events again.
10. When done confirming/observing the above results, so that the archiving functionality of this tag
performs similar to the "other" Proof_Oven TempZone tags, use Point Builder to change the
attributes of the BL1 TempZone1 tag back to the following: a. Change Compressing to On
b. Change ExcMax to Minutes: 10 and Seconds: 0
c. Location3 to a 1
d. Be sure to Save your changes
11. Close the SMT.
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Part B - Event Tags

2. Start the System Management Tools by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software >
a. Go to Data > Current Values
b. Search for and select the tag ending in *Shift_Timer.ACC
d. Notice the value of this tag changing approximately every second

a. Select Points > Point Builder
b. Search for and display tag ending in *Shift_Timer.ACC
c. Click on Classic Tab
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5. Location3 is currently set to 1 which is Advised Mode. Location4 is set to 1 which is identifying
a 1 second scan class for this tag. Change Location3 to a 0 for Polled/Event collection mode.
6. If you save and "only" made the above change, the tag would be in Polled mode, with the
Interface polling RSLinx Enterprise for the value of the tag every second. We actually want this
tag to act in Event mode, updating when some "event" or "trigger" occurs. Do these steps in this
order:
a. Go to the General tab
b. In the Exdesc field, enter the following (Note that "EVENT" must be uppercase!):
EVENT='RA Foods:RSLE:BL1.Program:Proof_Oven.SimpleMachineStep' Nonzero
c. Note in the above there should be spaces between RA and Foods, and between
MachineStep' and Nonzero.
d. Click the Save icon and look for "Successfully edited point" message
7. Go back to Data > Current Values and add the *Proof_Oven.SimpleMachineStep tag to your
display and click Start Updating. If it was left in the Start Updating mode, after you add this tag
you may need to select Stop Updating and then Start Updating again. You should see that
instead of every one second, the value of the Timer.ACC is now updating only when the
MachineStep tag changes to anything "except" a zero.
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Part C - Output Tags
1. On the Client image, got to System Management Tools (should be open from previous steps)
2. Go to Points > Point Builder and add tag RA Foods:RSLE:BL1.StorageDint1 (be sure you
click on to highlight this tag once you've added it to the tag list).
3. On the Classic Tab, change Location3 to a 2, in order to make this an Output Tag.
4. Back on the General Tab, use the Source tag Search button to select the *Shift_Timer.ACC tag.
5. Save your changes.

6. Go back to the Data > Current Values screen where you should be still seeing the value of this
Shift_Timer.ACC tag along with the MachineStep tag.
7. To see the actual value of the *StorageDint1 output tag in the controller, start FactoryTalk Data
Client by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Tools >
FactoryTalk Live Data Test Client.
8. Select Network directory.
9. Select Factory Talk and RA Foods, then click OK.
10. Select OK to create Group1.
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11. Select BL1 > Online, then StorageDint1 and finally click OK.
12. Position Data Client over the top of System Management Tools (SMT) such as below. Note
that when the value of the Shift_Timer.ACC changes (Source Tag), very soon after the
StorageDint1 tag (Output Tag) is written to with the same value.
13. When done verifying above, close the SMT and FactoryTalk Live Data Test Client.
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Lesson 6 - Using Performance Equations and Totalizers

• How to use Performance Equations to perform server-side recordable instance and summary
calculations.
• How to use Totalizers to perform server-side recordable instance and summary calculations.
Performance Equations (PE) Functions

In addition to all the basic arithmetic operators, the PE subsystem provides a large number of built-in
functions that you can use to perform more complex operations, such as taking the sine or cosine of a
point value, taking the average of a tag's value over time, etc.
Function Arguments
Functions have one or more arguments, or inputs, which are enclosed in parenthesis following the
function name. Some of the arguments may be optional. If there are several arguments, they are
separated by commas:
functionName(argument1, argument2, argument3)
The following are examples of function expressions:

Max(3, 5, 12.6, 'sinusoid')
PrevEvent('sy:arc001', '*-2h')
Sqr(Abs(TagMax('tag', 'y', 't')))
Log(if 'tag'=2 then .5 else .2)
Functions can also be nested and joined in expressions: Avg(TagVal('TagA',

'y'), TagVal('TagB', 'y'), TagVal('TagC', 'y') )
if TagVal('TagA', '*') < TagVal('TagB', '*') then sin('TagB') else sin('TagA')
You can use a tagname in any argument where a number or character string is called for. A tagname
in single quotes is evaluated as if it had been written TagVal(tagname), which is the same as
TagVal('tagname', '*' ). This gets the point's value at the "current" time for the calculation. If the
argument calls for a number, but the point's value is a digital state when the function is evaluated, a
run-time error (Calc Failed) is generated.
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List of Built-in Functions by “Type”
The PE Scheduler provides a wide range of built-in functions that make it easier for you to perform
calculations on Historian data. These functions are discussed in detail in the FactoryTalk Historian
SE Applications User Guide
Math functions Asin

Arc sine
Acos Arc cosine
Atn Arc tangent
Atn2 Arc tangent (two arguments)
Cos Cosine
Cosh Hyperbolic cosine
Exp Exponential
Log Natural logarithm
Log10 Common logarithm
Sin Sine
Sinh Hyperbolic sine
Sqr Square root
Tanh Hyperbolic tangent
Tan Tangent
Other Math Functions Abs

Absolute value
Float Conversion of string to number
Frac Fractional part of number
Int Integer part of number
Poly Evaluate polynomial
Round Round to nearest unit
Trunc Truncate to next smaller unit
Aggregate Functions Avg

Average
Max Maximum
Median Median selector
Min Minimum
PStDev Population standard deviation
SStDev Sample standard deviation
Total Sum
Miscellaneous Functions
BadVal See if a value is bad (not a number or time)
Curve Get value of a curve
DigState Get digital state from a string
IsDST Test whether a time is in local daylight savings time period
IsSet Test if a PI value is annotated, substituted, or questionable
StateNo The code number of a digital state
TagBad See if a point has an abnormal state
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PI Archive Retrieval
NextEvent Time of a point's next Archive event
NextVal Point's next value after a time
PrevEvent Time of a point's previous Archive event
PrevVal Point's previous value before a time
TagVal Point's value at a time
PI Archive Search
FindEq Timestamp when point = value
FindGE Timestamp when point >= value
FindGT Timestamp when point > value
FindLE Timestamp when point <= value
FindLT Timestamp when point < value
FindNE Timestamp when point ~= value
TimeEq Total period when point = value
TimeGE Total period when point >= value
TimeGT Total period when point > value
TimeLE Total period when point <= value
TimeLT Total period when point < value
TimeNE Total period when point ~= value
PI Archive
EventCount Number of Archive events
Statistics
PctGood Percent of good time in a period
Range Range of minimum to maximum value
StDev Time-weighted standard deviation
TagAvg Time-weighted average
TagMean Event-weighted average
TagMax Maximum value in a period
TagMin Minimum value in a period
TagTot Time integral over a period
Point Attributes
TagDesc Get a point's descriptor
TagEU Get a point's engineering unit string
TagExDesc Get a point's extended descriptor
TagName Get a point's name
TagNum Get a point's ID
TagSource Get a point's point source character
TagSpan Get a point's span
TagType Get a point's type character
TagTypVal Get a point's typical value
TagZero Get a point's zero value
Time Functions
Bod Timestamp for beginning of the day for given time
Bom Timestamp for beginning of the month for given time
Bonm Timestamp for first of the next month for given time
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Day Day of the month from a time
DaySec Seconds since midnight from time
Hour Hour from a time
Minute Minute from a times
Month Month from a time
Noon Timestamp for local noon of day of a times
ParseTime Convert character string to time
Second Second from a times
Weekday Day of the week from a times
Year Year from a time
Yearday Day of the year from a time
Dynamic Response
Arma Dynamic response from Auto Regressive Moving Average model
Delay Introduce time delay
MedianFilt Select the median value of time series
Impulse Dynamic response characterized by impulse response shape
Alarm StatusFunctions
AlmAckStat Alarm acknowledgement status code
AlmCondition Condition code number for Alarm State
AlmCondText Alarm condition as text
AlmPriority Alarm priority number
String Functions
Ascii ASCII character code for a character
Char String for ASCII character code(s)
Compare Wild comparison of two strings
DigText Text for a digital state
Format Formatting of a numerical number
InStr Instance of a sub-string
LCase Conversion of all characters to lower case
Len Length of a string
Left First characters in a string
LTrim Removal of blanks on the left side of a string
Mid Extraction of a sub-string from a string
Right Last characters in a string
RTrim Removal of blanks on the right side of a string
Trim Removal of blanks on both sides of a string
UCase Conversion of all characters to upper case
String Conversion
Concat Concatenate two or more strings
String String representing any PI value
Text Concatenation of strings for a series of PI value arguments
Additional Information
Additional details can be found in the FactoryTalk Historian SE Applications User Guide.
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Editing Performance Equation Tags/Points with the SMT
Note: FactoryTalk Historian tag name length is typically limited to 256 characters.
However, when a tag name is used with event-based scheduling with a Totalizer or
Performance Equation, the event tag’s length cannot exceed 73 characters. This would be
when used as part of an “event expression” in a Totalizer, or the “Event tag” in a
Performance Equation.
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Performance Equation Scheduling
Performance Equations are from a separate Interface, different that the FactoryTalk Live Data (FTLD)
Interface. Since a completely different interface, it has its own configurations such as scan classes.
These configurations are controlled by a batch file named pipeschd.bat file located in C:\Program
Files\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\Server\bin
This file can be opened with the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU) and scan classes modified,
added and/or deleted.
What's a Scan Class?

A scan class is a code that the PE Scheduler and other PI interfaces use for scheduling. Scan
classes always specify a period, which says how often to perform the calculation. Optionally, scan
classes can include an offset that specifies a start time for the calculations to begin and a code that
specifies that UTC time is used for the scheduling:
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Period: The period specifies the interval between calculations. The first two digits are the hours, the
second two the minutes, and the third two the seconds. So, for example, the scan class can specify
that the calculation take place every hour (01:00:00), every three minutes (00:03:00), every 52
seconds (00:00:52), and so on.
Offset: The offset specifies a start time for the calculation. The offset is optional. If no offset is
included in the scan class, the first calculation takes place immediately. The offset is counted from
midnight of the current day and, as with the period, the first two digits are the hours, the second two
the minutes, and the third two the seconds. So, for example, the offset can specify that the first
calculation occur at midnight (00:00:00), at 1AM (01:00:00), at 1PM (13:00:00), at 2:05PM (14:05:00),
at 25 seconds past noon (12:00:25) and so on.
UTC Time Indicator: The UTC time indicator goes at the end of the scan class and is just a comma
followed by a capital U: (/f=08:00:00,07:00:00,U). When a scan class includes the UTC time indicator,
it means that the scheduling is with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Note: If a scan class has a frequency of more than an hour, make it a UTC scan class, so that your
scheduling does not go out of sync after changes to or from daylight savings time. UTC scan classes
don't have this problem because they force the scan class scheduling to sync with UTC, rather than
local time.
Historian Totalizer Subsystem

The Historian Totalizer Subsystem (Totalizer) performs common calculations such as totals,
averages, minimum and maximum values, and standard deviations. Output of a calculation is stored
in a Historian point.
The main difference between a Performance Equations point and a Totalizer point calculating the
same summary is that Totalizer calculates from realtime inputs (as opposed to archived values.)
Performance Equations are based on Archive events, while Totalizer results are based on Snapshot
events.
Historian Totals are the most accurate way to represent production summary data. Totalizers can be
started and reset based on time and event, and ensure the highest accuracy in the calculation of flow
volumes and other critical variables used to monitor product transfers or production performance.
Totalizer is especially practical for totaling measurements or other process variables at the end of
specific time periods, such as the end-of-day yields.
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Totalizer Subsystem Overview
Totalizer allows you to perform certain calculations on a point in the Snapshot, and to store the results
in another point. The process is called postprocessing. Postprocessing includes the following types
of summary calculation:
• Total
• Average
• Minimum
• Maximum
• Range
• Standard Deviation
• Median
Additionally, Totalizer permits the counting of update events for a point. The types of counting allowed
are as follows:
• All Events
• Event Equal To a value
• Event Not Equal To a value
• Event Greater Than a value
• Event Greater Than or Equal To a value
• Event Less Than a value
• Event Less Than or Equal To a value
• Event change from Greater Than or Equal To to Less Than
• Event change from Less Than to Greater Than or Equal To
The Totalizer is a dedicated subsystem, pitotal. This subsystem signs up for exceptions, which means
that it is notified when a new value is added to the Snapshot for any of the points to be
postprocessed. After postprocessing, values, for example, average, total, or time in state, are sent
back to the Historian Snapshot.
Totalizer vs. Performance Equations

Totalizer may be more accurate because the values used in Totalizer calculations are taken from the
Snapshot, not after the application of compression as in the case of Performance Equations.
Conversion Factors
Conversion is a number that multiplies the raw Totalizer result. It is used to convert the units of the
rate tag to the proper units for the totalization.
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For TimeWeighted totals, the total is computed with the assumption that the rate tag is in “units/day.”
If the units of the rate tag are not in units/day, then the units of the rate tag must be converted to
units/day using Conversion. For example, if the units of the rate tag are in kg/hr (kilograms per hour)
and the desired total is in g (grams), then Conversion must be set to 2400. That is, (1 kg/hr) (24
hr/day) (1000 g/kg) = (2400 g/day).
As another example, for a flow measured in m³/h, a conversion factor of 24 must be supplied to
convert between the engineering units of the rate tag and the units/day assumption of the Server.
For EventWeighted totals Conversion can be used to convert the units of the rate tag to the
desired units of the total. For example, if the units of the rate tag is in kilograms and the desired total
is in grams, then Conversion should be set to 1000.
Additional details can be found in the FactoryTalk Historian SE Applications User Guide.
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Lab 1 – Performance Equations
Before you begin:
Part A – Simple Conversion Calculation

1. Verify that you are on the CLIENT image.
2. Launch the System Management Tools (SMT).
3. Expand the Points category and select the Performance Equations plug-in. Then, click the
New button.
4. Our first Performance Equation is going to be a Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion. On the

General tab, do the following steps:
a. Enter Name of TempZone1 Deg C
b. Description of TempZone 1 Temperature converted to Celsius
c. Point type of Float32
d. Eng Units of Deg C
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a. On the Equation tab, set the Equation to:
('RA Foods:RSLE:BL1.Program:Proof_Oven.SimpleTempZone1' - 32) * 5/9
(Hint: Use the Tag Search button to fill in the tag name)
b. Click the Evaluate button just to make sure you don’t get an error. If you do get an error,
check your syntax carefully. Your actual evaluated data will likely differ:
6. On the Scheduling tab, do the following steps:

a. Change the radio button to Event-based scheduling
b. Use the Tag Search button to select the tag …TempZone1
c. Change the timestamp assignment option to The timestamp of the triggering event
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7. On the Archive tab, set the following fields:
a. Exception Deviation to 0
b. Compressing to Off
Note: The above settings are totally dependent on the situation and may be different in
“real applications”. In this case we are doing a calculation on a source tag that has
already gone through exception and compression before going into the archive. This
performance equation is doing a calculation based on that value and for purposes of this
lab we want to archive all results. So, we are using zero exception and no compression.
8. Click the Save toolbar button and check for a success message in the session record:
9. Do the following steps in the SMT:

b. Search for and display the two “TempZone1” tags (hint: In the Search dialog, do not specify
Point Source of FTLD, as one tag you are looking for is a Performance Equation with Point
Source “C”. You could use Tag Mask of *TempZone1* for this Search.)
c. Select Start Updating (if values don’t change, please wait 20-30 seconds)
d. You should see the TempZone 1 Deg C Performance Equation tag display calculated Celsius
values from the source …TempZone1 tag’s Fahrenheit values
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Part B – Using a Performance Equation Function
1. Go back to Points > Performance Equations and click the New button.
2. Let’s say we need to do maintenance on the Proof Oven when the temperature zones are so
many minutes or hours over a certain temperature. In this case, as a “starting point” for such a
set of calculations, we will create one Performance Equation to calculate the number of minutes
TempZone1 is over 200 degrees in the last hour. First, do the following steps on the General tab:
a. Specify name of TempZone1 GT 200
b. Descriptor of Minutes in last hour TempZone1 greater than 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
Point type Float32
d. Eng Units of Minutes
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3. On the Equation tab, do the following steps:
a. Enter following Equation (Hint: Use Tag Search button to fill in tag name rather than type in!):
TimeGT('RA Foods:RSLE:BL1.Program:Proof_Oven.SimpleTempZone1','*-1h','*',200)
/60 b. Click Evaluate. You should be getting a value similar to the below and no errors
Note: The TimeGT (time greater than) function includes the Tag Name, Starttime, Endtime
and Value to be greater than in the parentheses that follow. The result is a value in
seconds. In the above, we are dividing by 60 to convert seconds to minutes.
4. On the Scheduling tab, select Clock scheduling and Scan class of 3 which will cause the
equation to be calculated every 30 seconds.
Note: At this time the Scheduling tab is not “identifying” what actual time period the “3” in
Scan class represents. Neither would it if you had entered a “1” or “2”. You will do
something later in this lab that will have an effect on this display.
5. On the Archive tab, set the following fields:
a. Exception Deviation of 0
b. Compressing Off
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6. Click the Save toolbar button and check for a success message in the session record.
7. In the “top window”, click on the TempZone1 GT 200 row to make sure it has focus.
8. Now, we want to open the Performance Equation Scheduling batch file to see where we could
edit, add or delete scan classes if desired. Go to the SERVER Image.
9. Start the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU).
10. Click the Create New Interface Instance from .BAT file button
11. Open the pipeschd.bat file located in C:\Program Files\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk

Historian\Server\bin
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12. As you can see, this interface is set at default to have three scan classes…1, 2, and 3…at 1
minute, 2 minutes and 30 seconds respectively.
13. Do not make any changes, but note the buttons above the scan class list that would allow you to
add, delete and/or reorder the scan classes.
14. Close the ICU without having made any changes.
15. Go back to the CLIENT image that should still have the SMT open on the Performance
Equations editor.
16. Close the SMT.
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17. Reopen the SMT and do the following steps:
a. Go to Points > Performance Equations.
b. Click Search (the binoculars icon) to list existing Performance Equation tags.
c. Click on the TempZone1 GT 200 tag.
d. On the Scheduling tab, note you now have a “drop-down list box” to select scan class and
the time represented by this scan class is shown. Compare to what you had seen previously
in step 4.
Note: This “functionality” exists because of what you did in the ICU on the Server…you
created the Performance Equation (PE) Scheduler Interface Instance. We could have done
this “before” we created the Clock scheduled tag, but we wanted you to see the “before
and after”. From now on, as you create additional PE tags, this functionality will continue.

b. Search for and display tag TempZone1 GT 200
d. You may see this tag occasionally changing by a small amount. Remember we are only
calculating this Performance Equation once every 30 seconds, and the oven temperatures
are changing pretty consistently over time in our simulation.
19. Close the SMT.

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Lab 2 - Totalizers
Before you begin:
Part A – Summary Calculation Totalizer Example
1. Verify that you are on the CLIENT image:
3. Select Points > Totalizers and click the New button.
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4. We will create a Totalizer to calculate the Moving Time Weighted Average of the Temperature of
TempZone1. Perhaps in the future all of the zone average temperatures could be calculated and
compared for determining maintenance needs, comparing efficiencies, etc. Start by doing the
following steps on the Name & Type tab:
a. Name of TempZone1 Average Temp
b. Source tag of …TempZone1 (see full tag name below)
c. Summary calculation of Moving Time Weighted Average
5. On Sampling tab, specify Whenever a new source tag event occurs (Natural)
6. On the Results tab, do the following:

a. Select Write final results After a time period elapses
b. Results every 1 Minute
c. Write interim results At source time (ramp)
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7. On the Archive tab, do the following:
a. Exception Deviation of 0
b. Compressing Off
8. Click Save and look for “Successfully created totalizer…” message

b. Search for and monitor the tags …TempZone1 and TempZone1 Average Temp c. Click
Start Updating
Note: For the first minute or so, the Totalizer tag might contain the text “Configure”. After
this first minute (the first “Write final results” time period), the tag should start to update
with “interim” values as new values are coming into the Source Tag. If more than a minute
has gone by, and the Source Tag updates but the Totalizer tag remains “Configure”, there
may be something wrong in its configuration (please check your previous steps).
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Part B – Count Events Totalizer Example
1. In the SMT, go to Points > Totalizers and click the New button.
2. On the Name & Type tab, enter the following:

a. Name of BL1 Proof_Oven Machine Cycles
b. Source Tag of …MachineStep
c. Count Events
d. Events where value changes
e. Block equal to 5 (we want the Totalizer we are creating to keep track of the number of
“cycles” the Machine has gone through, and we will consider reaching Step 5 “a cycle”)
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3. On the Results tab, verify/set the following:
a. Start schedule at 0 Hour(s) after midnight
b. Results every 1 Hour.
c. Write interim results At source time (ramp).
Note: These settings will cause the Totalizer to accumulate events every hour on the hour,
write “final results” at the end of the hour, reset and start the count again. “Write interim
results” set to “At source time (ramp)” will cause interim counts to be collected as they
occur as well, the count not collected just at the end of each hour.
4. On Archive tab, set Exception Deviation to 0 and Compressing to Off.
5. Save the Totalizer and look for “Successfully created totalizer…” message.
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6. Add the …Machine Cycles and …MachineStep tags to Data > Current Values. Verify Start
Updating is selected (may have to Stop and Start Updating again). You should see that every
time the MachineStep reaches 5, the Machine Cycles tag increments. If the time on your image
is nearing the top of an hour, you should be able to see the Machine Cycles reset. If not
happening soon, perhaps you can come back later and watch it occur.
7. When ready to proceed, close the SMT.
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Lesson 7 - Working with Digital States

• How to configure a digital state set
• How to create a digital tag which uses the new digital state set
Digital State Sets and Digital Tags

Digital tags provide the ability to record information about discrete states, such as: running, idle,
estop, shutdown. Digital tags cannot be created without assigning them to a digital state set. First,
you must use the System Management Tools to create a digital state set. Then, tags can be
“assigned” to that digital state set.
Lab 1 – Creating Digital State Sets, Assigning Tags and

Displaying States
Before you begin:
• VantagePoint configured as per Lesson 3
Part A - Configuring Digital State

1. Verify that you are on the Client image.

3. Expand the Points category and select the Digital States plug-in:
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4. In the Digital States plug-in, first click on SERVER at the top of the tree. Once that is selected,
click the Add a digital state toolbar button.
5. Type in a name of Machine_State.
6. To the right of the Digital State names, start by clicking in the State Name column.
7. Enter the text Manual (the “0” in the State Number field should automatically appear).
8. Fill in all the following values. Important: Be sure to press Enter after typing in each State and
especially the last State Name of Failed so the Failed state actually gets entered.
9. Click on the Save toolbar button so that your changes are not lost:
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Part B - Create Tag in Historian Using Digital State
1. Open the FactoryTalk Administration Console and select Network directory.
2. Right-click on the application RA Foods and select Add Individual Historian Points…
3. Select Browse Tags…
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a. Select RA Foods > BL1 > Online
b. Select StorageDint2 tag
c. Click Add Tag(s) to List
d. Click OK
5. Click OK on dialog that follows to add this tag to Historian.

6. Close FactoryTalk Administration Console.
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7. Now that you earlier created the Machine_State digital state set, we can create a new digital
point that uses the created digital state set. Do the following steps. a. Back to the SMT, select
Point Builder
b. Search and select the tag ending in *StorageDint2
c. Select or highlight the tag in the window immediately below the Search button to make sure it
has focus

a. In the Name field, overwrite the …StorageDint2 name with a new tag name of
Machine1_Current_Status. This will actually create a new tag by this name, and leave the
original tag of …StorageDint2 unaffected. Since we “started” with the …StorageDint2 tag in
this editor, the …StorageDint2 tag in the SoftLogix controller is still the Instrument tag (on
the Classic tab), so the values in that tag will actually be controlling the values in this
Machine1_Current_Status tag.
b. Set Point type to Digital
c. Select Digital set of Machine_State
9. Click the Save button on the toolbar:
10. Do the following step:

a. Select the Data > Current Values tool in the SMT
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b. Search for and display the Machine1_Current_Status and …StorageDint2 tags c. Click
Start Updating
11. We now will manually change the value of the StorageDint2 tag in the SoftLogix controller to
simulate values that will trigger different “States”. Open the FactoryTalk Live Data Test Client
tool from Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Tools
12. Select Network directory.
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13. Select FactoryTalk, $Global > RA Foods and then OK.
14. Click OK on the following dialog:
15. Select the StorageDint2 tag in the BL1 > Online location and click OK:
16. Right-click on the tag and select Write Item(s) > Async Write…
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17. Type in a value of 1 and then click OK.
18. Look at the SMT Current Values (be sure you’ve clicked Start Updating). You should see the
StorageDint2 tag with a value of 1 and the Machine1_Current_Status of Auto.
19. Experiment with changing the value of the StoreageDint2 tag from 0 to 4. All 5 states you
entered in the Machine_State Digital State Set should be able to be displayed.
20. Close System Management Tools and FactoryTalk Administration Console (if still open).
Leave the Data Client open.
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Part C - Displaying with VantagePoint
1. Open VantagePoint Manager.
2. Go to System > Sources > FactoryTalk > localhost > Historians > Production Historian.
3. Right-click and select Synchronize:
NOTE: We are synchronizing the Historian connection because we have added tags to
Historian since the connector was created and/or last synchronized.
4. Close the Import successfully completed dialog and VantagePoint Manager.
5. Open Microsoft Excel and click on cell C3: (do not activate it! See page 108)
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6. Select the VantagePoint tab and Insert function:
7. Select History and Next (Next button not shown below):
8. Do these steps:
a. Go to System > Sources > FactoryTalk > localhost > Historians and expand Production
Historian
b. Under Production Historian select Tags
c. Click on the Machine1_Current_Status tag
d. Click the > button to move to the right
e. Click Next
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9. Select Last 20 minutes and click Next:
10. Select Skip advanced options and Click Finish.
Note: If you get an error for some reason, try clicking Refresh in the VantagePoint add-in
ribbon.
11. Your Timestamp entries will be different, and maybe what states you've selected, but you should
be seeing that last 20 minutes of "states" displayed in the Excel spreadsheet:
12. Try using the Test Client to download 2-3 values between 0 and 4 to the tag again, and click
Refresh to see the additional results. You should be seeing the corresponding “state” (Manual,
Auto, etc.) appearing in the spreadsheet.
13. Close Excel. No need to save the spreadsheet unless you’d like to.
14. Close any other open applications.
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Lesson 8 – Using Asset Framework and Event Frames

• Overview of Asset Framework
• Overview of Event Frames
• Overview of Asset-Based Analytics
What is Asset Framework?

FactoryTalk Historian Asset Framework (AF) is a single repository for asset-centric models, hierarchies,
objects, and equipment (hereafter referred to as elements). It integrates, contextualizes, refines, references,
and further analyzes data from multiple sources, including one or more FTH Data Archives. Together, these
metadata and time series data provide a detailed description of equipment or assets. AF is a key component
of FactoryTalk Historian v5.01. System Explorer and PI Builder are the primary tools used to create and
manage AF objects (called Elements). Two important areas of functionality they provide are:
• Support for Event Frames (EF) - which enable you to capture important process events
• Asset Analytics - Integrated into System Explorer, asset analytics enables you to create calculations
and set up conditional statements involving asset values.
For additional information please refer to RA Knowledgebase AID: 47159 - FAQ: FactoryTalk Historian SE
Asset Framework Server.
Why use the Asset Framework to model your Assets?

A best practice for many Analytics applications is to perform your asset definitions, calculations and analytics
as close to the source of data as possible. Along these lines, your Assets can be modelled, within System
Explorer, using the tags available from within FactoryTalk Historian. In addition, calculations and analytics can
be added to the Asset model to provide more information to the User. For example, you may have many
Pumps that have the following tags within FactoryTalk Historian:
• Status (Discrete ON/OFF)
• Flow (m3/hr)
• Pressure (kPa)
Using System Explorer, you could create a generic Pump Element Template that incorporates the attributes
above along with additional analytics like:
• AverageHourlyFlow - which would calculate the average hourly flow on the hour
• MaximumHourlyPressure - which would calculate the maximum hourly pressure on the hour
• DurationHourlyRunning - time over the last hour, that the pump as running
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Such that the pump looks as follows when complete in System Explorer:
The element above (the pump) would then be imported into VantagePoint to be either consumed directly, or to
be further modelled with additional information available to VantagePoint.
The VantagePoint AF (Asset Framework) Import Tool allows Users to Import the Asset Definitions
(Elements) created in the FactoryTalk Historian (FTH) Asset Framework into FactoryTalk VantagePoint as
Types and Instances. Allowing Users to reuse asset definitions between products without having to replicate
modeling efforts. Once imported into FactoryTalk VantagePoint, users can use these types to augment their
VantagePoint model.
This tool is provided as an interim solution until an official productized version is available in a future release
of FactoryTalk VantagePoint (this is currently planned to be v9 but is subject to change).
• RA Knowledgebase AID 1034411 - FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI - Asset Framework (AF) Import
Tool
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What are Event Frames?
Capturing important events in your production areas and collecting relevant data around those events can help
analyze why they occurred. For example, you can closely monitor events such as asset status, process
excursions, equipment startup or shutdown, and environmental excursions to identify possible causes or
potential points of failure.
Collecting data around repeatable time periods such as product tracking batches, product runs, or operator
shifts can help make those processes more efficient. The capture of comprehensive data associated with such
an event helps track, compare, or analyse the process or event.
FactoryTalk Historian Event Frames allow you to collect and store data about events. You can easily collect
the Start and End Time of an event along with supporting data; making it easier to develop reports and
analysis. Using System Explorer, a User can define the Start and End of events using data from the FTH Data
Archives. These EFs can then be analyzed to identify those areas that need attention.
For additional information please refer to RA Knowledgebase AID: 709767 - FAQ: FactoryTalk Historian SE
Event Frames.
The VantagePoint Event Frame (EF) Export Tool allows users to export Event Frame data from FactoryTalk
Historian (FTH) Event Frames into a set of tables in the IncuityHistory database within FactoryTalk
VantagePoint. Once available to FactoryTalk VantagePoint, the data set will provide a fast and convenient
method for reporting against the Event Frames. The data set will include the Start and End time of the event
and up to 7 of the attributes defined within the Event Frame. The tool requires a VantagePoint Database
Connector and operates as follows:
• When executed, the export tool will read the Event Frames created within FTH
o You will need to schedule this event to occur on a periodic basis
• For each Event Frame found, it will insert a record into the EFList table
o Note that the tool also manages the other two tables: EFAssets and EFAttributes
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This tool is provided as an interim solution until an official productized version is available in a future release
of FactoryTalk VantagePoint (this is currently planned to be v9 but is subject to change).
• RA Knowledgebase AID 1034454 - FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI - Event Frame (EF) Export Tool
Event Frames can then be visualized with VantagePoint such as in the following Trend:
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Lab 1 – Asset Framework
Before you begin:
• Image running
Part A – Adding Historian Points for Use with Asset Framework

2. If not already open, start the FactoryTalk Administration Console by selecting Start > All
Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Administration Console
3. Select Network directory and OK.
3. Right-click on the RA Foods application and select Add Individual Historian Points…
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4. Leaving the scan class at 1, click
Browse Tags…
5. In the Tag Browser, you see the RA Foods application with BL1 and BL2 shortcuts listed under
it. These are the two shortcuts you observed in the FactoryTalk Directory earlier, each one
“pointing” to a different controller in the SoftLogix chassis. Under the RA Foods application,
navigate to BL1 > Online > Program:Proof_Oven and click on MachineUDT.
Double-click both MachineActive and MachineStep tags in the right hand pane to add them to
the list of selected tags at the bottom.
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6. Now, open the BatchID folder under MachineUDT. Double-click the BatchID tag to add it to
the list of Selected Tags.
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7. Continue through the MachineID, MachineStepString and ProductCode folders under
MachineUDT. Select the MachineID, MachineStepString and ProductCode tags (do not
select the LEN tag in each folder). Add these tags to the Selected Tags list.
8. Click on the BL1 > Online > Line_Workcell folder and double-click the Running tag to add it to
the list of selected tags.
9. Click on the BL1 > Online > Proof_Oven > OvenUDT folder. Double click the following tags to
add them to the list of selected tags.
a. TempZone1 (should show as ::[BL1]|Program:Proof_Oven.OvenUDT.TempZone1 in
selected tags)
b. TempZone2 (should show as ::[BL1]|Program:Proof_Oven.OvenUDT.TempZone2 in
selected tags)
c. TempZone3 (should show as ::[BL1]|Program:Proof_Oven.OvenUDT.TempZone3 in
selected tags)
d. TempZone4 (should show as ::[BL1]|Program:Proof_Oven.OvenUDT.TempZone4 in
selected tags)
10. Repeat steps 5-8 from above, but select tags for the BL2 line using the following folders:
BL2 > Online > Program:Proof_Oven

BL2 > Online > Line_Workcell
Also select the following tags:

BL2 > Online > Program:Proof_Oven.SimpleTempZone1
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BL2 > Online > Program:Proof_Oven.OvenUDT.TempZone1
Click the OK button.
11. Review the list of tags that have been selected from the previous steps. Tags from both BL1
and BL2 should be in the list. Click OK to add these tags to Historian.
Note: Temp Zone tags are not shown in the screenshot below, but should be selected and
included.
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Part B – Introduction to Asset Framework
1. Still on the SERVER image, open the System Explorer by going to Start > All Programs >
Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > System Explorer (64-bit)
2. If this is the first time System Explorer has been run, you will get this dialog. Read and click Yes.
3. Type RA Foods and then click OK. (The Server field will be showing “SERVER” on your image.)
4. Resize the PI System Explorer to fill up much of your screen, then right-click on Elements in the upper-left
corner and select New Element.
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5. Click OK.
6. The default name of Element1 will appear. Change it to Assets.
7. At first you will notice it still says Element1 on the left-hand window, but it will update to Assets if you click
on it. Notice the red checkmark which indicates something has changed and needs to be checked in to
be saved (don’t need to do yet).
…will change to…
8. Right-click on Assets and select New > New Child Element.
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9. Click OK.
10. Enter name of ProofOven 1.
11. First, select the ProofOven 1 element. Then, select its Attributes tab.
12. Click New Attribute.
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a. Enter name of TempZone1
b. Select the drop-down arrow for Properties and deselect Configuration Item
Note: You normally would assign the “Configuration Item” property to an attribute that has a
constant value and is not expected to change. You will do that later in the lab with a “Serial
Number” attribute for the ProofOven.
14. With Properties now at <None> (might need to click “off” from it), select the drop-down arrow for Default
UOM (Unit Of Measure).
15. Look down the list and click on Temperature and then degree Fahrenheit (°F).
16. For Data Reference, use the drop-down arrow to select PI Point.
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17. With Data Reference set to PI Point, click the Settings button.
18. Click the Search button to the far-right of Tag name.

a. Enter filter of *tempzone*
b. Click Search
c. Click the BL1 tag (not BL2) that ends in .TempZone1
d. Click OK
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20. Click OK.
21. You should notice the following.

a. Current value of the tag appears in a Value column in attribute list on the left and Value field for the
attribute on the right (your current value may not match below)
b. Tag you selected listed under the Settings button
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22. Add a new attribute by clicking the New Attribute button in the toolbar, or, right-clicking in the Attributes
list “white space” and selecting New Attribute.

a. Enter Name of TempZone2
b. Properties of <None> (deselect Configuration Item)
c. Default UOM of degree Fahrenheit (you’ll find under main category of Temperature)
d. Data Reference of PI Point
e. Tag from BL1…TempZone2 (use Search as you did for the last attribute)
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24. Repeat the proceeding steps two more times to create Attributes of TempZone3 and TempZone4,
coming from BL1 tags ending in TempZone3 and TempZone4. When finished, list of Attributes should
appear as follows (your values are likely to be different):
25. Notice that in your list of elements, the Assets and ProofOven 1 elements have red checkmarks, which
mean there are edits to be checked in.
26. Click the Check In button.
27. Click Check In on dialog that appears. Your edits have been saved to the database.
28. Now let’s add a few more tags from Historian as Attributes for the ProofOven 1 Element. First, notice that
you’ve had a Tag Search dialog pane (palette) open on the far-right in your PI System Explorer window (if
you don’t, continue to next step anyway).
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29. Note that if this was closed or does not appear, you could open via View > Palette > Tag Search (do so if
needed).
30. In this tag Search window, specify filter of *BL1*Oven.MachineUDT*and click Search. You should see
results as follows (you may need to make the palette “wider” to see the full tag names):
31. Drag and drop the BatchID tag to the Attributes window “white space”.
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32. Change Name to BatchID (deleting the other parts of the “long” tag name) and notice that Value Type,
Data Reference and the tag address under Settings are set up for you.
33. Drag and drop the MachineStep tag to the Attribute “white space”.
34. Change the name to MachineStep and note the other settings that were made automatically. Note that
your current Value may differ from the 2 shown below.
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35. Your Attributes should appear as follows (although their current Values may differ).
36. Click Check In on toolbar and Check In on dialog that follows.
37. Click Refresh and the current values for the Attributes should update and the tag list rearrange in
alphabetical order. Wait several seconds and click Refresh again to verify data updates. Note that at
times there may be a “pause” where values won’t change for some time. Wait a bit longer and try again if
needed.
38. Click New Attribute on toolbar to add a new attribute.
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39. Configure the attribute as follows:
• Name of Serial Number
• Properties of Configuration Item
• Value Type of String
• Value of XYZ123
40. This Serial Number attribute is an example of a constant that will be saved for ProofOven 1 within the
Asset Framework Database. It is not a tag from or otherwise stored in the Historian Server itself.
41. Add another New Attribute and configure as follows:

a. Name of Average Temperature
b. Properties of <None>
c. Default UOM of degree Fahrenheit (from Temperature category)
d. Value Type of Single
e. Data Reference of Formula
42. This attribute will contain the result of a formula that we will be specifying. Note that this is being
calculated within Asset Framework (AF), rather than the Historian Server, and will not be archived
(historized). It will be treated as a “current value” that can be accessed from AF.
43. Click the Settings button.
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44. Click the Add variable to definitions button to the right of the Parameters field.

a. Select variable of A
b. Attribute of TempZone1
c. Unit of Measure of °F (use °F instead of <Default> (°F))
d. Click OK button (not shown below)
46. Use Add variable to definitions button three more times to add variables B, C and D as TempZone 2, 3
and 4…all with Unit of Measure of °F. When done, your list of Parameters should appear as follows:
47. Click the Add new formula row button to the right of the Equations field.
48. Note that you now get a “right-arrow” button that will let you select Variables, Operators and/or
Functions to build complex formulas. Take a few seconds to move your cursor over each to see what
options appear.
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49. We simply want to calculate the average of the four temperatures, so our formula is pretty easy. Just type
the following formula into the Equations field: (A+B+C+D)/4
50. Do the following steps in the bottom area of the dialog.

a. Specify UOM for the result as °F
b. Click Evaluate and verify you get a value (may or may not get value shown below…if get an error
please double-check your equation)
c. Click OK.
51. Check In your changes.
52. Click Refresh several times (with delays “in-between”) and monitor the Average Temperature attribute as
it compares to the TempZone temperatures. At some times in the process, all temperatures, including
average, will all be close to 65 degrees. However, like in the below case, when one or more of the
TempZones start to increase (like TempZone1 below), the Average Temperature attribute will increase
as well. Be aware that occasionally the ProofOven will be in a “pause” state, and it may be many seconds
that the values don’t change. Please be patient and click Refresh after some time if this is happening.
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53. At this point, you have a series of Elements and Attributes identified in Asset Framework and are using PI
System Explorer to monitor “current values”. Every time you click the Refresh button you are seeing the
current TempZone temperatures, BatchID and MachineStep of this ProofOven 1 with Serial Number
XYZ123. In Historian, “current date/time” is identified with an asterisk (*) and is the default when viewing
values of attributes in PI System Explorer. You can confirm this by clicking the Refresh button and see
what attribute values change (there are likely to be times when you click Refresh that some or even all of
the values don’t change). When you move your cursor over a value that changes, you should get a tool tip
that shows the value and its date/timestamp, which should pretty closely match the time/date on your
image.
54. Besides using PI System Explorer to monitor “current values”, as you have been so far, you can use PI
System Explorer to monitor values from specific relative times, like *-1h (1 hour ago) or *-5m (5 minutes
ago). Or, you can specify an absolute date/time, like 12/12/2016 1:05:23 PM. To do this, click the Set
time context option tool in the toolbar (looks like a clock).
55. Select to display the values from one hour ago, by selecting the Alternative Time option and entering *-
1h. Click OK (not shown below).
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56. Verify that the data from an hour ago is being displayed by checking the time on your image (displayed on
far right of taskbar) and then letting the cursor hover over one of the TempZone values (shown similar to
tooltip). The timestamp you see should be from one hour ago (will not match below date/time).
57. Click Set time context option (clock) tool again, but this time use the Query Date Time option and click
the Browse (calendar) button.
58. Select a date and time in the past (maybe earlier today or yesterday) when you know your image was
running and click OK (do not pick below date/time).
59. When you click OK on the Set Time Context dialog, the values shown should be from the date/time you
selected (verify with tooltip).
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60. You may recall that the Average Temperature attribute that you created earlier is a Formula data
reference, not a tag (PI Point) in Historian like most of the other attributes (all except Serial Number,
which is a constant or Configuration Item). The Average Temperature is not being archived or historized
in Historian. However, in this case the Average Temperature attribute is being recalculated “on demand”
and should be showing you the correct average of the four temperatures at the date/time you selected
(12/12/2016 12:00:00 PM shown below).
61. To return the attributes to “current values”, go back into Set time context option (clock tool) and select
Restore Default, then click OK (OK button not shown).
62. Verify with attribute value tooltip that current date/time values are again being shown (check by looking at
the current date/time on your image in its toolbar…your date/time will not match below).
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Part C – Create an Asset Framework Element Template
1. Still in System Explorer, click on Library at bottom-left.
2. If you are going to have more than one of the same type of Element in your Asset Framework Database, it
is a good idea to use a “Template” to create them. Sure, you can copy and paste one element and then
edit the pasted version. Or, you can create each Element one-at-a-time if you want to like you did in Part
A. But, if you want to quickly and easily add or modify Attributes to different instances of Elements, if they
are all made from the same Template, it would make things much easier. With the Library option selected
as you did in the above step, notice that at this time you have no Element Templates (nothing listed
below Element Templates in the Templates Section).
3. Go back to your list of Elements by clicking Elements in the lower-left corner.
4. We created the ProofOven 1 Element “manually” earlier, adding one Attribute at a time. Now, let’s use
that instance to create an Element Template for a ProofOven. Right-click on ProofOven 1 and select
Convert > Convert to Template.
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5. The dialog that appears contains a “Current” list of PI Points (Historian Tags) that are in the ProofOven 1
instance that we are using to create the Element Template. Leave the Substitute checkboxes checked
and click OK.
6. Go back to Library.
7. Notice that an Element Template named ProofOven Template has been created. It can often be useful
for some instances of an Element created by a Template to have additional, “unique” attributes from other
instances created with the same Element Template. To allow this with your ProofOven Template, do the
following steps:
a. Click on ProofOven Template
b. Check the Allow Extensions checkbox
8. Check In your edits (will require clicking Check In on dialog that appears).
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9. Go back to Elements.
10. If you click on ProofOven 1 and the General tab, you can see that this instance is now identified as being
based on the ProofOven Template that you’ve just created.
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Part D – Use a Template to create an Element
1. Now, let’s create a ProofOven 2 asset with the ProofOven Template you’ve created. Right-click on
Assets and select New > New Child Element.
2. Select the ProofOven Template to base this element on and click OK.
3. Keep default name of ProofOven 2. Notice it identifies this Element as being based on the ProofOven
Template.
4. Check In your edits (will require clicking Check In on dialog that appears).
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5. With the ProofOven 2 Element selected on the left, click the Attributes tab. Notice that except for the
“constant” of Serial Number from ProofOven 1, the attributes that rely on PI Tags will have to be edited.
6. One way to make changes without too many steps is to turn on the Tag Search Palette by going to View
> Palette > Tag Search (if it’s not already open).
7. Click BatchID in your list of Attributes.
8. In this tag Search window, specify filter of *BL2*Oven.MachineUDT*and click Search. You should see
results as follows (you may need to make the palette “wider’ to see the full tag names):
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9. First, make sure the BatchID attribute is selected in the Attribute list. Then, drag and drop the BatchID
tag from the Tag Search list to the Settings area.
10. Click the MachineStep attribute in the Attribute list. Then, drag and drop the MachineStep tag to the
Settings area.
11. In the Tag Search dialog, change the filter to *tempzone* and then click Search. You should see 8
TempZone tags, 4 from BL1 and another 4 from BL2.
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12. Click on the TempZone1 attribute, then drag and drop the BL2…TempZone1 tag to the Settings area.
13. Click the TempZone2 attribute, then drag and drop the BL2…TempZone2 tag to the Settings area.
14. Repeat above step to define the tags for TempZone3 and then TempZone4. Be sure to click on the
TempZone3 attribute first, and drag and drop its tag. Then, click the TempZone4 attribute and drag and
drop its tag.
15. Click the Serial Number attribute, and change its value to ABC789.
16. Check In your edits. When done, you should see values for all attributes, including the Average
Temperature attribute which you did not have to edit (may have to click Refresh). It was based on a
formula using the TempZone attributes, and once they were configured to have values, the Average
Temperature attribute automatically calculated the result of the formula.
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17. Click on ProofOven 1. You now have a “quick and easy” view of this ProofOven’s data.
18. Click ProofOven 2. Same “quick and easy” view of ProofOven 2’s info!
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19. With ProofOven 2 selected, click Refresh in the toolbar. You should see one or more values
change/update (except for Number Serial, which is a constant). If you don’t notice any values change,
wait several seconds and try again. Be aware that in some cases the ProofOvens could be in a “pause
mode” and you might have to wait 30 or more seconds to see changing values.
20. Repeat above step with ProofOven 1 selected and verify you can click Refresh to get updated values.
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Part E – Enhancing the Asset Framework
1. In the above section, you created a simple Asset Framework with two ProofOvens in a folder named
Assets.
2. Let’s say this Asset Framework was expanded to 20 ProofOvens, named ProofOven1 through
ProofOven20. As long as you knew the name of the particular ProofOven you wanted to look at the data
from, this type of “structure” would be pretty simple to use…just click on the specific oven in the Asset list
that you want. However, if you’re an Operator in a particular part of the plant, like Line 2, you might not
know the name of my oven and would like some “help” figuring out what oven is in your location. Let’s
expand our Asset Framework, first by right-clicking on Elements and clicking New Element.
3. Click <None>, as we do not want to base this element on a Template, and then click OK.
4. On the General tab, name this element RA Foods.
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5. Right-click on RA Foods and select New > Child Element.
6. Click OK.
7. Name this element Baking Area.
8. Repeat last two steps twice to create a Line 1 and then Equipment elements as follows:
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9. Check In your edits.
10. Now, let’s say that ProofOven 1 is physically located in Line 1. It makes sense for a “Reference” to the
ProofOven 1 asset to be in the Line 1 > Equipment location. Right-click on ProofOven 1 and select
Copy.
11. Now, right-click on the Equipment element and click Paste Reference.
12. Click OK.
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13. Check In your edits.
14. When you click on the ProofOven 1 “Reference”, you can see its attributes just as you can when you click
on the ProofOven 1 element itself in the Assets folder.
15. Repeat last several steps to create Line 2 > Equipment elements. Then, copy the ProofOven 2 element
from the Assets folder and use Paste Reference to paste a reference into the Line 2 > Equipment
folder. After Check In of your edits, your Asset Framework should appear as follows:
16. Check In your edits if you didn’t already. As you could with the ProofOven 1 Reference, if you click on
the ProofOven 2 Reference you should see its data.
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17. Now you have an Asset Framework with an “asset-based” model, where you could quickly find data on a
particular ProofOven, as long as you know its name. And, if you don’t know the ProofOven name but you
know there is an Oven on Line 2 of the Baking Area, for example, it would be pretty quick and easy to find
its data from the “location-based” layout of your Asset Framework as well.
18. Close PI System Explorer.
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Part F – Visualizing Asset Framework Data within FactoryTalk VantagePoint
The following Rockwell Automation Knowledgebase article includes information on an import tool to
synchronize Asset Framework with the VantagePoint Model:
• AID 1034411 - FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI - Asset Framework (AF) Import Tool
This image has the import tool already installed and will walk you through steps to utilize within VantagePoint.
1. Start VantagePoint Manager from the taskbar.
2. Right-click on System > Solutions and select New > Folder.
3. Enter name of AssetFramework (could be whatever name you want) and click Create.
4. Right-click on AssetFramework and select New > Item.
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5. Scroll down and select PIAF.Root and click Create.

a. Enter Name of AF_Data (could be whatever name you want)
b. Chang Data Source from MACHINENAME to SERVER
c. Enter DatabaseName of RA Foods
d. Click SecurityMapping browse button
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7. Go to System > Security and click on Mappings. Then, click on Administrator. If the Assign button is
available (not greyed out like in below graphic), click Assign and skip to step 8. If the Assign button is
greyed out like in below graphic, follow the next “sub-steps” (a, b, etc.).
a. If the Assign button in the above graphic is greyed out on your image, start by right-clicking on the
Administrator user and selecting Delete Item.
b. Click Yes.
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c. Right-click on Mappings and select New Item.
d. Click Core.Security.UseFixedCredentials and then click Create (Create button not shown on below
graphic).
e. Do the following:
o Select Integrated credentials from list on the left
o Enter name of Administrator
o Enter password of rockwell
o Enter Domain of Server
o Click OK.
f. Now you should be able to click Administrator and Assign.
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8. Click Create.
9. Before synchronizing the Asset Framework database, we want to make sure the VantagePoint / Historian
connection is full in sync. Navigate to System > Sources > … Production Historian, right-click and
select Synchronize. Click OK on “Import successfully completed” dialog when it appears.
10. Right-click on AF_Data and select Synchronize.
11. When you see Synchronization successfully completed, click OK.
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12. Expand the4 AssetFramework tree down to …Assets > ProofOven 1 and click on ~Attributes. The
attributes for the ProofOven 1 element in Asset Framework now appear as tags in your VantagePoint
model.
Note: At this time the Importer tool does not support attributes that are “Formula” Data
References. So, the Average Temperature attribute will appear as “not assigned”.
13. Start VantagePoint Trend from the taskbar.
14. You might normally Copy and Paste Shortcuts of these tags to locations in the MyEnterprise portion of
your VantagePoint that make sense in your application. For quick and easy verification of these tags in
your image for testing purposes, drag and drop the TempZone tags from ProofOven 1 > ~Attributes to
your trend surface.
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15. Your trend should appear similar to the following.
16. Close VantagePoint Trend (no need to save trend) and VantagePoint Manager.
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Lab 2 – Event Frames
Before you begin:
• Image running
• Asset Framework lab completed successfully
Part A – Create Event Frame Template
1. If not already open, open System Explorer (64-bit) from the Start or Apps screen.
or
2. An Event Frame Template must be created to define which Attributes, or values, should be captured for
an event. In PI System Explorer, do the following steps:
a. Click Library in lower-left area.
b. Right-click on Event Frame Templates and select New Template.
3. On General tab, enter name of OvenEvent.
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4. At default, events will be given names using the Event Template Name field, plus an incremental number
to make it unique. So, if you didn’t do anything else now, the events created for this template will be
named OvenEvent1, OvenEvent2, etc. We are going to be using events created with this template to
capture “batches” created in our ProofOvens. In order for our event names to be a little more descriptive,
let’s name them with the ProofOven Element name and add the start date for the batch in the name. To
do so, first click the right-arrow at the end of the Naming Pattern field and select %ELEMENT%. This
will act as a “relative” variable to include the Element name of the item creating the event.
5. Next, enter two space characters (press space bar twice) after %ELEMENT%.
6. Now, click right-arrow and select the %STARTTIME:yyyy-MM… variable.
7. Verify your Naming Pattern appears as follows and correct if necessary.
8. Now, start to define which Attributes should be defined for events captured with this template by clicking
the Attribute Template tab and then New Attribute Template.
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a. Name the Attribute Template BatchID
b. Select Value Type of String
c. Select Data Reference of PI Point
d. Click Settings… button
10. We want to identify that this BatchID Attribute Template will get its value from the BatchID attribute of
whatever element is causing the event, in our case either ProofOven 1 or ProofOven 2. Select the
Attribute option button, then type in (will not be able to use drop-down arrow and DO NOT copy and
paste if your manual is on the same computer as the image) the following: .\Elements[.]|BatchID
Note: The “.\Elements[.]” syntax is acting as a variable for whichever element is creating this
event. Then, after a pipe symbol (“|”), BatchID is the actual attribute that will be used. Be sure you
are using a period followed by backslash, the word “Elements”, left-square bracket, period, right-
square bracket, pipe symbol and then the word “BatchID”.
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11. Once you are sure you have the above Attribute entered exactly correct, specify to capture this value at
the beginning of the event by selecting By Time Range of Start Time. Then, click OK.
12. Your BatchID Attribute Template should appear as follows:
13. Right-click under BatchID and select New Attribute Template.
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a. Enter name of TempZone1 Average
b. Enter Default UOM of degree Fahrenheit (need to select major category of Temperature for degree
Fahrenehit choice to be listed)
c. Value Type of Double
e. Click Settings…

a. Select Attribute option button
b. Type in Attribute of .\Elements[.]|TempZone1
c. Select By Time Range of Average
d. Click OK
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16. Click Check In to save changes (dialog will appear and you’ll need to click Check In).
17. We want to create three more ”average” Attribute Templates for TempZones 2, 3 and 4. You could
repeat the last few steps, however, to make it easier, start by right-clicking on TempZone1 Average and
selecting Copy.
18. Right-click below TempZone1 Average and click Paste.
19. Note the default name of the pasted version gets a “1” added to the end.
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20. Change this new version as follows.
a. Name of TempZone2 Average (change …Zone1 to …Zone2 and delete the extra “1” at the end)
b. Change attribute in Settings area to TempZone2 instead of 1
21. Copy, Paste and Edit two more times to create TempZone3 Average and TempZone4 Average Attribute
Templates. Be sure you’ve edited the TempZone number in the Settings… areas for each of the
TempZone Averages you are adding.
23. Add one final Attribute Template, this time by clicking the New Attribute Template tool (same as right-
clicking in “white space” area and selecting New Attribute Template as you did before).
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24. This time we’ll specify a Duration Attribute Template to store the duration of each event (amount of time
the event occurs). Configure as follows:
a. Name of Duration
b. Default UOM of second (under Time main category)
c. Value Type of Double
e. Click Settings when ready to continue
25. Although Duration will be a “calculated value”, and not really based on an existing Attribute, you must
define an Attribute like we did for the others. Enter the same one that we did for the Batch ID,
.\Elements[.]|BatchID.
26. Specify By Time of Not Supported and By Time Range of Count.
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27. Notice that Source Units of s (for seconds) appears. The number of seconds are being “counted” to
create this Duration Attribute Template. Click OK when ready to continue.
28. Your Attribute Templates should appear as follows.
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Part B – Add Event Frame Generation to Element Template
The main purpose of the Event Frame Template you created in the last section was to define what attributes
will be collected or captured when an event occurs. You created a Template intended to record the following
for an event.
• BatchID
• Duration
• TempZone1 Average
In this section you will define what “triggers” an event to occur. We will be using a simulation of batches of
bread being baked in ovens. The ovens have four temperature zones, 1-4. And, as you might have figured
out by now, we will be using Event Frames to capture the BatchID of each batch, the duration of each batch
(how long the bread takes to get through the oven) and the average temperature of each of the four oven
zones while the batch is being produced.
1. In PI System Explorer, click on Elements and then ProofOven1 from the Assets area.
2. With the ProofOven1 Element selected, click on the Analyses tab. Do not select it, but notice a Create
a new analysis option is available on this tab. One type of analysis you can create for an Element is an
Event Frame Generation analysis, which will be used to identify what “triggers” events. In our case, we
have more than one ProofOven and whether we have two or two hundred, it would be very advantageous
to configure one Event Frame Generation analysis for all of these ProofOvens. Since we have an
Element Template for a ProofOven, that is where we should create this Event Frame Generation analysis
so it will apply to and can be used with all ProofOvens.
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3. Click Library, then ProofOven Template (under Element Templates) and finally the Analysis Templates
tab.
4. Click Create a new analysis template.

a. Name the Analysis ProofOven EF Generation
b. Select Event Frame Generation option button
c. Select the Event Frame Template you created earlier, OvenEvent
6. You must select an example Element to base the Event Frame Generation on. Click Select an example
element.
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7. Select ProofOven 1 and then OK.
8. The main purpose of this Event Frame Generation configuration is to identify what triggers the event you
are trying to record. If there are two specific triggers that identify the Start and the End of the event, you
would define both StartTrigger and EndTrigger. In our application, the BatchID tag of a ProofOven gets
an ID number in it when the batch starts, a string such as M1Mix_5766. When any batch ends, that same
tag changes to NOBATCHACT. We can just use the StartTrigger, indicating that as long as the BatchID
is “not” NOBATCHACT, we are running a batch. Start by clicking in the Expression field to the right of
StartTrigger.
9. Type (DO NOT copy and paste!) in this field ‘BatchID’<>”NOBATCHACT”.
Note: Within expressions:

• Attribute names have to be within single quotes: ‘BatchID’
• Timestamps, if used, also need to be within single quotes: ’03-Jun-2014 8:00’
• Strings or Text has to be within double quotes: “NOBATCHACT”
• Numeric values can be entered “as is”: 101
10. Above where you entered the StartTrigger, click the Evaluate button.
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11. You should receive either True or False, depending on the current contents of the BatchID for
ProofOven 1 (may have to scroll up to the StartTrigger row to see it). If you get an error, you probably
have a syntax or typo error…please investigate and fix.
13. Go to Elements and click on ProofOven 1. On the Analyses tab, you should see this ProofOven EF
Generation has automatically been applied! This is because you created it in the Template that
ProofOven 1 is based on.
14. Click on ProofOven 2. Same thing…the ProofOven EF Generation applies to this ProofOven as well!
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Part C – View Generated Event Frames in PI System Explorer
1. As soon as you Checked In your Event Frame Generation Analyses, they should have started actively
recording the batch events of the ProofOvens. To verify and see them, first click on Event Frames in the
lower-left corner, then right-click on Event Frame Searches and select New Search.
2. To filter your list of events, specify Search of Starting After, Search start of *-5m (to get only events
starting less than 5 minutes ago), enter Element Name of ProofOven 1 and click OK.
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3. You could have more or less than 4 events such as shown below, but you should be getting multiple
events names with the syntax you specified when you created the Event Frame Template, Element
followed by Start Time (refer back to Part A, Steps 4-7 in this lab).
4. To the right of the above, you should be seeing a “spreadsheet-type” display of your events, with Names
followed by a graphic representation of the event (like little bar-graphs), followed by Duration, Start Time,
End Time and additional information. Notice in the below example the fourth event is still “in progress”
with no End Time specified yet.
5. Right-click on Event Frame Searches and select New Search.
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6. This time, specify Starting After *-5m and use Element Name of ProofOven 2, then click OK.
7. You should get a new search with ProofOven 2 batch events that started within the last 5 minutes (may
have more or less than shown below).
8. Click on the first event under your last search (in your image, may not be Search 2 as shown below). On
the right, click the Attributes tab. You should see the values of the BatchID, Duration, and Average
TempZone temperatures during this event.
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9. Click on other events and see the results of their Attributes.
10. When done, close PI System Explorer.
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Part D – Visualizing Event Frame Data in VantagePoint
The following Rockwell Automation Knowledgebase article includes information on a tool to export Event
Frame data from the Historian Asset Framework database to tables in the IncuityHistory database. Tag
Providers can then be created to utilize this data and report on with VantagePoint:
• AID 1034454 - FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI - Event Frame (EF) Export Tool
This image has the export tool and required Tag Provider creation files already installed and will walk you
through steps to utilize within VantagePoint.

a. Open File Explorer
b. Go to C:\ProgramData\RACE Tools\VantagePoint EF Export Tool
c. Right-click on VP_EF_Export_ToolCFG.xml file and click Edit
2. This file stores configuration data for the Exporter Tool, and at default is configured for a Server named
MYFATTWIN and Asset Framework database of Cookies. Locate these below and in the file on your
image.
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3. Change these to the correct Server name of your image of SERVER and Asset Framework database of
RA Foods (be sure to make all four changes!).
4. Look carefully to confirm your changes, then Save and Exit the xml file.
5. In File Explorer, go to C:\Class Files\EF Exporter Tools, right-click on VP EF Export Testbed.exe and click
Run as administrator.
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a. Select the Build option button
b. Click Test
c. Look for Build Complete message after several seconds

a. Select the Auto option button
b. Click Test
c. Look for Auto Complete message in a few seconds
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8. Go to Start > All Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and open SQL Server Management Studio.
9. Click Connect.
10. Expand Databases > IncuityHistory > Tables. Notice the EF tables that have been created by the
Exporter Tool and populated with Event Frame data from the Asset Framework database. We will return
to the tool later to Update the tables with Even Frame data from Historian (at this point your image should
be continuously creating “new” Event Frames…we will need to Update later to get “more current” Event
Frame data in these tables).
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11. Now we need to run some queries in preparation to create some Tag Providers in VantagePoint to work
with the Event Frame data that is populated in the above tables. In SQL Server Management Studio,
select File > Open > File.
12. Go to C:\Class Files\EF Exporter Tools\Tag Provider Items, select EFHistory.sql and click Open.
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13. Click Execute and look for Command(s) completed successfully message.
14. Again, select File > Open > File.
15. Select EFLive.sql file and click Open.
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16. Click Execute and look for Command(s) completed successfully message.
17. In SQL Server Management Studio, select File > Exit.
18. Start VantagePoint Manager from taskbar.
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19. Select File > Import.
20. Go to C:\Class Files\EF Exporter Tools\Tag Provider Items, select EFTP.icp file and click Open.
21. Click Next.
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22. Click Next.
23. Look for All items have been successfully imported message, then click Finish.
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24. Still in VanatagePoint Manager, go to System > Sources > Db, right-click on MsSql and select Add MsSql
Connector.

a. Enter Connector name of IncuityHistory
b. Enter MS SQL Server of SERVER
c. Select Database (use drop-down) of IncuityHistory
26. Click Test Connection and you should get succeeded message.
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27. Click OK on the succeeded message and then Finish on the Connector Creator Wizard.
28. Under System > Sources > Db > MsSql > IncuityHistory, right-click on TagProviders and select New >
Item.
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a. Enter Name of EventFrame Tags (can be whatever name you want)
b. Specify Template of EFTags
c. Change to Central Time zone
d. Click OK.
30. Right-click on IncuityHistory and select Populate tags.
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31. If you click on …IncuityHistory > TagProviders > EventFrame Tags > Tags, you should see the tags
that have been created based on your Event Frame data.
32. Return to the EF Export Tool. We are using this tool to manually update the Event Frame data that we will
be visualizing in a VantagePoint Trend shortly. In a “real application”, instead of using this Testbed.exe
tool, you might use a Scheduled Task to run a command every few minutes to update the Event Frame
Data. For additional information, a manual for the Exporter Tool gets installed at C:\ProgramData\RACE
Tools\VantagePoint EF Export Tool. For now, to update manually, select Update, click Test and look
for Update Complete message.
33. Start VantagePoint Trend from the taskbar.
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34. Go to System > Sources > Db > MsSql > IncuityHistory > TagProviders > EventFrame Tags and click on
Tags. Drag and drop the ProofOven 1 BatchID, Duration, Events and TempZone1 Average tags to the
trend surface.
35. You should get a trend that looks similar to this:
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36. A particular Event Frame will be represented like a “column” in your trend. Move your cursor around your
trend to find items like:
a. A BatchID
b. Start and End times of that Event Frame
c. Duration of that Event Frame
d. TempZone1 Average during that Event Frame
37. Close all applications/windows except for RSLogix Emulate 5000.
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Lab 3 – Asset-Based Analytics
Before you begin:
• Image running
• Asset Framework lab done
• Event Frames lab done
Part A – Create an Expression Analysis for Line 1
1. If not already open, open System Explorer (64-bit) from the Start menu.
2. Click on Elements in the Navigator pane (lower-left corner). Because of previous labs, in Asset
Framework you have a Baking area with two lines, Line 1 and Line 2.
3. In this lab you will create Analyses to keep track of how much time the Lines are stopped and have a
“rollup” to the Baking area to keep track of the “sum” of Lines being stopped (or “down”). Start by clicking
on the Line 1 Element, go to the Attribute tab and click New Attribute.
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a. Enter name of LineRunning
b. Properties of <None> (deselect all options)
c. Value Type of Boolean
e. Click Settings…
5. Click Tag name Search button.
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a. Type filter of *BL1.Line*
b. Click Search
c. Select …BL1.Line_Workcell.Running
d. Click OK
7. Click OK.
8. Based on the current state of your Line 1, you should either be seeing True or False.
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9. Check In your changes (requires clicking Check In again).
10. Click Analyses tab, and then click Create a new analysis.

a. Enter name of TimeLineDown
b. Select Analysis Type of Expression
c. Enter variable name of SecondsDown
d. Click in Expression field (where it says Type an expression). A large “text field” should open to
allow you to enter an expression)
12. Before typing an expression, note the Functions area to the right where it lists all of the possible
Functions you could select from to build your expression.
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13. If entering a simple math calculation, you could click the down-arrow at the right of All and select
Operators.
14. As you might guess, a list of Operators appear, such as add, subtract, multiply and divide. Note when
“clicked on”, such as the subtract operator below, a nice description and example appear in the lower part
of the window. A green circle with a “+” in it and the word Insert appears that you could click on to insert
the operator (don’t at this time).
15. Click the down-arrow again and select Search and Retrieval.
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16. Scroll down and click on TimeEq. Note the syntax that is shown for this TimeEq function, the
description and Example.
17. We will use this function to determine how many seconds within the last 8 hours the Line was stopped.
With cursor pointing to the TimeEq function, a green “+” sign with the word Insert should appear. Click on
it.
18. Note the TimeEq function and left parenthesis that automatically appears and the IntelliSense that will
help you complete the function. Also, specifically note that at this time attribute attname is in bold and at
the end of the IntelliSense it is giving you “help” indicating what comes next…the attribute name
enclosed in single quotes.
19. Click the Attributes section, under the Functions area.
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20. A list of Attributes for the element you are editing will appear. You may have to “hover over”
LineRunning for a few seconds for the options to the right to appear, then click on Relative to select the
LineRunning attribute instead of the absolute or literal tag providing the Line 1 Running status (will be
useful later when we use this same syntax for Line 2 instead of Line 1).
21. You should see the LineRunning attribute appear within single quotes, as we saw indicated earlier as
what was required after TimeEq(.
22. First, type a comma character. Then, enter ‘*-8h’ (don’t miss the single quotes at each end!) which is
specifying that we want to start with data from 8 hours ago. Note the IntelliSense showing that time
startTime part of the function you are entering now along with description.
23. Type a comma, followed by ‘*’ (single quote, asterisk, single quote). This is specifying “now” or current
time is the endTime.
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24. Finally, enter a comma followed by “False” (double-quote at each end). This is what we are trying to
determine…how many seconds over the last 8 hours was the line stopped (“False” is specifying tag of
Running was a zero or off).
25. Type a closed parenthesis to end the expression. Then, click the Evaluate button. As long as you don’t
have any syntax errors, you should get a value displayed. May be more or less than the 2200.6 displayed
below, depending on how long your image has been running.
Note: If you knew all of the syntax and pieces/parts of the TimeEq function, you could have typed
in the below string literally within the expression field, without stopping for the IntelliSense to help
you each step of the way.
TimeEq('LineRunning','*-8h','*',"False")
27. Click Add a new expression.
28. Enter name for this variable of SecondsInMinute and type value of 60.
29. Click Add a new expression again.
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30. Enter variable name of MinutesDown and enter expression of SecondsDown/SecondsInMinute.
31. Click Evaluate and you should see both seconds and calculated minutes appearing such as the below.
Again, your values might be higher or lower (maybe significantly), depending on how long your image has
been running.
32. At this point you’ve created an analysis that is calculating the number of seconds the line is down (a
“running” bit is off, or “False”), storing as a variable and dividing by a constant of 60 and storing the
number of minutes in another variable.
Note: At this point, you also might be asking yourself “Why did I have to do this with three
variables…wouldn’t I only have needed one expression such as the following?”…
TimeEq('LineRunning','*-8h','*',"False") / 60
The answer is “yes”, but this lab wanted you to experience and be aware of the ability to have
multiple variables within Analysis. Sometimes very helpful to have calculations done in
pieces/parts, especially when you need to troubleshoot! ☺
Also Note: Within expressions:
• Attribute names have to be within single quotes: ‘Temperature’
• Timestamps need to be within single quotes: ’03-Jun-2014 8:00’
• Strings or Text has to be within double quotes: “Below Target”
• Numeric values can be entered “as is”: 101
33. Notice below the expression area, the default Scheduling for this analysis is Event-Triggered based on
Any Input changing.
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34. If you click the down-arrow to the right of Any Input, you will see the “one and only” attribute that could
trigger this event, LineRunning. If multiple attributes were within the expressions, you could pick and
choose which attributes changing would trigger the analysis. So, in this application, every time the
LineRuning attribute changes (line stops or starts) the analysis will calculate how many minutes in the
last 8 hours the line was stopped or “down”.
Note: In a “real application”, calculating downtime over the last 8 hours might normally make more
sense to be done at the end of an 8 hour shift. In that case, instead of “Event-triggered”
scheduling, you might use “Periodic” scheduling and pick times to calculate that match up with
“end of shift times”. In this lab we don’t want to wait until end of shifts for our calculations to
occur, so are basically calculating blocks of “last 8-hour running downtime” values…last 8 hours
of downtime from whenever the calculations occur.
35. With what you have done so far, a major item is “missing”. You need to identify where you want to “store”
the results of analysis by Mapping to one or more tags. We don’t care about storing the SecondsDown or
SecondsInMinute values anywhere, but want to historize the number of MinutesDown. Click Map to the
right of the MinutesDown variable and select New Attribute.
36. Change Name to MinutesDown and click OK.
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37. You might have noticed a red exclamation mark to the left of your Analysis, and if you put the cursor over
it you might see the No output is defined Error/Warning message.
38. Check in your changes.
39. Go to the Attributes tab. You might be getting a PI Point not found message (if Pt Created, continue
with next step).
40. In case you have an error message that the PI Point does not exist, right-click on the Line 1 Element and
select Create or Update Data Reference. Once you do, close the Create Config dialog that appears. If
you didn’t have an error (or Pt Created), continue with next step.
41. Click on the Attributes tab, and you should see your newly created MinutesDown attribute with a current
value. However, it might be Pt Created as you see below.
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42. The expression in the analysis is only being evaluated when the LineRunning attribute changes (you
defined it as Event-Triggered). Wait a minute or two and try clicking Refresh. You may get a value to
appear, but sometimes the line will be the running or stopped state for quite a while before it changes, so
go ahead and continue with this lab even if you are not seeing a value yet.
43. On the Analyses tab, you should now be getting a green checkmark indicating analysis Running.
44. Let’s take a look at the archived data this analysis is recording. Start System Management Tools (SMT)
from the taskbar.
45. Click on Data > Archive Editor and click on the Search button.
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a. Enter Tag Mask of *MinutesDown*
b. Click Search
c. Select tag of Line 1.MinutesDown. Note that this tag got a prefix of Line 1 added to it, as it is from
the Line 1 Element. It also got a unique string added to the end of its name (the 85e86ce…etc you
see below) to make sure not to duplicate tag names.
d. Click OK
47. You should be seeing only a few values and timestamps for this tag, and the value of Pt Created might be
displayed. This is because this tag was only created a few minutes ago and the line is only “occasionally”
down.
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48. Go back to the PI System Explorer, right-click on the TimeLineDown analyses and select Preview
Results.
49. Enter Start Time of *-8h and click Generate Results.
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50. You should be seeing values, timestamps and a chart of the values involved in this analysis for “up to” the
last 8 hours. If your image has only been running a short amount of time, you may not have very many
values. However, even though you just created the MinutesDown tag in the last several steps of this lab,
the LineRunning tag has been turning on and off and has been archived ever since the image was
started. In your case, this might only be an hour or two ago, or it might be for the last day or two (or
more). In any case, this Preview Results window is showing what the data “looks like” for up to the last 8
hours (because you specified *-8h as the Start Time and * (current time) as the End Time). Click Close
when ready to continue.
51. Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Golly Gee, I really wish I had had this analysis running 8 hours ago
because I could really use this information on downtime permanently recorded in the Historian Archive.”
You’re in luck!! Right-click on the TimeLineDown analysis and click Backfill.
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52. Enter Start Time of *-8h and click Start.
53. If backfilling a lot of data, it might take some time. But, you probably very quickly received a green
Backfilling checkmark indicating Completed.
54. Go back to the SMT, enter start time of *-8h and click Get events (green right-arrow). Again, depending
on how long your image has been running, you still might not be seeing too many, but could be seeing
hundreds of events (scroll down). In either case, you should be seeing quite a few more than a few
minutes ago. These are the minutes of downtime recorded over the last 8 hours, updated every time the
line started or stopped (the LineRunning bit changed state).
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Part B – Add Analysis for Line 2
In our Asset Framework database we have a Baking Area with two lines, Line 1 and Line 2. Each of these,
Baking Area, Line 1 and Line 2, are Elements. If the Line 1 and Line 2 elements would have been made
with a Template, you could have created the Attributes and Analysis you did in Part A within the Template. It
would have been advantageous if you had done that, because the Attributes and Analyses you add to the
Template would have automatically propagated to every instance of that same Element. So, in this case, our
Line 2 would have automatically had LineRunning and MinutesDown Elements and a TimeLineDown
Analysis. And, in addition to those items being automatically added to existing instances of Lines, any Line
you added in the future would have automatically contained those items. Since we did not use a Template
when creating our Lines, we have to add the similar content to Line 2 “manually”. However, that is not too
difficult as we will be able to make use of copy and paste.
1. In PI System Explorer, go to the Baking Area section and select Line 1. On the Attributes tab, right-
click on LineRunning and select Copy.
2. Click on the Line 2 Element, and on its Attributes tab, right-click in the “white space” and select Paste.
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3. In the Settings area, change BL1 to BL2.

a. Click on Line 1
b. Go to Analyses tab
c. Right-click on TimeLineDown and select Copy
6. Click on Line 2. Then, go to Analyses tab, right-click in “white space” and select Paste.
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7. You should be seeing the same three variables and expressions you entered earlier for the Line 1
Analysis. You might recall that when you selected the LineRunning Attribute in the SecondsDown
expression, you selected Relative instead of Absolute. That is very useful as it is acting like a “variable”
and will now use the LineRunning Attribute from the Line 2 Element you are editing.
8. One thing that did not “carry over” from the copy and paste is the Output Attribute for the MinutesDown
variable. Click its Map link and select New Attribute.
9. Change name to MinutesDown and click OK.
10. Click Evaluate and you should see some values appear (values not likely to match below).
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12. Click the Run Analysis button. After a few seconds you should see a green checkmark appear in the
TimeLineDown analyses row.
13. Go to the Line 2 Attributes tab. You may be seeing the newly-created MinutesDown Attribute having an
error of PI Point not found… (if Pt Created or an actual value, continue with next step)
14. If you have the not found error, right-click the Line 2 Element and select Create or Update Data
Reference.
15. Make sure you didn’t get any errors and click Close.
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16. You may have to wait some time and click Refresh (expression only updates when LineRunning attribute
changes), but eventually should be getting a value for the MinutesDown Attribute. There may be times
when this change won’t occur for many minutes. If desired, you can continue with this lab and come back
to check this value later.
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Lesson 9 - Using Health Points and Performance Monitor
Tags

• Configure and use FactoryTalk Live Data (FTLD) Interface Health Points
• Use FactoryTalk Historian Server Performance Monitor Tags
FTLD Interface Health Points

A FactoryTalk Live Data Interface can have up to 64 Health Points created to monitor “health” of the
Interface. In the lab this lesson, you will create the FTLD interface’s health points and review
information available via these points (or tags). These points will give you a view into how long
various functions of the interface are taking and/or provide other information.
Note: Be aware that these points do not exist at default and if you create one or more of
them they are considered Rockwell tags in your FactoryTalk Historian server. So, they
count against your Rockwell Data Point license(s).
Historian Server Performance Monitor

FactoryTalk Historian v2.1 (and later) includes 140 Performance Tags for monitoring the system's
performance at no additional cost. Performance tags provide insights into a number of performance
management problems, including memory, disk, and process management problems.
For more information on these tags, refer to the Performance Monitor Interface to the PI System
manual (PI_PerfMon.doc) on a computer (image) where FactoryTalk Historian Server is installed (in
Program Files (x86) > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian > PIPC > Interfaces >
PIPerfMon).
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Lab 1 – Using FTLD Health Points and Historian Server
Performance Monitor Tags
Before you begin:
1. Go to the DATA image:
2. Launch the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU):
3. Select the FTLD1 interface from the drop-down box.

4. Select the Health Points sub-category under UniInt in the left pane.
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5. Right-click on one of the points and select Create All from the context-menu.
Note: None of these points exist at default and if you create one or more of them they are
considered Rockwell tags in your FactoryTalk Historian server. So, they count against
your Rockwell Data Point license(s).
6. The status of all health points should indicate Created.
7. Close the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU).

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a. Select SERVER if not already selected.
b. Go to Data > Current Values.
c. Click Search.
a. Enter a Tag Mask of sy* and then click the Search button.
b. Click the Select All button.
c. Click OK.
11. Click on the Start Updating toolbar button.
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12. Observe the Current Values for each FTLD Health Point. Be aware of the following items:
• Not shown below, but if you scroll to the right (if your window is not wide enough) you should
see Engineering Units and Descriptor for each of the Health Points.
• Initially, several tags may show “Pt Created” and will stay that way until something causes the
tag values to change. Restarting the Interface could cause at least some of these to update.
• Additional information on Health Points can be found in UnInt Interface User Manual on
FactoryTalk Historian Server computer (image) at Program Files (x86) > Rockwell
Software > FactoryTalk Historian > PIPC > Interfaces > UniInt.
13. Still in the SMT, click the Remove All button (this is not “deleting” any tags, just removing them
from the Current Values display).
14. Click Search button
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a. Set Tag Mask back to * (wildcard – no filtering of tag names).

b. Set Point Source to # (symbol for Performance Monitor Tag Point Source). c. Click Search.
d. Click Select All.
e. Click OK.
16. Click Start Updating.
17. Scan through list of Performance Monitor tags and their values. Note that it might be useful to
display these tags in a Historian Client like FactoryTalk VantagePoint. You could also send
them to a Controller or HMI via the use of Output tags. These tags DO NOT count towards your
Rockwell Data Point license(s).
18. For more information on these tags, you could refer to the Performance Monitor Interface to
the PI System manual (PI_PerfMon.doc) on a computer (image) where FactoryTalk Historian
Server is installed (Program Files (x86) > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian > PIPC
> Interfaces > PIPerfMon).
19. Close the SMT.
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Lesson 10 - Using and Displaying Audit Information

• Use SMT to enable auditing of your PI Server
• Use AuditViewer to examine activity
Historian Audit Database

The Historian Audit Database records the data that is added, edited, or removed from specific
Historian Server database files, as well as other events or changes to configuration that occur in the
Historian Server. The Historian Audit Database satisfies FDA Title 21 CFR Part 11 auditing
requirements.
In addition to methods described in the Auditing the FactoryTalk Historian SE Server User’s
Guide you can use to store, export, and review audit records, Rockwell Automation provides the
Historian AuditViewer utility, which enables you to view and manage Audit Database records.
Historian AuditViewer is available as a separate package with its own documentation.
Principles of Operation
The Historian Audit Database contains records of changes made to Historian Server data. The
following changes are recorded:
• Editing and deleting time-series data, such as values in the Historian Archive.
• Creating, deleting, and editing configuration information on time-series data. Examples
include Historian point configuration data and access permissions for secure objects within
the Historian Server.
The Historian Audit Database consists of three distinct files. Each file represents a Historian
Subsystem:
• Base Subsystem: pibasessAudit.dat
• Archive Subsystem: piarchssAudit.dat
• Snapshot Subsystem: pisnapssAudit.dat
All files for the online Audit Database are stored in the PI\log directory of the Historian Server.
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Use Historian AuditViewer to Manage Historian Audit Records
Historian AuditViewer is a Microsoft Windows-based application that allows you to view records from
the Audit Database, select them, examine them, print them, or export them to a new file.
Note: Historian AuditViewer satisfies the Title 21 CFR Part 11 FDA regulatory requirements for
generating accurate and complete copies of Audit Records in both human-readable and electronic
form suitable for inspection, review, and copy.
Historian AuditViewer allows you to search for and view audit records in the Historian Audit Database.
It is an essential tool for analyzing and validating a FactoryTalk Historian System for compliance with
an implementation of cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice regulations enforced by the US
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)). It facilitates the generation of selected reports in Windows file
formats, to comply with FDA audit requests.
Because AuditViewer can change auditing status and control the execution of FactoryTalk Historian
System processes, certain restrictions are in place:
• AuditViewer must run on the same computer as the Historian Server.
• The user must be a member of the Windows Administrator User Group.
• For FactoryTalk Historian 3.0 and later, the user must have read access to the PIAUDIT entry
in the Historian DBSecurity table and read/write access to the PITUNING entry. For earlier
versions of the Historian Server, the user must log on to the Historian Server as the piadmin
user.
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References:
• Auditing the FactoryTalk Historian SE Server User’s Guide
• AuditViewer Help
Note: This lesson uses AuditViewer to display audit information. This tool is not installed
automatically, but included in Redist/AuditViewer in Historian 3.0 and newer install media
and/or downloaded from Knowledgebase article 64384 - FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition
AuditViewer
Also note that Audit Viewer has already been installed on the SERVER image.
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Lab 1 – Auditing FactoryTalk Historian
Before you begin:
Part A - Enable Auditing of your PI Server

1. Go to the SERVER image:
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a. Expand the Operations category and select Tuning Parameters.
b. Click the EnableAudit Tuning Parameter.
Note: The Auditing Mask entered value is a bit mask where each bit refers to a specific
database. -1 enables the audit of all databases. Masked parameter (Point:1, Digital Sets:2,
Attribute Sets:4, Point Class:16, User:32, Group:64, Trust:128, Module:256, Heading:512,
TransferRecord:1024, Campaign:2048, Batch:4096, UnitBatch:8192, Server:16384,
Collective:32768, Identity:65536, Identity Mapping:131072, Snapshot:268435456,
Archive:536870912, DBsecurity:1073741824)
Value units are in bitmask. Parameter takes effect at startup only.
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4. Double-click on EnableAudit to display the properties window. Change the auditing Value to -1
and click OK
5. Close the SMT.

6. For the auditing entered value to take effect, FactoryTalk Historian must be stopped and
restarted. Select Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE >
Stop FactoryTalk Historian SE. Wait for all services to stop and window to close.
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7. Once all of the services have stopped and window has closed, select Start > All Programs >
Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > Start FactoryTalk Historian SE. Wait for all
services to start and window to close.
Part B - Make Changes and Use Audit Viewer to Examine the Activity
With auditing enabled the audit database mechanism reports changes to all subsystems, all data
added, edited or removed from the system including database configuration changes. In this exercise,
you are going to substitute a tag value in the archive and also edit an attribute of a tag and view the
change in the FactoryTalk Historian AuditViewer.
1. Open the SMT, expand the Data category and select Archive Editor.
2. From the archive editor, you need to search/select the tag value you wish to view/modify. Use
the search button to select the tag BA:TEMP.1. The archive editor will display data for the time
period specified in the lower window. Note you are displaying the last two hours of values in the
archive at default (Start Time of *-2h and End Time of *)
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Note: In our original configuration of Historian with the images you are using, we made our
Administrator user a member of two Windows Groups that we then mapped to
FTHAdministrators and FTHEngineers Groups in Historian. Be aware that there is also a
Historian Group named FTHSupervisors. This is the only group that can edit archived
values of FTLD tags. In this lab you are about to edit an archived value of an “internal” or
“test” Historian tag (BA:TEMP.1). If you were going to edit the value of an FTLD tag, your
logged in user would have to be mapped to the FTHSupervisors group, otherwise you
would get an error and not be able to edit the value.
3. Scroll down “part-way” through the data so that you are not looking at the “beginning” of the last
two hours of data. Otherwise, when you later look for your edits you might have to look “further
back” than the last two hours you are currently displaying.
From the archive editor select the value you want to change and note its date/timestamp (write it
down). Type a new value (modified value of 99 in below example), press Enter, then click the
Save icon . The modified value will be displayed and marked as substituted (scroll to your
date/timestamp and look for checkmark in Substituted column after these steps).
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a. Go to Points > Point Builder
b. Search for tag BA:LEVEL.1
c. Go to Archive Tab
d. Change Span to 101
5. Save changes by clicking the Save icon and look for success message:
6. From the SMT Tools menu select Audit Viewer… to launch the application.
7. From the AuditViewer expand the Manage section. Verify the Archive 0 checkbox is checked (if
not, check it) and then click the Manage link
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8. Double-click the Archive 0 icon on the right to display the subsystems file details.
9. From the subsystem details page scan each of the files in turn by selecting the Scan File button
from each of the three subsystem views. Do all three (only two shown below).
10. Confirm that the records are updated with current date/time (will not match below).
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11. You can also view this in table form. Above the three Subsystems listed select the Table tab.
12. Change the search “Start Time” to past 5 minutes by specifying *-5m
13. Select Search to display and audit records for the time period specified.
Note: If you don't see records, perhaps more than 5 minutes have gone by since your
changes. Try Start Time of *-10m in that case.
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14. To view more detailed information, click the + symbols on the entries. This will display detailed
information about the tag attribute old and new value, modified archived values, etc. You should
see entries such as: Configuration (Base) tab:
Timeseries (Snapshot/Archive) tab:
15. As time allows, make other FactoryTalk Historian edits/changes and detect them with Audit
Viewer.
16. Close Audit Viewer and the SMT.
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Lesson 11 - Using Archive Management Tools

Create various sized archive files and register/unregister archives.
Managing archives in FactoryTalk Historian is a relatively straight-forward task. You can use the
Archives plug-in for SMT to create, register, and unregister most archives. You can also use the
piarcreate command-line utility to create archives, as described in the FactoryTalk Historian SE
Server Reference Guide.
Archive File(s)
With FTHistorian 3.x and earlier, three Archive files are created at default, each 128 MB in size.
Starting with FTHistorian 4.0, by default, the Historian server setup program creates one archive file
such as the following:
For new installations, the installation wizard calculates the default archive file size based on the
physical memory that is available on the computer. The recommended archive file size will equal
approximately one-third of the physical memory. It will also never be smaller than 256 MB or greater
than 8192 MB. The actual recommendation will always be a power of 2.
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Example
The physical memory available on the computer equals 8192 MB.
One-third of it equals 2730 MB.
The result will be rounded down to 2048 MB, which is a power of 2.
Conclusion: The recommended archive file size on a computer with 8192 MB of the physical
memory equals 2048 MB.
The default archive file size might be too small for most systems. Rockwell Automation recommends
that you change the default file size based on the number of Historian Points, according to the
recommendations in the Introduction to Historian SE Server System Management guide.
Note: The complete user documentation on FactoryTalk Historian SE is available in the
Common Files\Rockwell\Help folder in your Program Files (x86) directory, and in the
Redist\Docs folder on your FactoryTalk Historian SE installation DVD.
The location for archives is typically on the largest drive on the server. Rockwell Automation
recommends that you change the name of the archive directory from the default Server\dat to a more
meaningful name, such as \arc.
Annotation Files
Also be aware that every archive file has a corresponding Annotation File with an extension of “.ann”
added to the archive file name. For example, an archive file named SERVER_2013-12-26_00-
0000.arc would have a corresponding annotation file of SERVER_2013-12-26_00-00-00.arc.ann
created in the same directory and used to store any annotations of the archived data. If you move or
relocate archive files, you should always remember to move or relocate annotation files “with them”.
Archive Shift
One archive file is considered “Primary” (the archive file currently being written to). An “Archive Shift”
occurs automatically when the Primary archive file is full. When an “Archive Shift” occurs, either a
new archive file will be created or an existing file will be used. This is controlled by a Tuning
Parameter called Archive_AutoArchiveFileRoot (see below and next page).
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If there is a valid path specified in the Archive_AutoArchiveFileRoot parameter, a new archive file
will be created when an archive shift occurs. In FactoryTalk Historian SE 4.0, at default the value in
this parameter is C:\Program Files\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\Server\dat\piarch_.
This setting will cause new archive files to automatically be created in the C:\Program
Files\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\Server\dat directory and the archive file names will
start with piarch_. The rest of the archive file name will consist of the date and time of when it was
created and an .arc extension. As discussed previously, an Annotation file will also be created with
.ann added.
If the “Value” (path) in this parameter is empty or blank, when a file shift occurs an existing file will be
used. The archive file must already exist and be registered in the FactoryTalk Historian Server. The
selection of the specific file that will be used is:
• If more than one empty archive files exists, the most recently created archive file will be
used.
• If there are no empty archive files, the oldest full file will be used. The archived data already
in this file will be erased and new archive data be written to it.
The Archive_AutoArchiveFileSize tuning parameter allows you to define the size for automatically
created archive files. If the parameter is not present, by default the new archive files will be the same
size of the current primary archive.
Register and Unregister

To move an archive file, you must unregister it first. In the future, if it is desired that FactoryTalk
Historian SE be able to read data from an unregistered archive (for example, if someone wants to use
a client such as VantagePoint to have access to that data), it must be registered again.
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Lab 1 – Managing FactoryTalk Historian Archives
Before you begin:
• No special configurations need to be done prior to this lab
2. Launch the System Management Tools (SMT):

a. Go to Operation > Tuning Parameters.
b. Go to Archive tab.
c. Double-click on tuning parameter of Archive_AutoArchiveFileRoot.
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4. Notice that at default, this tuning parameter will cause new archives to be created in the
C:\Program Files\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\Server\dat directory and the
archive file name(s) will start with piarch_.
5. Instead of \dat\piarch_, change this tuning parameter to end in \archives\MyArchive_.
6. When you’ve made the above change, click the OK button (not shown). Your tuning parameter
should now appear as follows:
7. Still in the Operation category, select Archives:
8. Notice there is only one archive currently and you can see its file location and name, its Start
Time (when it was created), End Time of “Current Time” (which means it is currently the Primary
archive being “written to”), its size and % Full.
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9. During normal operations, you should not force an immediate archive shift, but let archives
automatically be created when current Primary file is full. But, for testing or in this case, training
purposes, force an archive shift by clicking the Force an archive shift button.
10. Click Yes.
11. You should eventually see two messages in the Session Record. One when the Archive Shift is
initiated and several seconds later, one indicating Archive Shift is completed.
12. Notice the following:

a. The file that initially was there now has an End Time specified (date/time of when it was
changed from Primary.
b. The newly created archive is identified as End Time of Current Time, which means it is now
Primary.
c. The new archive file is stored in the location you specified (…\archives\MyArchive…) with
date and time of when it was created added to the end of its name (will not match below).
d. The new Primary file is 512MB in size, same as the file that was Primary.
Note: You did not modify a Tuning Parameter of “Archive_AutoArchiveFileSize”, so by

default, newly created archive files are the same size as the file that is Primary before the
Archive Shift occurs.
13. Let’s say that you want to move the older archive file to another location or another computer
(image) entirely. Do these steps in this order:
a. Click the “old” archive file.
a. Click the Unregister button.
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14. Click Yes.
15. It might be a little hard to see, but if you click on the Primary archive (top one) you should be able
to see that the Unregistered archive is “greyed out”.
16. Data in an Unregistered archive cannot be seen by FactoryTalk Historian SE clients such as
FactoryTalk VantagePoint, or even using Data > Archive Editor within the SMT. To Register this
archive, so that its data is accessible again, do the following steps in this order:
a. Click the Unregistered archive.
b. Click the Register button.
17. You should get a message such as this in your Session Record:
18. Using Windows Explorer, go to the location specified below and notice the “default” archive file
with its corresponding annotation file:
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19. Similarly, go to the below location and review the archive and annotation files that you have
created in this lab:
20. Close Windows Explorer and the SMT.
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Lesson 12 - Scheduling Backups of Historian Data

Procedure to schedule a daily backup of FactoryTalk Historian
It’s important to back up the FactoryTalk Historian Server at least once a day, so that you don't lose
data and configuration information if something goes wrong with your equipment. All backups of
Historian that are done while the Historian System is running are managed by the PI Backup
Subsystem.
Backups
In System Management Tools, there is an Operation > Backups section:
The primary purpose of this Backup tool is to view the backup history of a FactoryTalk Historian SE
Server. You can also use the Backup tool to run unscheduled, or on-demand, backups for
troubleshooting, data mining, or testing. On-demand backups do not interfere with your regularly
scheduled backups.
Note: Do not use on-demand backups to substitute regularly scheduled FactoryTalk
Historian SE Server backups.
The “Introduction to FT Historian SE Server System Management” manual explains how to configure
a regular, automatic backup. The “FactoryTalk Historian SE System Management Guide” provides
more detailed information about backups.
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PIbackup.bat
Batch file used to create backups to local hard drive or to create Windows Scheduled task to create
backups automatically.
Required parameter:
Backup path – Complete drive letter and path to a directory with sufficient space for the entire
backup.
Optional parameters:
-Install - Installs a scheduled task to run PIbackup.bat each day at 3:15am.
-Incremental – An incremental backup will be performed.
Number of archives – Number of archives to backup.
Archive cutoff date – Specifies the cutoff date for archives to be backed up. The more
restrictive of number of archives and archive cutoff date takes precedence.
PIsitebackup.bat
This batch file does not exist at default. If created, it is called automatically at the end of the
PIbackup.bat file. A version named pisitebackup.bat.example is created at default and can be
edited to refer to an existing remote computer that can also be sent backup files in addition to the
local backup created by PIbackup.bat.
Note: See “FactoryTalk Historian SE System Management Guide” for details and additional
information regarding Backups. In particular, there are sections describing:
• How to Restore a Backup to an Existing Historian Server
• Restore a Server Backup to a New Computer
• Restore Archives from Backup
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Lab 1 – FactoryTalk Historian Backups
Part A - Create a Scheduled Task to Perform Backups

Before you begin:
• No special configurations need to be done prior to this lab
2. One of the things you will do in this lab is run a file named pibackup.bat to create a Scheduled
Task to automate backups of your FactoryTalk Historian Server. The pibackup.bat file calls
another file named afbackup.bat that assumes your FactoryTalk Historian is using the default
install of SQLServerExpress to store AF (Asset Framework). The default SQLServerExpress
install was not used in the images you are working with, but rather a Standard SQL Server. So,
we need to edit the contents of this afbackup.bat file. Use Windows Explorer and go to
C:\Program Files\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\PIPC\AF\SQL.
3. Right-click on afbackup.bat and click Properties.
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4. Turn off the Read-only property and click OK.
5. Right-click on the afbackup.bat file and select Edit.
6. At the bottom of this file, find this section.
7. Change the SET SQLINSTANCE from .\sqlexpress to SERVER
8. Save the file and exit Notepad.

9. Change the file attribute back to Read-only.
10. Close Windows Explorer.
11. Now that this afbackup.bat file has the necessary corrections because our AF install is not using
the default of SQLServerExpress, we can continue.
Open a Command Prompt and change directory to the location:
C:\Program Files\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\Server\adm
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12. Type pibackup and press Enter. You should get the following. Please read through the
information, including descriptions of the “backup path”, “number of archives”, “archive cutoff
date” and “-install” parameters:
13. To create a Scheduled Task that will backup Historian in C:\Backup, including the 5 most recent
archives, enter the command (be sure to enter exactly, including spaces):
pibackup C:\Backup –install 5

14. Examine the end of the text output and verify that the script completed successfully.
Note: A backup has not actually “occurred”, but by using the –install flag a Scheduled
Task to create backups has been created.
15. Close the Command Prompt.

16. Go to Start > Administrative Tools > Services.
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17. Verify that the Task Scheduler service has a Status of Started.
18. Close the Services dialog.

19. Go to Start > Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler.
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20. Click Task Schedule Library and verify that the PI Server Backup task has been created and
has a Next Run Time of 3:15 AM on tomorrow’s date (the day after the date that you created this
task). Note that 3:15 AM is the default for this task controlled by settings within the pibackup.bat
file:
21. Since we don’t want to wait until 3:15 AM tomorrow morning, right-click on the task and select
Properties:
22. Go to the Triggers tab and click Edit.
23. In the Settings area, enter a start time of two minutes past your computer’s current time (“future
time” of 2:00 PM in below example). Be sure to pay attention to AM versus PM. Click OK and
OK (not shown):
24. Wait for the time to go by. You may need to close and reopen Task Scheduler to refresh, but look
for Last Run Time to show when your task ran.
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25. On the C: drive you should now have a “Backup” folder with contents such as the below. The
subfolders store the backup configuration files and archives. The .txt file is a log file that stores
information about the backup that you have just completed.
26. Open and look through the backup log (.txt) file. Check at the end that the backup script
completed successfully:
27. Note the “No pisitebackup.bat script found. Skipping site-specific backup.” line in this log
file (a few lines above the “completed successfully” message). The pibackup.bat file is only
backing up to your local hard drive. You should also back up to a separate computer in order to
recover from a hard disk crash of the computer running Historian Server. A pisitebackup.bat file
is used to accomplish this (next part in this lab).
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Part B - Creating a pisitebackup.bat file to Backup to Remote Computer
1. Still on the Server image, open Windows Explorer, navigate to the directory specified below and
find a file by the name of pisitebackup.bat.example.
2. Right-click on pistiebackup.bat.example file and rename to pisitebackup.bat (delete the

.example portion).
3. Now, right-click on the pisitebackup.bat file and select Edit. Notepad should open and you
should be seeing the contents of this file. Find the following excerpt from this file.
4. In the UNCROOTPATH1 line in this area:

a. Remove the REM statement at the beginning of the line
b. Change contents/path as follows:
5. Save the file and exit Notepad.
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6. Go back to the Task Scheduler. Right-click on the task and select Properties.
7. On the General tab, click Change User or Group…
8. Enter Administrator and click Check Names.
9. Click OK.
10. Click OK to close the Properties dialog.
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11. When asked to log in, enter password of rockwell and click OK.
12. Right-click on the task and select Run.
13. Wait for two minutes for the task to run.

14. If you didn’t wait two minutes, please keep waiting. If a full 2 minutes have gone by, in the
C:\Backup folder you should see a second txt file and if you open it you should see “…completed
successfully” at the bottom.
15. Go to the Client image.
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16. In Windows Explorer, go to C:\Temp\SERVER and open whatever folder is in that directory
(should be one there with today’s date as name). There was already a shared Temp folder on
the C: drive. The scheduled task created a SERVER folder and then one with today’s date. In
the folder of today’s date you should see backup files such as the following safely backed up on
this “separate” computer from the FactoryTalk Historian Server.
17. Close Windows Explorer on the CLIENT image.

18. On the SERVER image, open the System Management Tools and go to Operation > Backups.
Your display will not match the below, but should reflect the backups you’ve performed.
19. Close any open applications/windows on the SERVER image.
Note: You can review the “FactoryTalk Historian SE Management Guide” for more
information regarding creating and restoring backups.
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Lesson 13 - Using FactoryTalk View SE Trend to Display
Historian Data

• Use Trend object in FactoryTalk View SE to display FactoryTalk Historian data
• Extract individual ProcessBook displays from a ProcessBook workbook and embed them inside a
FactoryTalk View SE display
Using FactoryTalk View TrendX Object

The FactoryTalk View TrendX display object supports FactoryTalk Historian SE Server as a data
source. The lab in this lesson shows the configuration required for FactoryTalk View TrendX to trend
the data points (tags) from FactoryTalk Historian SE Server. A trend is a visual representation or
chart, of a real-time or historical data. It provides you a way to track plant activity as it is happening.
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Lab 1 – Using FactoryTalk View SE Trend to Display Historian
Data
Before you begin:
• FactoryTalk Historian, FTLD Interface, and Client image should be configured and tags added as
per Lessons 1 and 2.
1. Select the CLIENT image.
2. Launch FactoryTalk View Studio by selecting Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software >
FactoryTalk View > FactoryTalk View Studio.
3. When prompted, select the View Site Edition (Network Distributed) application type and click
Continue.
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4. Click the RA Foods application and click Open.
5. When the application fully opens, go to RA Foods > Graphics, right-click on Displays and click
New.
6. Use the Trend object to draw a box in some empty space.
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7. The Trend Properties dialog should automatically appear. On the General tab, change the Data
Server to Poll historical data:
8. On the Pens tab, change the Pen Source to Historian Server and then click the Add Pen(s)…
button. Please note that the Pen Source selection only controls the action that will be taken
when the Add Pen(s)… button is clicked. It does not have any effect on existing pens, and
should it switch back to the default value after a pen is added this does not indicate that the pen
is no longer using the Historian Server source.
9. On the Add Pen Configuration dialog, click the Browse button to launch the tag search dialog.
10. On the Tag Search dialog Basic Search tab, change the Tag Mask to *TempZone* and then
click the Search button.
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11. Use Ctrl-clicks to select both the …TempZone1 and …TempZone3 tags. Click the OK button.
Note: Depending on what labs you’ve done prior to this lab, you may or may not have the
other tags listed below in your system.
12. Click on the Add button.
13. Click on the OK button.
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14. Change the Width on both pens to 3.
15. On the Display tab, change the Maximum pen caption length to 80.

a. On the X-Axis tab, change the Time span to 5 Minute(s).
b. Click the OK button to finish (not shown).
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17. Verify that the pens have been added to the trend.
18. Click Test Display button.
19. Experiment with and explore the trend. Note that the data is coming from the FactoryTalk
Historian archive and is not being updated from the snapshot table. This means that updates will
only be displayed when events pass the compression test.
20. Close FactoryTalk View Studio, saving your display if desired (not needed in future labs).
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Lesson 14 - Backfilling Data into a FactoryTalk Historian
SE Server
“Backfilling” data is basically taking data collected from another source and inserting or transferring
into one or more FactoryTalk Historian SE archives.
Previously, backfill of older historian data was a manual process and very cumbersome. This is now
simplified with Historian SE v4.0
The three primary use cases are:
• Historian ME in place with historical data and now want to upload to Historian SE to archive
• Historian SE collecting data on an OEM machine and now we want to replicate the data in a
plant wide Historian SE or Historian Enterprise
• Import time series data from other databases to Historian SE
Typical backfilling options:
• Piconfig (command line utility to maintain and configure Historian Server databases and
tables)
• FTH ME to FTH SE Data Transfer, FTH to FTH Interface, PI to PI Interface
• Relational Database (RDBMS via ODBC) Interface
• Universal File and Stream Loading (UFL) Interface
Lab summary
• Overview of data to backfill
• Review data currently in Historian and create archive to hold backfilled data
Configure UFL Interface and backfill data
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Lab 1 - Backfilling Data into a FactoryTalk Historian SE Server
Before you begin:
• FactoryTalk Historian, FTLD Interface, and Client image should be configured and tags added as
per Lessons 1 and 2.
Part A - Overview of Data to Backfill and Historian SE Configuration

In this lab you will create a new tag in FactoryTalk Historian, and FactoryTalk Historian will start
collecting values and timestamps for that tag “from that time forward”. However, we will assume you
previously had collected values and timestamps from that very same tag from another method, and
have a CSV file of this previously collected data to “backfill” into the FactoryTalk Historian archives.
1. Go to the SERVER image.
2. Go the Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software and open FactoryTalk Administration
Console.
3. After selecting Network directory, right-click on RA Foods and select Add Individual Historian
Points.
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4. Click Browse Tags.

a. In the left pane, navigate to RA Foods > BL1 > Online > Program:Proof_Oven and click on
OvenUDT
b. Click on TempZone1 in the right pane.
c. Click Add Tag(s) to List.
6. After confirming this tag is in the lower pane, click OK.
7. Click OK again on Add Historian Points dialog and close FactoryTalk Administration
Console.
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8. Now we will take a look at a couple of CSV files that will be used to backfill data for this new tag.
Do the following steps:
a. Use Windows Explorer and go to C:\Class Files\Backfill Lab
b. Right-click on Data to Backfill.csv
c. Select Open with > Notepad
9. Scroll through this CSV file and note that it contains over 4000 entries (don’t bother counting!) of
timestamps (date followed by time) and values between May 1 and May 31, 2012, for a tag by the
name of:
RA Foods:RSLE:BL1.Program:Proof_Oven.OvenUDT.TempZone1
This is a CSV (comma delimited) file, with each line formatted as:
Tagname,Timestamp,Value
10. We will use the data in the Data to Backfill.csv file to backfill data in a FactoryTalk Historian
archive. Later in this lab, when you configure a Universal File and Stream Loading (UFL)
interface, you will specify this file as the source of the data. However, we will also need a
“reference” file to show how the data to be backfilled is formatted. We could use the same
file, but a reference file is limited to 50KB in size, so we will use a different file instead. a. Back
in Windows Explorer, right click on the Backfill File Reference.csv
b. Select Open with > Notepad.
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11. Note that this file has only one line in it, and the formatting of the line “matches” the lines in the
Data to Backfill.csv file. This Backfill File Reference.csv file will be used when configuring an
INI file needed for the UFL interface (you will see all of this as you continue with the lab).

a. Close both csv files and DO NOT save any changes if asked.
b. Minimize Windows Explorer.
13. Open System Management Tools (SMT) by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell
Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > System Management Tools.
14. The first thing we will do is look to see if there is already data in the Historian archives for this tag
within the timeframe of the data in the CSV file (May 1 – 31, 2012). There shouldn’t be, because
you just created that tag! ☺
b. Click the Tag search button.
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a. Enter Tag Mask of *TempZone1
b. Click Search
c. Select the tag that has OvenUDT as part of its name and ends in TempZone1 d. Click OK
16. You should now be seeing that last two hours of archived data for this tag, as the default Start
Time is *-2h (two hours ago) and End time is * (now).

a. Enter Start Time of 5/1/2012
b. Leave End Time set to *, which means “current time”

c. Click Get Events (green “right-arrow” button)
d. Note that in the below example, 173 records were retrieved from within this time period. In
your case, depending on how long ago you added the tag and the FTLD Interface started
collecting data for that tag, you are not likely to have exactly 173 records but probably
somewhere between 20 and 100 values. Your Pt Created value and timestamp should be
just from a few minutes ago.
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18. If we are going to backfill data from the CSV file, which contains values and timestamps from
May 1 – 31, 2012, we need to make sure one or more archives exist that will be able to hold
such data. Go to Operation > Archives. Note that at this time your list of archives will not
match the below, but if you look at the Start Time and End Times, none of your archives are
configured to contain data from May of 2012.
19. Since the required archive does not exist, let’s create it. Do these steps in this order:
a. Click the Create a new archive button (dialog shown below will then appear).
b. Give it a name of BackfilledArchive (nothing “special” about this name, could be any name
you like)
c. Select Create archive with fixed start and end time.
d. Enter Start time of 5/1/2012 12:00:00 AM (we could pick a date further in the past, like
1/1/2012 if we want to use this archive for even older data, but for the purpose of this lab we
will make it go just back to 5/1/2012).
e. Enter End time of 12/31/2012 11:59:59 PM (this archive can now contain data “up to” the end
of 2012 in case we want to backfill additional data later).
f. Select archive Type of Dynamic.
g. After confirming below settings, click OK.
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20. You should see your archive was created to contain data within the timeframe specified. Also,
note the “successfully created” message. Note: At this time you may have an additional archive
file in your Historian than the two shown below…will not have an impact on this lab as you
continue.
21. Now we will create two Trusts for the FactoryTalk Historian Server to allow the UFL interface to
interact with the Server/Archives.
a. Go to Security > Mappings & Trusts
b. Click the Trusts tab.

a. Click the down-arrow next to the New… button
b. Click Advanced.
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a. Enter Trust Name of PI_UFL (could actually name whatever you want)
b. Enter Application Name of PI_UFL.exe (this is the PI-SDK Application for this interface) c.
Click PI Identity browse button
24. You would normally use a different existing Identity, Group or PI User with more restrictive
privileges, or even create a “special one” for this interface to use (see documentation), but for the
purpose of this lab, do the following: a. Select Type of PI Users
b. Select piadmin
c. Click OK.
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25. Your dialog should now look like this. Click OK.
26. You should see your trust added as follows:
27. Repeat previous steps to create another trust named PI_UE (could be whatever you want),
trusting application PI_UE (this is the PI-API Application for this interface– does not have .exe
extension) and PI Identity of piadmin. a. Enter Trust Name of PI_UE
b. Application Name of PI_UE
c. PI Identity of piadmin
d. Click OK.
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28. You should now have these two Trusts in your Historian Server.
29. Minimize the SMT for later use.
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Part B - Configure, Run and See Results of UFL Interface
1. Open Interface Configuration Utility (ICU) by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell
Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > Interface Configuration Utility.
2. Select Interface > New Windows Interface Instance from EXE…
3. Click Browse…
4. Go to C:\Program Files (x86) > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian > PIPC >
Interfaces > PI_UFL
a. Select PI_UFL.exe.
b. Click Open (not shown below).
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a. Select SERVER from the drop-down list.
b. Specify Point Source of FTLD
c. Click Add
d. You will see a message that the interface is ready to be configured (not shown below) – click
OK on that message)
6. Click UFL tab and browse button for the Configuration File.
7. You are identifying an INI file that the UFL interface will use to store its configuration. If you had
an existing one you wanted to use, you could select it. We do not, so are going to create a new
file and configure it in the next several steps.
a. Go to the INI folder in the PI-UFL directory
b. Enter name of MyBackfill
c. Click Open.
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8. Click the Launch UFLDesigner.exe button to step through configuration of our INI file.
9. Read message and click Yes.

a. Leave default Plug-in of AsciiFiles.dll selected. This is because we are going to backfill
from an ASCII (CSV) text file.
b. Use browse button and select the reference file of C:\Class Files\Backfill Lab\Backfill File
Reference.csv. Remember from earlier in this lab, this file contains one line of text that
“matches” the formatting in the data file we will use to backfill from and will be used as a
reference as we continue with this configuration.
c. Click OK.
11. You will see three panes in this editor. Configurations are done in the left-pane, the center-pane
displays our reference file contents, and the right-pane shows the actual INI file contents as it is
being created.
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12. In the configuration pane, notice we are on tab 1 General and the Input File Mask is defaulting to
the same Backfill File Reference.csv file that we picked in a previous step. This would be OK if
our actual data to import is the same file we used for a reference. However, reference files have
a 50KB maximum size and our file of data for backfilling is much larger than that, so in the next
step we will have to pick the actual data file.
13. Click in the Input File Mask field so that the browse button will appear. Click the browse button.
14. Go to C:\Class Files\Backfill Lab\

a. Select Data to Backfill.csv
b. Click Save
15. Click Yes.
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16. The top of your configuration pane should now have the Data to Backfill.csv file specified for
Input File Mask.
a. Click the blue right-arrow to go to tab 2 Variables.
17. This tab is used to define the variables or “parts” to be extracted from the csv file. Click the green
+ button to add the first variable.
18. You will identify the first variable in the data file, which in our case is the tagname.
a. Enter name of Tagname
b. Enter Data Type of String.
c. Click the green + to add a second variable.
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a. For the second variable, enter name of Timestamp
b. For the Data Type, use drop-down list to pick DateTime
c. IMPORTANT - Delete all the characters in the Data Format field to “start fresh” (best practice
to avoid using invalid existing characters).
d. To match the format of the Timestamp in our data file, carefully enter the following in the Data
Format field, including the leading and trailing double-quote characters. Needs to be EXACT
and it is Case Sensitive!!
“MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss”
Note: There is a space between “yyyy” and “hh”, but no other spaces
e. Make sure your second variable is configured exactly as below
f. Click the green + sign to add a third variable.

a. Enter Name of Value
b. Select Data Type (using drop-down arrow) of Number
c. When done with above, click blue right-arrow to go to tab 3 Message Types
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21. Click the green + sign to add a Message Type. Leave this configuration as it is. It basically is
indicating that “any” first character in a line is the beginning of the data for that row. C1==”*” is
interpreted as “the first character in a row (Character 1 or C1) can be “anything” (wildcard of *) to
indicate the start of data for that row”.
22. Go to tab 4 Data Extraction by clicking blue right-arrow.
23. This tab is used to assign data extraction to specific variables. Click the green + button.
24. The data in our CSV file is delimited, so select Delimited and Next.
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25. The data in our CSV file is delimited with commas, so check Comma. Notice in the Data preview
window you can see the data is “properly delimited” (you can tell by the black vertical lines),
separated by the commas between Tagname, Timestamp and Value. Click Next.
26. Read the blue text in this dialog carefully.

a. One at a time, drag the Tagname, Timestamp and Value variables to the appropriate
columns in the Data preview.
b. When the three variables are in the proper columns as shown below (review carefully!), click
Finish.
27. Click blue right-arrow to go to tab 5 Actions.
28. On the 5 Actions tab, click the green + sign.
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29. Read the blue text. Leave the StoreInPI option selected. Similar to the previous steps, drag the
three variables to the appropriate place in the Result field (you will be dragging and dropping “on
top of”).
• Tagname to <*Tag>
• Timestamp to <*Time>
• Value to <*Value>
30. After above step, the Result field should appear as follows:
31. Click Validate and you should get a green shield.

a. First, click Add
b. Second, click Close.
33. Click the Save icon and then select File-Exit to close the UFLDesigner.
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34. Back on the ICU, go to the General tab
a. Click the Add a scan class button
b. Specify a 30 second scan class by entering 00:00:30 (in a real application this may differ)

a. Go to Service tab
b. Click Apply
c. Click Create (will take a few seconds)
d. Click Start interface service.
36. In a few seconds you should see Ready and Running in the lower left-hand corner.
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37. Restore the Windows Explorer you minimized earlier. When all 4000+ values and timestamps
are finished being transferred to the FactoryTalk Historian Server, the current date, time and a
._OK extension will be appended to the name of the source data file.
38. Restore the SMT that you minimized earlier

b. Click Get Events (green arrow)
With 5/1/2012 and * as Start and End times, you should now be able to see all of the data
you’ve backfilled into the Historian archives. We originally had 20-100 or so events for this
tag within this time frame. Now, you should be seeing 4000-5000 events, the 4000+ you
backfilled, plus the “more current values” that Historian has now been collecting.
Congratulations!!
39. Scroll through and briefly review the data collected from May 1, 2012 to May 31, 2012, now in the
Historian archive. You will have a “large gap” from May 31, 2012 to whatever the current date is
(the date you are doing this lab), but you’ve successfully backfilled data into a Historian archive.
40. On the ICU, stop the UFL interface.
41. Close ICU, SMT and any open dialogs/windows.
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Lesson 15 - FactoryTalk Historian SE High Availability

• Observe the effect of Interface Buffering in a FactoryTalk Historian system
• Understand concepts and advantages of Interface Redundancy
• Understand concepts and advantages of Collectives
Interface Buffering
FactoryTalk Historian provides a buffering service that can save your data if the Interface Node loses
its connection to the Historian Server. When an Interface Node is running the buffering service
(Pibufss), data flows from the data source, through the interface to the buffering service. From there,
data flows to the Snapshot subsystem on the Historian Server.
Data Flow with Buffering

If the Historian Server is not available for some reason (such as an upgrade on the Server) then
Pibufss stores the data in one or more file buffers on the Interface Node. When the Historian Server
becomes available again, Pibufss sends all the stored data from the buffer, in chronological order,
back to the Historian Server. At this point, if you look at the data in VantagePoint or any other client,
you see a continuous flow of data, with no gaps.
Impact on the Historian Server

On the Historian Server side, all data from the Buffer Subsystem comes directly to the Snapshot
Subsystem. The Buffer Subsystem runs the compression algorithm before all time-series data is sent
to the Historian Servers. This guarantees identical data in the archive records of all Historian Servers
when a Collection is used, and also brings another reduction of CPU usage for the Snapshot
Subsystem. Overall, the more distributed CPU load translates into a higher scalability of your
Historian System.
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Note: While the Buffer Subsystem performs the swinging-door compression on the remote node, all
data from the Historian Interface is sent to the Historian Server. Values are marked as snapshot only
or snapshot and archive values before they are stored in buffer queues and sent to the Historian
Servers. As a result, real-time updates are delivered to Client Applications, Analyses, or Calculations
as if compression was performed by the Historian Server itself.
Buffer Files
The Buffer Subsystem creates fixed-size event queues named PIBUFQ_*.DAT to store all time-series
data. The asterisk (*) in the file name is substituted by the host name of the corresponding Historian
Server. By default, these queue files are found in the …PIPC\DAT directory, but their location is
configurable in the ICU. Default size for these queue files is 32 MB, configurable from a minimum of 8
MB to a maximum of 128 GB. In most cases, choose a large enough size for the PIbufss queue as it
guarantees a reserved space for buffered events. Use Performance Counters or the pibufss -qs
option to estimate the correct size based on data rate and desired capacity. One buffer file is initially
created. When buffering is actually taking place, additional files will be created as required until there
is not enough available disk space to create any other files. As new files are created, a sequence
number is appended to the file names.
Buffer Settings in the ICU

In this course, buffering was configured for the FTLD Interface on the Data image during the Lesson 1
Lab. The FTLD interface can be opened with the ICU.
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Select Tools > Buffering to configure or view buffering settings.
Pibufss buffering is enabled with this setting, shown which servers are available for buffering.
Pibufss buffer file size, path, and other settings can be changed in Buffering Settings.
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Interface Redundancy and Collectives
High Availability
At Rockwell, we understand that uninterrupted access to data is a serious concern for our users.
That's why we've expanded our products to provide a feature called High Availability (HA). This
offering enhances the reliability of Historian Servers by providing you with an alternate source of
timeseries data without requiring special hardware or clustered environments.
Here's how it works.

In the traditional Historian System data is collected at an interface node and transmitted to a listening
Historian Server where the user community can access it. Even in this simple configuration there are
a number of possible scenarios, both planned and unplanned, that could trigger data loss or render
data inaccessible.
Planned Maintenance
• Operating System Updates
• Software Upgrades
• Hardware Upgrades
• Reconfiguration
Unplanned Failure
• Software Failure
• Hardware Failure
• Network Failure
• Human Error
Planned Maintenance
So what happens when an administrator takes down a Historian System for planned maintenance
without having an HA system?
Taking an interface node down for service prevents data from being gathered from its source and
creates a gap in data stored that may not be acceptable. Although Rockwell interfaces buffer data
collected when a Historian Server is unavailable, that data is not available to clients while the
Historian Server is down for maintenance. While the circumstances of planned maintenance can be
controlled, the impact can be minimized but not eliminated entirely.
Unplanned Failure
While occurring infrequently, unplanned downtime represents a greater risk. Even under the best
circumstances there are times when hardware, software, or networks fail. Any of these scenarios can
bring down a system momentarily or until such time as the failure is detected and repaired. This
downtime could last several hours. Generally, exposure is similar to that of planned maintenance,
with a couple of exceptions. Any failure bringing down an interface node can cause a loss of data. A
failure of the Historian Server could also result in loss of any data that had not been previously
backed up. There may be permutations of either or both of these failure modes that can also have
serious impact on the system's ability to store and recover data for users.
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High Availability Architecture
The Historian System already includes features that facilitate making data highly available. These
include the ability to conduct online backups, compatibility with Microsoft Clustering technology, the
distributed nature of data collection within the Historian System, and the availability of fault-tolerant
third-party solutions that provide redundant hardware solutions. Now, with our HA Historian System, a
new architecture with built-in features is introduced that specifically address the issue of data
availability during planned and unplanned downtime.
These features are visible at three levels, as described in the following sections.
• Historian Servers
• Interfaces
• Historian SDK
Historian Servers
The HA design provides multiple Historian Servers that each act as independent storage and a
source for time-series data. These Historian Servers function as a unit described as a collective. A
collective has two types of servers:
• Primary - The main server in a collective where configuration changes are made. By default, this
is the only server that accepts non-buffered data.
• Secondary - The remaining servers in a collective. These servers automatically adopt
configuration changes made on the primary.
Within a collective, configuration changes are allowed on only the Historian Server designated the
primary. The other Historian Servers in the collective are designated as secondary and do not allow
configuration changes, but do receive changes from the primary. Historian Replication keeps the
configuration databases consistent on the servers. Any change made to the primary Historian Server
configuration is moved to the secondary Historian Servers in real time, according to a fixed schedule,
or on demand. The figure below shows this overall architecture of a collective consisting of two
member servers.
HA Architecture
Historian Server Replication
Historian Server replication is one of the core concepts behind High Availability. It allows redundant
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Historian Servers, including a primary and one secondary server, which together are referred to as a
Collective. The Historian Server point database, module database, user database, trust table, and
most of the configuration tables are replicated across the collective.
Additionally,
• Interface buffering service writes time-series data directly to all members of the collective,
buffering data temporarily for those unable to receive data for a period of time and assuring that
time-series data stored in each archive is an exact duplicate of the others.
• Any SDK-based Historian client (for example, FactoryTalk VantagePoint, FactoryTalk Historian
ProcessBook, FactoryTalk Historian DataLink) can automatically switch from the primary
Historian Server to any of the replicated servers in the event connection to the primary is
unavailable, assuring that all clients always have read-access to Historian data.
Interfaces
Interface-level failover allows you to install redundant copies of an interface on separate interface
computers. This provides uninterrupted collection of process data even when one of the interfaces is
unable to collect data for any reason. Interface node maintenance—such as hardware upgrades,
security updates, and software installs—can occur without loss of data because the redundant node
automatically collects and sends data to the Historian Server. Moreover, in the event of a hardware,
network, or software fault, interface level failover prevents the loss of data, as the redundant node
detects when the primary nodes fail and begins to send data to the Historian Server.
Interface nodes are configured to make use of a buffering service. All interfaces that write data to the
Historian System can make use of this service. The buffering service queues the data independently
to each Historian Server in a process called n-Way buffering. Each Historian Server receives the
same data from the interfaces and performs its functions independently.
Historian SDK
The Historian SDK, the data access layer used by Rockwell applications as a programmatic interface
to the Historian Server, is enhanced to treat the collective as one logical data source. When the
Historian Server is shut down normally through the pisrvstop.bat batch file or shutting down the OS,
the Historian SDK receives an early notification of shutdown and immediately connects to a
secondary Historian Server. When the Historian Server providing data becomes unresponsive
because of hardware or software problems, or unreachable because of network problems, the
Historian SDK connects to an alternate Historian Server after a short timeout period.
Applications that use the Historian SDK can take advantage of the failover behavior on any computer
where the new Historian SDK is installed. The new Historian SDK is backward compatible with older
versions of the Historian SDK.
Once you install an HA-aware Historian SDK (typically when you upgrade to an HA-aware version of
a client application) you get failover behavior against any collective, regardless of whether you are
using an HA-aware version of an application. Applications using previous versions of the Historian
SDK do not benefit from the failover behavior and continue to function as before.
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Normal Data Flow
Key Points regarding Collectives

• A collective consists of two servers, where one is identified as Primary and the other as
Secondary. Any edits must be done to the Primary. The Primary sends any configuration
changes to the Secondary automatically.
• Support for Collectives is limited to one Secondary server. Capability of having multiple
Secondary servers planned for future releases.
• Only the Primary server is displayed in the FactoryTalk Administration Console. In "Properties" of
the Primary server, it is assigned the appropriate number of licenses that it needs based on RA
and/or 3rd Party tag counts. A second "duplicate" set of licenses must be purchased and
installed. The Secondary server requires and will use the duplicate activations, although you do
not manually "assign them" to the Secondary server as you assign licenses to the Primary.
• Collectives rely on Interface nodes configured for buffering. These interface nodes collect data
from data sources and provide identical values/timestamps to each server. When one server is
down it will buffer the data for that server while continuing to send "current" data to the server that
is available.
• If a client such as VantagePoint, ProcessBook or DataLink tries to obtain data from one of the
servers and that server is not available, the client will automatically switch to obtain the data it
needs from the other server in the Collective.
• "Internal values", such as Performance Equations and Totalizers, are not synchronized between
Primary and Secondary servers. Such tags could contain different values.
• The Primary and Secondary servers would have their own Event-triggered input tags (tags read
based on other tags changing) and Output tags (values sent "outside" of the server), and those
tags would work independently of each other. Configuration changes of such tags will
automatically be sent from Primary to Secondary servers, but actual content/values of such tags
are not synchronized. For example, both servers could be sending values to the same Output tag,
such as a tag in a CLX controller, and the values may or may not be identical.
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More Information
For more details on HA concepts and features, see the following manuals:
• FactoryTalk Historian SE High Availability Administration Guide FactoryTalk Historian SE
Buffering User Guide
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Lab 1 - Interface Buffering
Before you begin:
• FactoryTalk Historian and Interface configured, and tags added as done in Lesson 1
2. Launch VantagePoint Trend by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software >
FactoryTalk VantagePoint > Trend.
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3. Go to System > Sources > FactoryTalk > localhost > Historians > Production Historian >
Tags and click and drag the …SimpleTempZone1 tag to the trend surface.
4. Click the Live Mode button and you should see the trend scrolling from right to left, continuously
updating.
5. In order to “monitor” the buffering subsystem, there are “queue statistics” we can monitor on the
computer with the Interface that is doing the buffering. The FTLD Interface FactoryTalk Historian
Server is using is installed on the DATA image.
6. Switch to the DATA image.
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7. Open the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU) from Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software >
FactoryTalk Historian SE > Interface Configuration Utility.
8. From the drop-down Interface selection box, pick the FTLD1 interface.
9. Once selected, note that this interface is configured for buffering:
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10. Close the ICU.
11. Open a command prompt and change to the path of:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\PIPC\BIN
12. Enter the command: pibufss -qs

Note: “pibufss” is the buffer service, then there needs to be a space, a “-“ (dash) followed
by “qs” for queue statistics.
13. The result of this command should be similar to the following. The first column of numbers is the
“count” at that moment. The second column is “change since last update”. Note that you should
be accumulating Total Event Writes and Total Event Reads, but no Current Queue Events at
this time.
14. Leave the Command Prompt open and return to the CLIENT image.
15. Verify that your VantagePoint Trend is still displayed and the …TempZone1 tag is still changing.
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17. We will simulate a Historian Server outage by manually stopping Historian.
Stop your Historian Server by selecting Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software >
FactoryTalk Historian SE > Stop FactoryTalk Historian SE
18. Wait for all of the services to stop and the dialog to close itself before proceeding.
19. After Historian is fully stopped, go back to the CLIENT image and look at your VantagePoint
Trend. When the Historian Server is shut down, you will see a “break” and apparent “loss of
data".
20. Go back to the DATA image.
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21. Since the Historian Server is not available, the FTLD Interface is buffering data. You should see
Current Queue Events accumulating (may take several “updates”).
22. Return to the SERVER image.
23. Restart the Historian Server by selecting Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software >
FactoryTalk Historian SE > Start FactoryTalk Historian SE
24. While the Server is restarting (may take several minutes), return to the DATA image.
25. See if you can “catch” when the server finishes restarting and the pibufss buffer “empties”.
Current Queue Events value should go to 0 (zero) and the “change since last” value should be
negative. This may take several minutes…even when the Historian Server is fully running, it may
take a couple of minutes for the Interface to “notice” and send that buffered data to the server.
Please be patient! ☺
26. Return to the CLIENT image.
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27. Your trend should now be updating with values.
28. If you see a gap, to fully refresh the trend, turn Live Mode off and back on again. The trend
should be displaying data with “no gaps”.
29. Leave VantagePoint Trend open and in Live Mode for the next Lab.
30. Go to the DATA image. Make sure the command window has focus and select Ctrl-C to stop the
queue statistics. Close the command window.
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Lab 2 - Interface Redundancy
Before you begin:
• FactoryTalk Historian and Interface configured, and tags added as done in Lesson 1 and 2
Note: In the VMware images being used in this training, the FTLD Interface we have been
using is on the DATA image. To demonstrate Interface Redundancy, another FTLD
Interface has been installed on the CLIENT image. It is NOT recommended in real
applications that Interfaces be run on “client machines”, but for the purposes of this lab
we will use an interface on the CLIENT image as a redundant interface to the one on the
DATA image.
Part A – Configuring Buffering and Initial CLIENT Interface Configuration

1. Go to the DATA image.
2. Open the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU).
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3. Use the ICU on this image to confirm the interface is running (select FTLD1 Interface from
dropdown list and look for "Running" at the bottom of the dialog)…
…and configured for Buffering.
4. Leave the ICU open.
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5. Go to the CLIENT image.
6. On the CLIENT image, we want to verify the connection to the Historian Server named SERVER.
Launch the AboutPI-SDK utility.
7. Click on the Connections entry, the SERVER checkbox and confirm SERVER connected dialog
appears at bottom.
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8. Select File > Exit PISDKUtility to close the AboutPI-SDK.
9. Launch the Interface Configuration Utility (ICU).
10. Click the Create new Interface Instance from .BAT file toolbar button.
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11. Navigate to the LDInterface directory and select the FTLDInt_FTLD.bat.bak file. Click the Open
button.
12. You will be prompted to select the Host PI Server. Select SERVER from the drop-down box and
click the OK button.
13. Note that the Interface ID is set to the default value of 1 and will be the same ID as that of our
primary interface on DATA, Interface ID of 1.
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a. Select the Service category.
b. Change the Display name to FTLD1.
c. Click the service Create button.
15. Select Tools > Buffering….
1. The PI Buffer Subsystem has not yet been enabled. Select Yes on the dialog that appears.
2. The rest of the buffering configuration will be done in the PI ICU. Read this message and then
click OK.
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3. In the PI ICU, click General and then Service from the list on the left. The ICU recommends
that the Interface Service should have a dependency on the PI Buffer Subsystem. It
recommends that this dependency be created. Select Yes from the dialog that appears.
4. After telling the ICU to create the dependency, you will see the pibufss added to the list of
service dependencies.
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6. The Buffering Manager appears showing the buffering system status, and some statistics.
Click on Settings to configure the options for the buffering system.
7. The Buffering Settings dialog allows you to set Global and Server specific settings for
buffering. Select the Show advanced global configuration link.
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8. We are going to force the system to always buffer data by setting the AF SDK Buffering to
Always buffer. Select Save and close.
9. Close the Buffer Manager.

10. In the General area of the ICU, there is now a Buffering Status setting and button to
Enable the connection. Click the Enable button.
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11. The connection to the server must be configured for the Buffering Subsystem. Type SERVER
into the textbox for Server, and then click Next.
12. The Buffering Manager needs to be assigned an identity to use to connect to the archive
server. Click Browse to select from the list of identities and groups available.
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13. The following dialog appears, select PI Group, then select FTHEngineers and click OK.
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14. The selected identity is assigned to the server connection.
15. The following message warns that the connection is using an administrative level connection
which fails the default security tests. We are going to ignore the warning and use this setting.
Click Yes.
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16. The connection to the server is established. Click the Exit add server wizard button and be
returned to the PI ICU.
16. In the ICU, click Apply (it will not be grayed out yet), and then note that the Buffering Status is
now set to On.
17. One of the configurations of the Interface on the DATA image that was done on Lesson 1 was to
delete some Scan Classes and enable Disconnected Startup. To make this interface “match”,
first go to the General tab, click on them one at a time and use the Remove selected scan class
button to delete scan classes 0.05, 0.1 and 0.25.
18. You scan classes should now appear as follows.
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19. Click on Disconnected Startup category and select Enable disconnected startup (with point
caching).
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Part B - Create Shared Folder
1. We need to create a “shared folder” to store a “handshaking file” that the two redundant interfaces
will use to control their redundancy. Go to the SERVER image.
Note: A computer running a Historian Server is NOT a recommended place for this shared
"handshaking" folder. However, since it is the only image that will not be running an
Interface, we will use it for training purposes in this lab.
2. Go to Start > Administrative Tools > Share and Storage Management.
3. Click on Provision Share… on right side of dialog
4. Click the Browse… button
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5. Click the c$ drive and then Make New Folder button
6. Name the folder FTH_Shared (press Enter after typing name) and then click OK
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7. Click Next > several times to accept defaults until this screen. Select the second option and then
Next >
Note: In a “real application”, you may wish to adjust these permissions for a different user
name or group of users.
8. Click Next > on dialog that follows and then Create on this dialog.
9. Click Close and then close the Share and Storage Management dialog.
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Part C – Configuring Interfaces for Failover
1. Change to the DATA image which should still have its ICU open.

a. Select the Failover sub-category under UniInt in the left pane.
b. Check the box to Enable UniInt Failover.
c. Select Phase 2.
d. For Synchronization File Path, browse to the FTH_Shared folder on Server (Network >
SERVER > FTH_Shared) and click Open. The file FTLDInt_FTLD_1.dat will be created in
this folder. If for some reason you cannot “Browse”, type
\\SERVER\FTH_Shared\FTLDInt_FTLD_1.dat into this field.
e. Select UFO (Universal FailOver) Type of HOT.
f. Carefully confirm all following selections. When confirmed (are you sure?), select Apply.
3. Read this message (we will come back later to finish the configuration) and click OK
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4. Read and click Yes.
5. Read and click OK (we will stop and restart the interface later).
6. Leave the ICU open. Go to the CLIENT image.
7. Make the same Failover selections on this interface as you did on the other.
HOWEVER - Select Failover ID # 2 for this instance and Failover ID # 1 for the other instance -
IMPORTANT! Verify all below selections CAREFULLY!
8. Are you sure the settings match – especially Failover ID# for “this instance” of 2 and “other
instance” of 1? If so, click Apply on above dialog
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9. Read and click OK.
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Part D – Modifying FTLD Service Properties
1. Still on the CLIENT image, go to Services by selecting Start > Control Panel > System and
Security > Administrative Tools > Services
2. Double-click the FTLD1 Service
3. Select the Log On tab, and specify to use Administrator account with password of rockwell.
Click OK
4. Read and click OK
5. Close Services, Administrative Tools and System and Security dialogs 6. Go to the DATA image
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7. Go to Services (Start > Administrative Tools > Services) and make the same changes to the
FTLD1 service on this image. Use Administrator with password of rockwell. Click OK.
8. Read and click OK.
9. Read and click OK. You will not stop and restart the service YET!
10. Close the Services dialog.
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Part E – Finishing up and Testing the Interface Redundancy
2. In the ICU, click the Browse button to select the “other instance”.
3. Click the FTLDInt1 interface on the CLIENT image and click OK.
4. In the “tag area”, below where you identified the UFO Type and Synchronization File Path,
right-click on the tags and select Create UFO_State Digital Set on Server SERVER…:
5. Read and click OK on this dialog.
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6. Right-click on the “tag area” again and select Create all points (UFO Phase 2).
7. Click the Apply button at the bottom-right of the dialog box and click OK on the Interface
Changes Require Restart dialog box that will appear.
8. Restart the interface. Look for Stopping Service, then Starting Service and then Ready and
Running at the bottom-left of the dialog box. Leave the ICU open.
9. Return to the CLIENT image.
10. Select the below Browse button.
11. Click the interface on DATA image and click OK
12. Click the Apply button at the bottom of the dialog box and then start this interface by clicking
Start Interface service.
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13. Click Yes if asked if you would like the ICU to start the PIBufss Service (may not be asked this).
14. Switch over to the SERVER image.
16. Expand the Data category and select the Current Values plug-in.
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17. Use the search button to add all of the *FTLDInt_1* tags to the current values monitor and click
the Start Updating toolbar button.
You should be seeing:

• ActiveID = 1 – Interface Node with Failover ID#1 is currently "Primary" and sending data to
Historian Server
• DeviceStatus = 0 – Zero is “good” status
• Heartbeats = Incrementing numbers indicate Interface Nodes #1 and #2 are responsive
• States = Current “Primary” or “Backup” state of Interface Nodes #1 and #2. Under certain
conditions could also indicate “Off” or “Transition”
18. Leaving the SMT open, go to the CLIENT image and the VantagePoint Trend application, which
should still be running from the previous lab. You may see a gap or loss of data from interface
configuration changes and restarts. If not running, start VantagePoint Trend and create a
display with a trend of the tag ending in …SimpleTempZone1. See Lab 1 in this Lesson for
steps if needed.
Note: Since the Interface on the DATA image is currently Primary (you should have seen
that with the SMT on the SERVER image), this tag being trended is coming from the
Interface on the DATA image to the Historian Server.
19. On the DATA image, use the ICU to stop the Interface by clicking Stop interface service.
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20. Back on the CLIENT image, there could be a short delay but then the backup interface should
take over. You may need to stop and start Live Mode, but data collection will continue and no
data should be “lost”.
21. Start the Interface again on the DATA image.
22. Switch back to the SERVER image.
23. Did the Interfaces “switch roles”? The Interface on CLIENT (Failover ID #2) is now “Primary” and
the Interface on DATA (Failover ID #1) is “Backup”?
24. Experiment with stopping a “Primary” interface to verify the “Secondary” Interface takes over, with
no data loss. Just be sure you don’t end up with both Interfaces stopped. You WILL FOR SURE
lose data then! ☺
25. When you are finished experimenting, revert back to non-redundant conditions by:
a. Make sure the Interface Node on DATA (ID#1) is Primary
b. On the CLIENT image, stop the Interface with the ICU, then close the ICU.
c. Use the ICU on DATA image to de-select Enable UniInt Failover, click Apply and Restart
the Interface Node.
26. On all three images, close any open applications (SMT, VantagePoint Trend, ICU, etc).
This lab is complete.
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Lab 3 – Using a Collective
Before you begin:
• FactoryTalk Historian and Interface configured, and tags added as done in Lesson 1
Note: At the end of this lab, you will have a system with a single FTLD interface sending
identical data to two FactoryTalk Historian Servers, a Primary and a Secondary Server in a
Collective. It may not be easy to “un-do” the configurations you are making to create this
Collective. So, be aware if you will be doing additional testing/training with these images,
it will assume the Collective will still be in effect. If you want to “revert” to configurations
prior to making the Collective, you may want to take VMware snapshots of the DATA and
SERVER images prior to starting this lab.
Recommended procedure to take snapshots and restart images:
a. Stop FactoryTalk Historian on the SERVER image
b. Shut down both DATA and SERVER images
c. Take VMware snapshots of each image
d. Start SERVER image and wait until completely running
e. Start DATA image until completely running
Part A – Confirming and Adding Security Mappings

1. In VMware Workstation, in addition to the DATA, SERVER and CLIENT images that should
already be running, open and power on the SERVER2 image.
2. Wait until following dialog appears, and then at least one minute to make sure everything is fully
running. Then, close this dialog.
3. A few changes regarding security have been made from the “default” Operating System and
FactoryTalk Historian Server install. Right-click on Computer and select Manage.
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4. Note that under Server Manager (SERVER2) > Configuration > Local Users and Groups >
Groups, Windows Groups of WIN_FTHAdministrators and WIN_FTHEngineers have been
pre-created in preparation of this lab.
5. Under Users, right-click on Administrator and click Properties.
6. On the Member Of tab, note that the Administrator user is a member of both
WIN_FTHAdministrators and WIN_FTHEngineers Windows Groups. The Administrator user
is the default logged in user on this image, so you currently have the privileges/rights of the
Administrator user.
7. Close Administrator Properties and the Server Manager dialogs.
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8. Go to Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > System
Management Tools.

a. Verify SERVER2 is checked
b. Go to Security > Mappings & Trusts
c. Note that the WIN_FTHAdministrators and WIN_FTHEngineers Windows Groups have
been mapped to the FTHAdministrators and FTHEngineers FactoryTalk Historian Server
Groups. These are also additions to this image that have been made from the default (no
Mappings exist at default). This is that so the Windows Administrator user (currently, “you”)
will have permissions/rights that are given to these built-in FactoryTalk Historian “Identities”.
10. Close the SMT.

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a. Open the SMT.
b. Go to Security > Mappings & Trusts.
c. With the Mappings tab selected, click the New… button.
13. Select Windows Account Browse button.
14. Enter Administrator, click Check Names (“Administrator” should change to

SERVER\Administrator”) and then OK.
15. Click PI Identity Browse button.
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16. Select Type of PI Groups, the FTHSupervisors group and OK.
17. Click OK.
18. At this time you have mapped the Administrator Windows User (logged in User on each image)
to the FTHSupervisors group in FactoryTalk Historian Server. This Mapping will be replicated to
the Secondary Server when you make the Collective.
Note: To be more consistent with your other Mappings, a “better practice” might have
been to create a Windows Group named WIN_FTHSupervisors, make the Administrator
user a member of that Windows Group, and then map that Windows Group to the
FTHSupervisors Group in FactoryTalk Historian. This would need to have been done on
both the SERVER and SERVER2 images. In order to save a few steps in this lab, directly
mapping the Administrator to the FTHSupervisors group on the SERVER image is all that
is needed.
19. Close the SMT.
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Part B – Creating Collective Preparation
1. Go to the DATA image:
2. On the DATA image, open the ICU, select the FTLD1 interface from the drop-down list and
STOP the FTLD1 interface.
3. Close the ICU.

4. Start AboutPI-SDK from Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian
SE > FactoryTalk Historian SE System > AboutPI-SDK
5. Select Connections > Add Server…
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6. Enter server of SERVER2, click the “+” sign (will turn to “-“), uncheck Confirm and click OK.
Note: If you don’t uncheck Confirm, when you click OK the AboutPI-SDK will automatically
try to connect to the new Server. In this case we want to wait until the next step to
connect “manually” just to separate these activities (separate “accepting the above
dialog” from “making an actual connection”).
7. Check both server boxes and verify you can connect to both from this image with no errors:
8. Since the logged in user on all images is Administrator, based on Windows Group assignments
and Mappings in the SERVER2 Historian Server, note that you are currently connecting to
SERVER2 as FTHAdministrators, FTHEngineers and PIWorld (everyone).
9. Close the AboutPI-SDK.

11. Repeat steps 4-9 on the SERVER image, adding SERVER2, so that this image can connect to
both servers. You should end up with both servers found and no errors as you did from the
DATA image:
12. Close AboutPI_SDK.
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Part C - Creating the Collective
1. Still on the SERVER image, open the Collective Manager from Start > All Programs >
Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Historian SE > FactoryTalk Historian SE System >
Collective Manager:
2. Select File > Create New Collective…
3. Read the following dialog. We have not made a recent backup, and for the purpose of this lab will
not do so, but in a “real application” you would for sure want to do that before proceeding. In the
previous section you verified the FTLD Interface could connect to both Servers. Select both
checkboxes and click Next.
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4. Select that the primary server of the new collective is “existing” and click Next.
5. Select SERVER as the Collective Primary from the drop-down list.

Note: When an existing server is used as Primary, the Collective Name will automatically
be the same as the Primary Server’s name. If you would have selected to create a
collective from a “newly installed PI server” on the previous dialog, you would have been
able to give the Collective a name of your choice.
Click Next:
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a. Select SERVER2 as Secondary Server.
b. Click Add.
c. Click Next.
7. Select number of archives to copy to Secondary Server (yours may differ from below) and click
Next.
8. Click Next to accept default location to store backup of Primary Server (in a “real application” you
may want to change).
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9. Review information listed and click Next.
10. Watch and read through the steps as the wizard creates the Collective. When the Collective is
successfully created (congratulations!), click Finish.
11. On the Collective Manager, click the “Collective” of SERVER. You should see the Primary and
Secondary Servers of SERVER and SERVER2 displayed with green check marks. If you don’t
see green checkmarks on both, wait one minute and then refresh (either right-click on SERVER
Collective and click Refresh or else use the Refresh button above the two Servers).
12. Close the Collective Manager.
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14. On the DATA image, open the AboutPI-SDK
15. You should see the two Historian Servers that were listed earlier:
16. Click on SERVER and the display should update to show a single “Collective” named SERVER.
Notice the different icon -
17. Close About PI-SDK.

18. Open the ICU and select the FTLD1 interface:
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19. Select Tools > Buffering and Buffered Servers. You should see both Primary and Secondary
servers listed as servers that this interface will buffer data for using a Collective name of
SERVER.
Note: These images are configured in a Workgroup, rather than a Domain. However, the
Historian Collective does require Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN) for the Servers.
So, these images have been configured with “Lab” as a Primary DNS suffix. You will
notice in the above that Server.Lab and Server2.Lab are their “full computer names” or
FQDN.
20. Select OK on the Buffering dialog and click the Start interface service button.
21. Look for “Ready” and “Running” to be displayed at the bottom of the ICU.
22. Close the ICU.
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Part D - Testing and Using the Collective
1. Still on the DATA image, open the SMT.
2. In the SMT, click on the Primary Server named Server (if not already checked) and use Data >
Current Values to display the tag ending in …SimpleTempZone1. Verify you have occasionally
changing values (be sure to click the Start Updating button).
3. Notice that the SMT has an area to select either the Primary or Secondary server. It is possible
to select both servers at once, but many times you would only want to select only one or the
other.
4. On the SMT, uncheck the box for SERVER and check the box for SERVER2. Open up a couple
of different editors, like Point Builder, Performance Equations, Totalizers, etc. Confirm that the
fields you have normally used to edit tags are “grayed out”…you cannot edit configurations on the
Secondary server.
5. Change the SMT to look at the Primary server instead of the Secondary. Confirm that the editing
fields for things like Point Builder, Performance Equations and Totalizers are NOT “grayed out”.
The Primary server is the one that must be used for any editing of tags and most configuration
changes. It will “replicate” such changes to the Secondary server.
6. Confirm the previous statement is true by making some small change on a tag on the Primary
server (like slightly modifying Zero or Span) and confirming that change “appears” on the
Secondary server.
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7. Go back to showing the value of the …SimpleTempZone1 tag in the Primary Server and verify it
is still occasionally changing.
8. Minimize the SMT for now.

9. Open a command prompt and go to the path of c:\program files (x86)\rockwell
software\factorytalk historian\pipc\bin
10. Type pibufss -qs and press Enter.
This command is to monitor “queue statistics” of the Buffer Subsystem. Since the interface will
now be able to buffer data to two historian servers, you should be getting a choice to monitor one
or the other buffer as follows:
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11. Press 1 and Enter to monitor the buffer to the Primary server. You should see a screen similar to
the following, updating every few seconds, indicating buffer status. As long as the “Current
Queue Events” value is zero, the interface is not buffering to this server.
12. Go to the SERVER image and stop Historian.
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13. Go back to the DATA image. It may take several minutes, but eventually you will see data being
buffered for the SERVER server.
14. Go back to the SMT. You should see the changing of data for this tag has stopped. Write down
the Timestamp of this “last record” before buffering data…3:54:23 PM in below example.

a. Uncheck Server
b. Check Server2
c. Add the …SimpleTempZone1 tag to Current Values and click Start Updating. The value
should be eventually updating in this server.
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16. Go to the SERVER image and restart the Historian Server.
17. On the DATA image, wait until the Current Queue Events goes to zero.
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a. Go to the SMT
b. Unselect Server2 and select Server.
c. Go to Data > Archive Editor and search for the …SimpleTempZone1 tag.
d. Scroll to find the Timestamp you had written down earlier. Although the Historian Server was
shut down for many minutes, data was still being collected by the FTLD Interface and
buffered. Now that the Interface has “reconnected” to the Server, there should not be a large
gap in time between archived values following this Timestamp (buffered data was “filled in”).
19. Close all open dialogs/applications/windows.
Note: As mentioned at the beginning of this lab, you system is now configured to use a
Collective. If you have additional testing/training you would like to do with these images
unrelated to having the Collective, you can either…
1. Continue with all these images running as they currently are. – or –
2. Shut down the SERVER2 image and continue with the other images
you’ve used throughout this training. Be aware that the FTLD interface
on the DATA image will continuously collect and buffer data for the
SERVER2 Server. You are probably not likely to notice any negative
effects from this behavior.
– or –
3. As mentioned at the beginning of this lab, if you made VMware snapshots you
can revert to those snapshots and start up the DATA and SERVER images
again (as described in that section) before continuing.
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Appendix A - Installing FactoryTalk Historian SE

• Recognize Pre-Installation Tasks and Windows File System Concerns
• Steps to Install FactoryTalk Historian SE Server
• Steps to Install FactoryTalk Historian SE Interface
Pre-Installation Tasks and Windows File System Concerns

Synchronize Time Settings on FactoryTalk Historian System Computers
For all machines that are part of the FactoryTalk Historian system, you must ensure that the time is
set correctly and synchronized to the FactoryTalk Historian Server. In addition, make sure that all
Windows machines have the proper time-zone settings and that they are set to automatically adjust
for daylight-saving changes.
The FactoryTalk Historian Server computer and client computers clocks should all be synchronized.
This is typically done through the domain controller. The domain controller's time is synchronized first
by an NTP source. Then, the domain controller synchronizes all the other computers that are a part of
the FactoryTalk Historian system.
Disable the Windows Time Zone (TZ) Environment Variable

The Windows TZ environment variable adversely affects Historian Server. You must ensure that TZ is
not set on the Historian Server computer.
To confirm the TZ variable is not set on Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2:
1. Select Start > My Computer.
2. Right-click and select Properties.
3. Click the Advanced system settings link.
4. Click Environment Variables.
5. If the TZ variable is present, delete it.
6. If necessary, restart the computer.
Do Not Use Windows File Compression

Rockwell Automation recommends that you do not Windows File System Compression. Although
compression may save disk space, it requires more CPU resources each time data arrives at the
Archive and clients access database files. Time Specifications and Considerations
You can slow access to archive files and degrade performance of the entire FactoryTalk Historian
System if you use compressed files. This is especially true for files that change constantly, such as
the primary archive and event queue files, and the current message log file.
Configure Antivirus Software
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Rockwell Automation recommends that you configure anti-virus software on production systems to
exclude scans of the Server\dat directory and any directories containing Historian Server database
and archive files. The Server\dat directory does not contain any executable programs or scripts.
Anti-virus software immediately scans files with contents that change. The contents of the Historian
Server archive files change constantly as archive cache records are regularly flushed from memory to
disk. Archive files tend to be large, and thus the time required to scan can be quite long. In addition, if
any random bit pattern in an archive file happens to match a known virus signature, the anti-virus
software can lock or otherwise quarantine the archive file. Such a corruption of the archive file system
would result in the unrecoverable loss of production data. The same situation can occur for other
Historian Server database files.
Installing FactoryTalk Historian Server

Note: FactoryTalk Historian Server and Interface are already installed on images used with
this Training Manual. The following steps are intended as a reference to show the install
steps/procedures. The specific dialogs shown are for the installation of version 3.0.
Version 4.0 steps/dialogs are very similar.
Prior to installing FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition Server, the following core components should be
installed. See FTHistorian SE Installation and Configuration Guide for details.
• Microsoft SQL Server
• RSLinx Enterprise
1. From installation media, run setup.exe
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2. Select Install FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition
3. Select Install FactoryTalk Historian Asset Framework
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4. Asset Framework is a requirement for installing a FactoryTalk Historian Server and requires a
SQL Server database. The below dialog will let you install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express
on the local computer. See the FTHistorian SE Installation and Configuration Guide for more
details. Assuming you have a SQL Server for Asset Framework to use, select Install
FactoryTalk Historian AF Server.
5. This wizard will guide you through installing Asset Framework. Select Next.
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6. Read and select I accept the terms… (if you do) and click Next.
7. The dialog shows what items need to be installed and if they currently are or not. Select Next.
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8. Select destination drive and then Next.
9. See the FTHistorian SE Installation and Configuration Guide for more options/details on the next
dialog. The below example is selecting the default local instance of SQL Server Express
(.\sqlexpress) and installing both the AF Application Service and AF SQL Database. Select Next.
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10. This dialog shows what will be installed. Select Install.
11. When install completes, select Finish.
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12. Select BACK to return to prior dialog.
13. Select Install FactoryTalk Historian Server.
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14. Read dialog and select Next.
15. Read and select I accept the terms… (if you do) and click Next.
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16. Specify User Name, Organization and valid Serial Number (below number is not). Click Next.
17. The next dialog will list what is and isn’t currently installed. Click Next.
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18. Select Next.
19. This lists what will be installed. Click Install.
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20. When Release Notes appear you can take the time to read them. You may need to close to
proceed with the installation.
21. Click the Browse button to select the computer hosting the FactoryTalk Directory that this
Historian Server will be a part of (if not already listed). Click OK to continue.
22. Click Finish.
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23. Click Yes to reboot computer now, or No if you want to reboot later (but be sure and reboot
before trying to use FactoryTalk Historian).
Installing FactoryTalk Historian Live Data Interface

A FactoryTalk Historian Live Data Interface will not require an install of MS SQL Server or Asset
Framework, as a FactoryTalk Historian Server does. The install is very similar to installing a Server,
except Install FactoryTalk Historian Live Data Interface on the below dialog will be selected.
This appendix is complete
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Appendix B - FactoryTalk Historian Time Format

After completing this lesson, you should be able to:
• Understand and use different versions of time syntax with FactoryTalk Historian
Relative Time
Relative time is some number of days, hours, minutes, or seconds. The leading sign (+ or -) is
required.
+/- d | h | m | s
The default starting point for relative time is usually the current time. Therefore, a time of -8h is eight
hours before the current time. Fractional times may be entered. For example, use - 1.5d for one and
one-half days. Only a single operator is supported, + or -. For example, this is not supported:
-1d+1h
Absolute Time
Absolute times have one of the following formats:
• DD-MMM-YY hh:mm:ss.ssss - day-month-year hour:minute:second * - current time.
• T - 00:00:00 on the current day (TODAY)
• Y - 00:00:00on the previous day (YESTERDAY)
• Monday - 00:00:00 on the most recent Monday
• Sun,Mon,Tue,Wed,Thu,Fri,Sat - 00:00:00 on the most recent Sunday, Monday, ..., Saturday
• For the DD-MMM-YY hh:mm:ss.ssss format, if any of the date fields are left out, they default to
the current date. Time fields default to 00.
Examples
• 25 - 00:00:00 on the 25th of the current month
• 25-Aug-86 - 00:00:00 on that date
• 8: - 08:00:00 on the current date
• 25 8 - 08:00:00 on the 25th of the current month
• 21:30:01.02 - 9:30:01.0200 PM on the current date
Caution should be used with the default settings. Here are some examples of timestamps that may be
confusing.
• 8: - 08:00:00 on the current date
• :8 - 08:00:00 on the current date
• ::8 - 00:08:00 on the current date
• :::8 - 00:00:08 on the current date
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• 0:8 - 00:08:00 on the current date
The confusion comes from the ambiguity in the first two examples above. Following this theme, when
minutes are added to the next examples, the time stamps are still similar.
• 8:01 - 08:01:00 on the current date
• :8:01 - 08:01:00 on the current date
The difference in the two notations is evident when a date is added to the time. When a date is added
to the front of the time the default notation is hh:mm:ss.ssss not :hh:mm:ss.ssss.
• 2 8: - 08:00:00 on the 2nd of the current month
• 2 :8 - 00:08:00 on the 2nd of the current month
• 2 ::8 - 00:00:08 on the 2nd of the current month
If extra colons and times are added that is greater than the given DD-MMM-YY hh:mm:ss.ssss
format the last part of the time will be disregarded.
• 2 :::8 - 00:00:00 on the 2nd of the current month
• 2 :::8 - 00:00:00 on the 2nd of the current month
• 2 8:01:30 - 08:01:30 on the 2nd of the current month
• 2 :8:01:30 - 00:08:01 on the 2nd of the current month
A value for the seconds must be used if sub-seconds are used. Hence caution should also be used
when considering timestamps containing sub-seconds.
• 8::30.01 - 08:00:30.0100 on the current date
• :8::30.01 - 08:00:30.0100 on the current date
• 14 :8::30.01 - 00:08:00 on the 14th of the current month Here are examples of timestamps that do
not work.
• 8:30.01 - Ambiguous, 8 could be minutes or hours
• :8:30.01 - Ambiguous, 8 could be minutes or hours
Combined Formats
Combined time scales use both an absolute and a relative time. The absolute part of the time can be
*, T, Y, or a day of the week.
Examples
• T + 8h - 08:00:00 AM on the current day (today)
• Y - 8h - 04:00:00 PM on the day before yesterday
• Mon + 14.5h - 02:30:00 PM on the most recent Monday
• - 1h - One hour ago
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Appendix C - Using FactoryTalk Historian DataLink

• Use DataLink to display Historian Data in Excel
• Understand the difference between Compressed and Sampled data
FactoryTalk Historian DataLink is a Microsoft Excel add-in that enables you to retrieve information
from your FactoryTalk Historian server directly into a spreadsheet. Combined with the computational,
graphic and formatting capabilities of Microsoft Excel, FactoryTalk Historian DataLink offers powerful
tools for gathering, monitoring, analyzing, and reporting FactoryTalk Historian data.
FactoryTalk Historian DataLink provides many different methods to retrieve data. A fundamental
difference in many of the functions is whether you are retrieving sampled or compressed data.
Sampled data is regularly spaced data where interpolated values are returned if there is not a
recorded value at a particular timestamp. Compressed data is simply the actual recorded values that
were archived. This exercise demonstrates the difference, but begins with an introduction to
displaying data from FactoryTalk Historian in an Excel spreadsheet using DataLink.
Note: DataLink v5.00 no longer provides a trend and this may affect existing DataLink
worksheets. In new worksheets, the native Excel Line (Sparkline) object can be used. In
pre-existing workbooks, the user can manually enable the Excel COM Add-in 'DataLink
(Legacy)'. For more information, refer to the DataLink Release Notes and the FactoryTalk
Historian Installation and Configuration Guide.
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Lab 1 – Using FactoryTalk Historian DataLink
Before you begin:
• FactoryTalk Historian and Interface configured and tags added as done in Lesson 1
• Tags added as done in Lesson 2
Part A – DataLink Introduction
2. Launch Excel 2010 by selecting Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Excel
2010. (do not activate it! See page 108)
3. Enter text into the spreadsheet and “widen” rows as appropriate to create a spreadsheet similar to
the following:
4. Click in the cell under the text Temperature, then select the PI DataLink tab and Current Value
icon:
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5. In the dialog box that appears, click the Search button to the right of the Data item(s) field:

a. Enter Tag Mask of *SimpleTempZone1 (type in an press Enter)
b. Pick …SimpleTempZone1 tag
c. Click OK
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7. Click time at left. Then, click OK.
8. You should have the Current Value of the …SimpleTempZone1 tag with timestamp displayed
such as the following.
Note: If one or more of your cells filled with hash marks (##########), widen out the
column(s) to make more room for the information to fit.
9. This Current Value will not dynamically update, but notice if you press F9, whether this cell is
selected or not, the “current value” link will update (try it). Note that at times the tag’s value may
not be changing for many seconds in a row, so if the value doesn’t change when you press F9,
please wait several seconds and try again.
10. You can also click the Update button on the toolbar to cause the value to update automatically.
11. Click the Update button to stop or deselect automatic updates (Temperature value and
timestamp should stop updating).
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12. Now, select the cell under the Last Minute: text and select the Compressed Data button.
Note: The “bottom half” of the button will give “preconfigured” options of “Values for
yesterday”, “Values for today” and “Values for past day”. We want to configure start and
end times ourselves, so click the “top half” of the button:
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13. Make the following entries:
a. Search and select the same …SimpleTempZone1 tag
b. Start Time of *
c. End Time of *-1m
d. Hide count
e. Show timestamps
f. Click OK
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14. Your spreadsheet should now be showing the last minute’s worth of data from the archive. Note:
Although this tag might be configured with a 1 second scan class, based on times when
the tag’s value isn’t changing and also exception and compressions settings, there is not
likely to be data archived every second (below graphic only showing partial data).
15. Notice that pressing F9 will continue to update the single Current Value on the spreadsheet, but
seems to have no effect on updating the Compressed Data (Start Time / End Time) array.
A special key combination of Ctrl – Alt – Shift – F9 will update this and other arrays you might
add, as well as the single Current Value field. Please try this key combination to verify.
16. Like the F9 key, the Update button you used earlier will only update the Current Value field.
However, if you click Settings to the right of the Update Button, you can change to Full
Calculate and also specify a time interval if desired (minimum of 5 seconds).
17. Turn “off” automatic update (click Update button if selected to “de-select”).
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18. Select the cell under the cell containing Last 10 Values Archived and select PI DataLink >
Compressed Data.
19. Make the following choices:

a. Select Number of Values
b. Select same …SimpleTempZone1 tag
c. Start time of *
d. Number of Values of 10
e. Select backwards in time
f. Show time stamps
g. Click OK
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20. You should see the last 10 values archived displayed. This new series of data, as well as the
other data on your spreadsheet, should update with Ctrl – Alt – Shift – F9.
Note: In the last dialog you selected a Start Time of *, which specifies “now” or “current
time”. You also selected backwards in time. This was necessary because otherwise the
entry would try to show data “ahead” of the Start Time, instead of data archived prior to
the Start Time. Perhaps fine if the start time was at some point in the past. However, by
Start Time of “current” or “now”, data “ahead” of that time would have to be data archived
in the future, “predicted” by FactoryTalk Historian. FactoryTalk Historian is good, but not
that good! ☺
21. When satisfied with the spreadsheet results, close the spreadsheet and save to My Documents
as Temperature Report.xlsx.
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Part B - Archived data and Digital tags
In this exercise, we use the compressed data function to retrieve state changes of a digital tag. By
employing some Excel logic functions, we can quickly calculate some very basic metrics.
In this lab we will be looking at the tag BA:Active.2 to determine the operating time percentage for a
batch pump.
2. If not already running, launch Excel 2010 by selecting Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office >
Microsoft Excel 2010. (do not activate it! See page 108)
3. Open the file DL Comp Data.xls located in C:\Class Files.
4. Select cell B2 and then type BA:Active.2 in the cell.
5. Select cell A7 and then choose the Compressed Data button on the PI DataLink menu.
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6. Select the option button for Number of Values and checkbox show timestamps. Next, click in
the desired field in the “Compressed Data” dialog box and click the corresponding cell in your
spreadsheet to fill in the dialog as follows:
Data item(s) B2
Start Time B3
Number of Values B4
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7. After you click the OK button, the Time and Status columns should have been populated with
state transition data. Select cell C8 and enter the formula:
=IF(B7=”Active”,A8-A7,0)
8. Copy the formula in C8 to cells C9 through C23. If status is going from "Inactive" to "Active", the
cell in Column C will contain zeros (0:00:00). If instead, status is going from "Active" to "Inactive",
the cell in Column C indicates how long the value was "Active". The simple summation and
division formulas on the right will automatically calculate a running time percentage.
9. Close Excel.
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Part C - Time Filtered Function
In this lab you are going to use the Excel PI DataLink “Time Filtered” function to view the status
changes of a digital tag to determine over the last day and how much time in each hour was spent in
the active state. This method performs the calculation in a single step.
You will be using the tag “BA:ACTIVE.2” to determine the active state time.
Function: PITimeFilter - Retrieves the amount of time where an expression is true
1. Verify that you are on the CLIENT image.
2. Launch Excel. (do not activate it! See page 108)

3. Open the file DataLink Time Filtered _Template.xls located in C:\Class Files.
4. Set the various time options…

a. Enter a Start Time of *-1d in cell B6 (one day ago).
b. Enter an End Time of * in cell B7 (current time starting now).
c. Enter a Time Interval of 1h in cell B10 (interval period for the calculation data).
d. To configure the Time Unit, on the worksheet, select Cell B11.
5. From the Excel Data menu, select Validation.
6. For the validation criteria set Allow field to List.
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7. In the Source field enter: seconds, minutes, hours, days and click OK.
8. Select Cell B11 and click the drop down list selector icon and select minutes
9. Next, add the expression that will be used in the Time Filtered function. Select cell B12 and enter
the below expression.
Important Note: The first two characters are two Single Quotations, ’’. Then, there is a
single quotation after the tag name and Double Quotations before and after Active. After
you enter the expressions, the cell view only displays the 1st single quotation character.
Two single quotations are required at the beginning because the first single quote tells
Excel that what follows is not a “formula”. The second single quote is part of the “pair”
that needs to surround the tag name BA:ACTIVE.2. Tag names have to be within single
quotes, same syntax used in Performance Equations.
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10. Verify the settings which will return 24 time filtered values, one value per hour in a day. These
values will be the number of minutes per hour that the expression was true.
Note: When you press ENTER, the first single-quote character will not be displayed. Excel
is expecting that the first single-quote is indicating what follows is not a number or
formula, which it is not in our case.
11. In the data output area, select Cell A15 under Date / Time.
12. From the PI DataLink menu, select Time Filtered.
13. For each parameter click in the appropriate field and select the required cell reference as detailed
below:
a. Expression(s) Cell B12
b. Start Time: Cell B6
c. End Time: Cell B7
d. Time Interval (optional): Cell B10
e. Time Units: Cell B11
Note: To be able to select the Time Units from a selected cell rather than from the drop
down list, click the cell icon then click in the field before clicking Cell B11. f. Check show
start time checkbox
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14. Verify the following options and then click OK.
15. Review the Time Filtered data.

Note: The 24 listed items are the number of minutes per hour over a 24-hour period when
the expression being evaluated is true. If your Historian has not been running for very
long, perhaps only the “most recent” hour or two (bottom of the list) might be considered
“valid”. Times when Historian was not actively archiving might have the tag 100% of the
time (60 minutes of the hour) in an “Active” state (you would see 60's listed) or 100% of
the time in an “Inactive” state (you would see 0's listed)
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16. Modify one or more of the time parameters (i.e. Start Time, End Time, Time Interval, and/or Time
Unit) and review the data.
Right-click on cell A15 and select Recalculate (Resize) Function on the context menu
Note: If the time parameters modified result in increases in size of the output data area,
(more returned rows), then you may need to Recalculate (resize) Function.
17. A Time Filtered expression can contain multiple conditions using the logical operators OR and
AND
Modify the expression to use the AND operator by entering (remember first two characters are
single quotations):
'’BA.ACTIVE.2’=”Active” AND 'Sinusoid'>30
Note the difference in the calculation of time when this condition was met.
18. Modify the expression to use the OR operator by entering:
'’BA.ACTIVE.2’=”Active” OR 'Sinusoid'>30
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19. Save your work and close Excel.
This lab and appendix is complete
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Appendix D - Using FactoryTalk Historian ProcessBook

• Create ProcessBook files
• Insert and configure Trends in ProcessBook displays
Lab 1 – Using FactoryTalk Historian ProcessBook

Before you begin:
• FactoryTalk Historian, Interface and other configurations made and tags added as done in
Lessons 1 and 2
Part A – Single-page ProcessBook

2. Launch ProcessBook by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk
Historian SE > ProcessBook.
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3. Click OK to connect to the FactoryTalk Historian server named SERVER.
4. Close the ProcessBook demo file that opens at default and do not save changes.
5. From the File menu select New.
6. Select the ProcessBook (.piw) File type. Give your new ProcessBook workbook the name of
Trends and click OK.
7. Again, click on the File > New option.
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8. Select the ProcessBook Entry type and then click the OK button.
9. Set the entry Label to Basic Trends and select an entry Type of Text. Click the OK button.
10. Again, click on File > New.
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12. Set the entry Label to Simple Trend and select an entry Type of Display. Set the Level to 2
and click the OK button:
13. You should now have a ProcessBook workbook that looks similar to the following.
14. Change to build mode by selecting the Build button on the toolbar.
15. Select the Trend button on the toolbar.
16. Drag a box in some empty space to create a trend.
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17. On the General tab, click the Tag Search… button:
18. Set the Point Source to ftld and click the Search button:
19. Select the …SimpleTempZone1 tag (your list of tags may not exactly match the below) and click
OK.
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20. Set the Start time to *-5 Minutes and then click OK.
21. You should now have a simple interactive trend.

Note: If the tag name is not appearing on the right side of your trend as in the below, you
may need to go back to “Build” mode to widen out your window and the trend object itself.
Finishing the trend automatically put it in “Run” mode.
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Part B - Multi-Trend Layout
Now that you have some experience building a basic trend, we will use these skills to create multiple
trends arranged together. 1. Again, click on File > New.
3. Set the entry Label to Multi-Trends and select an entry Type of Display.
Set the Level to 2 and click the OK button.
4. Change to build mode (if not in already) by selecting the Build button on the toolbar.
5. Select the Trend button on the toolbar.
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6. Drag a box in some empty space to create a trend.

a. Set the Plot name to Level.
b. Use the Tag Search… button to select the tag …SimpleMachineStep (refer to previous
section for detailed steps).
c. Set Plot Time Start to *-5 Minutes.
d. Do NOT click the OK button.
e. Last, click the New Plot button.
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a. Set the Plot Name to Temp.
b. Use the Tag Search… button to select the tag …TempZone3
c. Set Plot Time Start to *-3 Minutes.
e. Last, click the New Plot button.
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a. Set the Plot Name to Ovens.
b. Use the Tag Search… button to select both tags …TempZone2 and …TempZone4
c. Set Plot Time Start to *-50 Seconds.
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10. On the Display Format tab, select Level from the drop-down and uncheck the Value Scale
Inside Axis option. Do NOT click the OK button.
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11. On the Layout tab, fill in the following values:
• Row: 1
• Col: 2
• ExRow: 1
• ExCol: 1
These settings will cause the first (bottom) row to contain two columns (trends) and the additional
second row to contain one column (trend).
It is now safe to click the OK button. The only time you can access the Layout tab is during the
initial creation of a new trend. Once the trend is completed, you cannot go back and edit the
layout.
The end result will be three “separate” trends which can be edited individually.
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12. You should now have a lovely multi-trend.
13. Click on the Save toolbar button.
14. Save the Processbook to Desktop as Trends.PIW.
15. Close the Displays and Trends.PIW processbook file (you can leave ProcessBook itself open).
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Part C – Multi-Page ProcessBook
1. Create a new ProcessBook (.piw) File and give it the name of Production Data. Click OK.
2. With the Production Data ProcessBook open, select Tools > Preferences...
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3. On the General tab, uncheck the Prefer Run Mode option (if not already unchecked). This will
keep the processbook from going into “Run mode” as items are added. Click OK when finished.
4. Your processbook may have entered Run mode if your Run Mode Bias option was on prior to
step 3 above.
Put the processbook in Build mode by clicking on the build icon in the tool bar.
5. In the last section, you always used the New button to add entries to the processbook.
This time, select the Insert menu and then Text.
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6. Enter Label of Tank Levels and click OK.
7. Again, select Insert > Text and this time enter a Label of Oven Temps.
8. One more time, select Insert > Text and enter a Label of Misc
9. When finished, your processbook should appear as follows.
Note the three tabs creating individual “pages” of your processbook. This is because all of the
Text items you entered were at “Level 1”.
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10. Click on the Tank Levels tab to bring that page forward.
11. Select Insert > Display
12. Enter a Label of Tank 1 and change the Level to 3 which will result in indenting the display name
on the page a couple of times. Then, click OK.
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13. A “blank” processbook display will appear.
14. As you did in Part A of this exercise, add a Trend to this display the tag that ends in
…SimpleTempZone1. Use a Start Time of *-2 Minutes.
Your display should appear similar to the following (may need to “widen” your trend for the long
tag name to appear on the right side such as in the below example):
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15. Close the Tank 1 display. It will ask you if you want to save changes, be sure to click Yes: You
will actually be saving your entire processbook .PIW file (the display is embedded in it).
Save to Desktop.
16. Your processbook should now appear as follows, with a Display named Tank 1 under the Text of
Tank Levels:
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17. Select Insert > Display again and name the new display Tank 2.
Do not bother putting a trend or anything else on the display for now.
Close and save it.
Your processbook should appear as follows, with Tank 2 above Tank 1:
18. Obviously, if that is what you intended and prefer, no need to change anything.
However, if you want to change the order you could select View > Outline.
Instead of Book mode, your processbook would then appear as follows:
19. If your processbook appears in this way, with Tank 2 above Tank 1, first select Tank1 and then
click the arrow up button.
The order should be changed.
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20. If you go back to View > Book mode, your processbook should appear as follows (you may need
to click the Tank Levels tab to bring that page forward):
21. You may have noticed that the tabs on the right-hand side of the processbook are appearing in
reverse order of how we entered them, with Misc on top and Tank Levels on the bottom.
To reverse that order, go back to View > Outline mode. Select the individual lines of text that
you added and use the arrow up and arrow down buttons to move the order to match the
following:
22. When you go back to View > Book mode, the tabs will now be in the order you’ve specified:
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23. Click on the Misc tab and select Insert > Link / OS Command.
Configure the dialog box as follows. Use the Browse… button to select notepad.exe from the
directory C:\Windows\System32 (be sure to look for “all files”, not just .piw or .pdi files!)
Set Level to 3. Click OK when all other settings are made. Notepad will automatically open.
You can close it.
24. When your processbook is in Run mode, you now have a link to open Notepad in case you
wanted to enter some notes and save them, or open previously written notes that were saved as
.txt files in case you want to read them (try it!).
25. Add another link on your Misc processbook page to launch Microsoft Excel.
The path to Excel on your computer should be
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\EXCEL.EXE.
Note: As a possible enhancement, when Excel opens you could have it automatically open a
particular workbook if your link is configured similar to the following (this example assumes
C:\Production Report.xlsx actually exists – it does not at this time - and is a valid Excel
workbook – is not at this time):
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\EXCEL.EXE" "C:\Production Report.xlsx"
26. As time allows, experiment with your processbook file adding items such as:
• Add one or more displays to the Oven Temps page
• Additional lines of Text as “headings” or “section dividers” on the pages
• Change order tabs are displayed and/or order of items on pages
• Launch additional applications from your processbook, such as the Windows Calculator,
Paint, etc.
27. Save your processbook file and close ProcessBook. Also close any other applications that
might have opened during this exercise, such as Excel or Notepad.
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Appendix E - Introduction to SQC Charts in ProcessBook

• Use the SQC tool to configure control charts in ProcessBook and perform common SQC
calculations.
The SQC (Statistical Quality Control) tool for ProcessBook provides a client side SQC
mechanism for FactoryTalk Historian. With the add-in, users can flexibly configure SQC control
charts. These charts can have advanced filtering, perform SQC statistical calculations, and even
check data points against SQC alarm conditions.
Lab 1 - SQC Charting in ProcessBook

Before you begin:
FactoryTalk Historian, Interface and other configurations made and tags added as done in
Lessons 1 and 2
The SQC (Statistical Quality Control) tool for ProcessBook provides a client side SQC mechanism for
FactoryTalk Historian. With the add-in, users can flexibly configure SQC control charts. These charts
can have advanced filtering, perform SQC statistical calculations, and even check data points against
SQC alarm conditions.
2. Launch Microsoft Excel 2010. (do not activate it! See page 108)
3. Select File > Open and open the file ProcessBook SQC Setup.xls located in the class files
folder C:\Class Files
4. Choose the Export Tags… entry on the PI-SMT menu under Add-Ins.
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5. On the Export PI Tags dialog, verify that the Mode is set to Create and then click the OK button.
6. Acknowledge the results dialog by clicking the OK button.
Note: We have exported some tags from a provided spreadsheet to serve as “simulator”
tags to give us “quality-type” data that will make sense with the SQC feature of
ProcessBook. In a “real application”, you would have your own tags to be used with this
feature/functionality.
7. Close Excel and don’t save workbook.
8. Launch ProcessBook by going to Start > All Programs > Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk
Historian SE > ProcessBook.
9. If you get a Select New Node dialog, click OK to connect to SERVER.
10. Close the ProcessBook demo file that opens at default and do not save changes.
11. Open the file SQC.PDI located in C:\Class Files
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12. Click OK to select the SERVER Server:
13. Verify that you are in Run mode and then explore the interactive SQC chart. If you are getting a
message in the middle of the chart indicating “Not enough samples” or you don’t see “any data”
such as in the below, just wait 2-3 minutes until it goes away and the SQC charts have "data":
14. Click and drag a rectangle on the data plot to zoom in to the selected area.
15. Click the Revert toolbar button to undo the zoom.
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16. Double-click on the chart control to maximize it. Double-click on it again to return it to its original
size and location.
17. Use the One Time Period Back and One Time Period Forward toolbar buttons to scroll through
the data (may have to wait a few minutes if you get a No or not enough data points or Not
enough samples message).
18. Use the “Sliders” to change the start and end times.
19. Use the set time range button to look at a specific period of data.
20. Set the time span from *-4 Hour to * and click the OK button.
21. Revert back to previous time.
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22. Use the Trend Cursor to explore the data values. Once you click the Trend Cursor tool, you
may need to click and drag the cursor (like a vertical bar) from the right edge of the trend area.
23. Double-click on the Exercise 1: [Individuals] title bar to bring up the Statistics Window.
Note that this will only work if there are enough values for a “bell curve” to be drawn such as
shown below…if this won’t work for you, wait a minute or so and watch for the curve to appear:
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24. Examine the various statistics and information available, eventually selecting the Plotted Data
option and click on the Save Data To File button:
25. Save the data as sqcdata.txt to the Desktop:
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26. Close the Statistics Window and open the sqcdata.txt file in Notepad.
27. When you are done examining the available statistics, close Notepad and close the
ProcessBook display file and save changes (DO NOT close ProcessBook itself).
28. Click on the New toolbar button:
29. Select ProcessBook Display (.pdi) File, set the Display Name to XBar, and click OK.
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30. Switch to Build mode and then click on the SQC Chart toolbar button.
31. Drag a rectangle on the background to create an SQC Chart.
32. On the General tab, set the following fields.

• Chart Title: X-Bar Control Chart
• Chart Type: X - Bar
• Chart Tag: stationary1
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33. After clicking OK on the above dialog, click the Save toolbar button.
34. Save this display to Desktop as XBar.PDI.

35. Take some time to explore your recently created SQC chart.
36. When you are ready, use File > Save As… and save under a new name of Moving Avg.PDI.
Remember, you already saved it as XBar.PDI so we can return to it later. For now you are giving
it a different name so we can have “different versions”.
37. After saved as Moving Avg.PDI, double-click the chart to return to the configuration dialog (must
be in Build mode):
38. On the General tab, set the Chart Title to Moving Avg Control Chart.
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39. Next change the Chart Type to Moving Average. DO NOT click OK or Apply yet!
40. On the Sample tab, set the Sample Size to 5 and then click OK:
41. Click the Save toolbar button.

42. Take some time to experiment with the SQC chart. Be sure to go to Run mode to see any
updates.
43. When ready, first close the current PDI (Moving Avg.PDI). Then, reopen the XBar.PDI file you
saved earlier.
44. Use File > Save As… and save as the new name of XBar Time Sampled.PDI.
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45. Double-click the chart to return to the configuration dialog (must be in Build mode).
46. We want to change the sampling algorithm. We want to take two samples every ten minutes
starting on 5 and 6 minutes after the hour. On the Sample tab, make the following changes: a.
Calculation Basis to “Time”
b. Calculation Period to “00:10:00”
c. Sample Period to “00:01:00”
d. Start Time of Sample to “00:05:00”
e. Finally, click the OK button:
47. Put the display in Run mode. Initially you may not have enough samples and it may take some
time for the chart to start showing data. Experiment with the chart as desired...you may want to
"come back later" (if time permits) to view data in the chart. When ready to proceed, click the
Save button on the toolbar and close Processbook.
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Appendix F - Accessing FactoryTalk Historian SE Data
via OLEDB

• Understand capabilities of using PIOLEDB Provider
• Configure Reporting Services to display a report based on FactoryTalk Historian data
FactoryTalk Historian itself is not a relational database. But it is possible to expose Historian data in a
relational way. OLEDB Provider implements SQL to allow relational queries to be run against the
Historian Data Archives, the Point Database and other configuration data. This product is mostly used
or in the context of other OLE DB compliant products such as reporting, analytics, Business
Intelligence (BI) and similar tools, or for the development of custom applications.
Note: OLEDB Provider is a feature available in the Advanced Server option of FactoryTalk
Historian SE, and with the release of version 4.0 is also available as a single catalog item (9518-
HSEOLEDB).
OLEDB exposes FactoryTalk Historian data in form of tables which are grouped into catalogs as
listed below:
piarchive contains archive related tables
pibatch contains batch data tables
pids contains PI digital state tables
pifunction contains tables representing PE functions
piheading contains heading tables
pilog contains the pimessagelog table
pimodule contains a set of tables representing the Module Database
pipoint contains tag configuration tables (one per point class)
pisystem contains system internal information
piuser contains user database tables
• OLEDB Provider includes either 5 Named User CAL licenses, or Unlimited users CAL
license ONLY for FT Historian SE – 260 or 500 tags
• Additional Named User or Unlimited Client licensing purchased separately
• 3rd Party Data Access to the Historian archive requires client licensing (CAL)
• This applies to direct and indirect access through any of the Data Access components
• Client licensing is not required for Rockwell clients (we don’t use Data Access
components)
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Example: 10k tag Historian system includes the OLE DB data access to extract select items and
copy them into a SQL database to be used by a 3rd party client application. This application is
used by the 5 members in the Quality organization
Answer: In this case, you would be able to use the 5 Named User licenses included with the OLE
DB Data Access component. Additional named user licensing (or Unlimited licensing) would need
to be purchased if there were addition users of the 3rd party client application
Note: Unlimited User licenses are not “additive”. Need to cover total number of tags
customer’s Historian Server is licensed for. If customer adds more tags to their Historian
Server, they could do a StepForward and receive full credit to use towards purchase of
new part number.
References:
Documentation on computer with FactoryTalk Historian OLDB Provider installed (typically, where
SQL Server and Reporting Services is installed):
C:\Program Files (x86)\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\PIPC\OLEDB\Doc\PI OLEDB
Provider 2010 R3_EN.pdf
C:\Program Files (x86)\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\PIPC\OLEDB\Doc\PI OLEDB
Provider 2010 R3 Release Notes.pdf
C:\Program Files (x86)\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk Historian\PIPC\OLEDB\Tools\PI OLEDB Tester\
SampleStatements.txt
In this lab, you will examine some of the capabilities of the FactoryTalk Historian OLEDB layer. You will
learn how to use the PIOLEDB.msc and PIOLEDBTester.exe to examine some sophisticated
functionality provided by the OLEDB layer, and use Microsoft Reporting Services to create a simple
report based on data in FactoryTalk Historian archives.
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Lab 1 – Accessing FactoryTalk Historian SE Data via OLEDB
Before you begin:
FactoryTalk Historian and Interface configured and tags added as done in Lesson 1
Part A - Using PIOLEDB.msc

1. Go to the SERVER image (this is where PIOLEDB Provider is installed).
2. Use Windows Explorer, go to the following path and double-click on the PIOLEDB.msc
application : C:\Program Files (x86)\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk
Historian\PIPC\OLEDB\Tools\MMC
3. Under PI Servers, right-click on SERVER and select Connect.
4. Select the Use Windows NT Integrated security checkbox and then click OK.
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5. Expand the piarchive catalog and click on the picomp table. Observe the sample query that
appears and the resulting tag, timestamps and values (you will have different timestamps,
values, and may have more or less resulting records listed).
6. Right-click on picomp and select Query.
7. Verify the default columns that are configured to be displayed and the default query that is
configured to display information from the sinusoid tag from the last hour (*-1h represents one
hour ago and * represents “now”).
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8. Select svalue, status and flags, one at a time, and move them to the left by clicking <.
9. Edit the filter condition by unselecting the Default checkbox and changing the query to use the
BA:TEMP.1 tag and display last 20 minutes (start time of *-20m).
10. You dialog should now look like this. After confirming, click OK.
11. You should see final query and results displayed. Only tag, time and value columns are
shown and values for last 20 minutes of BA:TEMP.1 tag.
12. Take a few minutes to experiment with other catalogs, tables, edited queries, etc.
13. Close PIOLEDB.msc and don’t save settings when ready to proceed.
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Part B - Using PIOLEDBTester.exe
1. Stay on the SERVER image.
2. Use Windows Explorer to launch the PIOLEDBTester.exe application by double-clicking on it

from the following: C:\Program Files (x86)\Rockwell Software\FactoryTalk
Historian\PIPC\OLEDB\Tools\PI OLEDB Tester
3. If prompted to login, select the Use Windows NT Integrated security checkbox and then click
OK.
4. Select Sample Statements >>.
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5. In the Archive Statements category, there are 34 sample queries. To help understand the
statement functionality, each statement is accompanied with a short comment. Review entries
to see how to handle types of situations such as the following:
• Translating a digital state or status
• Retrieve snapshot data
• Count archive entries
• Work with annotations
• Work with timestep interpolated data
• Use SQL CASE statement
6. Click on various Sample SQL Statements and click Execute. Review results displayed at the
bottom of the dialog.
7. Try editing one of the SQL Statements or entering one of your own, executing and reviewing
results.
8. Close PI OLEDB Tester and any open dialogs or windows.
Part C - Using Microsoft Reporting Services

SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services is a server-based reporting platform that can be used to create
and manage tabular, matrix, graphical, and free-form reports that contain data from relational and
multidimensional data sources. The reports can be viewed and managed over a World Wide Webbased
connection. Reporting Services includes the following core components:
Complete set of tools that you can use to create, manage, and view reports
Report Server (NT Service) component that hosts and processes reports in a variety of formats.
These (output) formats include HTML, PDF, TIFF, Excel, CSV, and more.
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One of the sources of data that Reporting Services can work with is OLEDB Providers. The PI
OLEDB is pre-installed on SERVER image.
1. Verify that you are on the SERVER image.
2. From the Start Menu, launch SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio by
selecting Start > All Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 > SQL Server Business
Intelligence Development Studio.
3. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Project…
4. In the Project types list, click Business Intelligence Projects (see below graphic).
5. In the Templates list, click Report Server Project.
6. In the Name field, enter FTH MSReport.
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7. Click OK to create the project.
8. The FTH MSReport solution will be displayed momentarily in Visual Studio (VS) Solution
Explorer view (a window on the right side).
9. You need to specify the target Server URL for the project. Right-click FTH MSReport and click
Properties.
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10. Set the Target Server URL to http://localhost/ReportServer (see below).
11. Click OK.
Note: In order to collect data from the Historian server, you need to create a connection to the
Historian server. In this lab, you will add a shared data source via PI OLEDB.
12. Right-click the Shared Data Sources folder and select Add New Data Source.
13. The Shared Data Source dialog box appears.
14. Enter PIOLEDB in the Name field.
15. Select OLE DB from the Type drop-down list.
16. Click the Edit… button to fill in the PI OLEDB connection properties (you will do in following
steps).
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17. Select OLE Provider of PI OLE DB Provider from the drop-down list.
18. Enter SERVER into Server or file name field.
19. Specify Use Windows NT Integrated Security.
20. Verify that the options are selected and entered correctly as in the image below.
21. Click Test Connection.
22. Verify that the connection succeeded and click OK, and OK again.
23. Add the following to the Connection string:

;Integrated Security = SSPI
24. Verify the above configuration options and click OK.
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25. After the data source is defined, Report Designer creates a dataset (you named it PIOLEDB).
26. To create a report definition file, in the Solution Explorer right-click Reports, point to Add,
and click New Item...
27. Select Report Wizard.
28. In Name field, leave the default name Report1.rdl.
29. Click Add.
30. The Report Wizard welcome page will be displayed. Click Next.
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31. Verify the shared data source is set to PIOLEDB.
32. Click Next.
33. In the design query type the following:

SELECT tag, time, value
FROM piarchive..picomp
WHERE tag LIKE ? AND time >= ? AND time <= ?
ORDER BY tag, time
34. Click Next.
35. Select the report type as Tabular.
36. Click Next.
37. In the report design table, select tag and then click the Page> button to move “tag” into the
page display field.
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38. Select time and click Group> to move “time” into the Group display field.
39. Select Value and click Details> to move “value” into the details display field.
40. Verify that the following groups have been configured.
41. Click Next.
42. Select the default Stepped.
43. Click Next.
44. Select the default Slate.
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45. Click Next.
46. In Report Name field, leave the default report name Report1.
47. Click Finish.
48. A view opens that contains Design and Preview tabs; the report opens in Design view (may
need to click on Design to give it focus).
49. From the Report Data window on the left, under Parameters, double-click on Parameter1.
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50. Configure the Parameter1 properties with the following settings:
a. Prompt: Tag Mask
b. Data type: Text
c. Click OK
51. Repeat the parameter configuration steps for Parameter2 with the following settings
a. Prompt: Start Time
b. Data type: Date/Time
52. Repeat the parameter configuration steps for Parameter3 with the following settings
a. Prompt: End Time
b. Data type: Date/Time
53. From the Visual Studio design view window select the Preview tab to preview Report1.
54. Set the parameters to the following (see graphic on next page):
a. Tag Mask: *SimpleTempZone1
b. Start Time: Date and Time of 5 minutes ago (for example, 4/2/2014 11:00:00 AM)
c. End Time: Date of tomorrow
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55. Click View Report and observe the results.
56. Within the above window, if you cursor down you should be able to see many timestamps and
values were archived over the last 5 or so minutes.
57. In the Solution Explorer on the right side of Visual Studio, right-click on FTH MSReport and
select Deploy.
58. Lower-left corner of Visual Studio should say Deploy started…and then watch for succeeded
messages.
59. Right-click on the Report1.rdl report and select Deploy.
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60. Watch for succeeded messages.
61. Close Visual Studio.
62. Start Internet Explorer by going to Start > All Programs > Internet Explorer.
63. Type in address of http://SERVER/Reports 64. Click FTH MSReport.
65. Click Report1.
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66. Set the parameters to the following:
a. Tag Mask: *SimpleTempZone1
a. Start Time: Date and Time of 5 minutes ago (for example, 4/2/2014 11:10:00 AM)
a. End Time: Date of tomorrow
b. Click View Report
67. Enjoy your Internet Explorer report based on FactoryTalk Historian data!!
68. Close Internet Explorer.
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Appendix G – FactoryTalk Historian Advanced
Calculation Engine (ACE) Overview

• Overview of ACE, its Features and Components
Introduction
Historian Advanced Computing Engine (ACE) allows programming of complex calculations (for
example, heat and material balances, data reconciliation, real-time cost accounting, and batch
summary); communication applications (for example, alarming, emailing, and paging); data
transfer programs; and any other application that does not require user intervention. ACE consists
of the following components: ACE Wizard, ACE Manager, and ACE Scheduler. The functionalities
and requirements for each component differ and are discussed in detail later.
ACE can be used in either the Microsoft Visual Basic 6 (VB6) or the Microsoft Visual Basic .NET
(VB.NET) development environment. Because of the significant differences in the integrated
development environments (IDEs) for VB6 and VB.NET 2005/2008/2010, Rockwell Automation
provides two versions of ACE: ACE for VB6 (ACE 1.x) and ACE for VB.NET (ACE 2.x). The 1.x and
2.x nomenclature is retained for consistency with usage in earlier releases of ACE. For more
information, see “Differences Between ACE for VB6 and ACE for VB.NET” in FT Historian ACE User
Guide for Visual Basic .NET.pdf.
Note: ACE is a feature available in the Advanced Server option of FactoryTalk Historian
SE.
Features
The main features for the Historian Advanced Computing Engine (ACE) are as follows:
• To implement complex calculations (for example, iterative solutions, data and time
manipulation, and numerically solving ordinary or partial differential equations) To
provide a fault-tolerant and redundant architecture.
• To retrieve data from, and send results to, Historian tags or to other systems.
• To apply one set of equations to multiple units or processes.
• To provide various scheduling features: clock, natural, event, equation ordering, and
graceful degradation under resource limitations (CPU loading).
• To use multiple Historian tags from multiple Historian Servers in calculations.
• To provide the ability to use the previous snapshot value for a Historian tag (instead of the
previous archive value) in calculations.
• To allow documentation or comments with a set of equations.
• To allow clamping and bad-value substitution of inputs and outputs.
• To provide the ability to call COM and .NET objects and a library of user-written functions.
• To provide the ability to test and debug equations.
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• To provide the ability to make different users responsible for different groups of equations.
• To provide the ability to migrate from Historian 2 and Historian 3 performance equations.
• To provide the ability to monitor performance of individual equations.
• To provide robustness, including trapping floating-point errors and avoiding repetitive
message logs.
• To expose calculations via a Web service.
• To allow automatic recalculation when past data are changed.
• To manually recalculate an ACE Context.
Components
A set of calculations or instructions is implemented in a VB.NET class, which is referred to as an ACE
Module. The components of ACE that develop, monitor, manipulate, and execute ACE Modules are as
follows:
• ACE Wizard
• ACE Manager
• ACE Scheduler
ACE Components and Their Common Data:
The ACE Wizard is a Visual Basic Add-In to help users build and test ACE Modules quickly, the ACE
Manager lets users monitor and change various properties of ACE Modules, and the ACE Scheduler
executes ACE Modules in a timely manner and handles updates and abnormal behavior. The
structural information for ACE Modules is stored in the Historian Module Database. While the ACE
Scheduler and the class library files (.dll files) for all ACE Modules need to be on the same computer,
the ACE Wizard, the ACE Manager, the ACE Scheduler, and the Historian Server that stores the ACE
structural information may be on different computers.
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Structure of ACE Modules
The overall structure of the ACE Modules is shown below. All the ACE Modules developed with
VB.NET are listed under the ACEClassLibraries tree in the Historian Module Database (Historian
MDB).
Each ACE Module developed with ACE for VB.NET corresponds to a class in a VB.NET Class
Library project. The project is referred to as ACE Executable (even though the .NET Class Library
project is actually a .dll assembly). ACE Executables can be developed and maintained by
different users. Each ACE Executable can contain multiple ACE Modules. Each ACE Module can
perform calculations for different modules in Historian Module Database (that is, on different ACE
Contexts). For example, if identical calculations need to be carried out for reactor #1 and reactor
#2, then only one set of equations needs to be developed and maintained, but can be run on
different ACE Contexts. This greatly facilitates the development and maintenance of calculations
for similar units or processes.
The maximum number of ACE Executables may be limited by the computer resources. Each ACE
Executable runs in its own process and thus is independent of other ACE Executables. One
advantage of putting multiple ACE Modules in one ACE Executable is that only one set of .dll files
needs to be loaded, reducing the overall memory usage.
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Configuration and System Requirements
ACE consists of the following components: ACE Wizard, ACE Manager, and ACE Scheduler. The
components of ACE can be installed on different computers. To develop and run ACE Modules, a
Historian Server version 2.0 and later is required to store the structural information of ACE
Modules in the Historian Module Database (MDB). This server is referred to as the ACE Data
Server. The actual Historian tags used in calculations or for archiving results in an ACE
Module could come from either the ACE Data Server or other Historian Servers .
ACE Scheduler
The ACE Scheduler can be installed on an ACE Data Server or on a client computer. The
computer must have:
• Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 7, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008
with latest service pack
Note: We recommend running ACE Scheduler on server operating systems (for
example, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008) in production
environments.
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher
• PI SDK 1.3.8.387 or higher for 64-bit and PI SDK 1.3.8.388 or higher for 32-bit
• PI API 1.6.2.4 or higher
• Connection to a Historian Server 2.0 and later with read/write privileges
Where the ACE Scheduler should be installed depends on many factors. The most important
consideration is the tradeoff between the CPU load and the network load. If the ACE Scheduler is
installed on the ACE Data Server, it would increase the CPU load on the server but it would have
minimal impact on the network. If the ACE Scheduler is installed on a client computer, executing
ACE Modules would not impact the ACE Data Server CPU load (other than the normal data
retrieval calls to the server) but the frequent communication between the ACE Scheduler and the
server might affect the network load.
To run the ACE Scheduler, appropriate security should be set up for the ACE Scheduler to
access the ACE structural information on the ACE Data Server. For details on how to set up a
trust relationship between the ACE Scheduler and the ACE Data Server, see Security (page 28).
While ACE Schedulers for both versions can be run simultaneously, only one instance of the ACE
Scheduler for each version can be run on a computer.
ACE Manager
The ACE Manager can be installed on any computer. Different access levels (for example, no
access, read-only, and read/write) to a Historian Server can be set up through the Trust table.
The requirements are the following:
• PI SDK 1.3.8.388 or higher
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ACE Wizard
The requirements for ACE Wizard are the following:
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, 2008, or 2010 (either Enterprise or Professional Edition)
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher
• PI SDK 1.3.8.388 or higher
• Connection to a Historian Server 2.0 and later with read/write privileges
Installation
The installation program is called Setup and contains both ACE for VB6 (ACE 1.x) and ACE for
VB.NET (ACE 2.x). Before running Setup, verify that the target platform meets the requirements
specified in Configuration and System Requirements. Setup automatically installs PI SDK, Microsoft
.NET Framework, and other components if they are not already installed. Because Setup might write
entries to shared portions of the registry, it is necessary to log in as a user with Administrator
privileges on the system. It is advisable to close other applications while running Setup. If a
FactoryTalk Historian System is running on the target machine, you need not stop the system. By
default, ACE is installed under the pipc directory (that is, pipc\ACE).
Follow the instructions of the Setup program to install appropriate components on the target machine.
You may choose to install ACE Wizard, ACE Manager, and/or ACE Scheduler. Upon successful
installation, ACE registers its Uninstall, which enables you to uninstall by clicking Start > Control Panel
> Add/Remove Programs.
To install all features silently, the command is: msiexec
/i piace.msi /q
To install selected features silently, the command is: msiexec /i piace.msi
ADDDEFAULT="FeatureList" /q where FeatureList is a list of features to be installed, separated by
commas. piace.msi consists of these features: Core, ACEManager, ACE1.x_Wizard,
ACE2.x_Wizard, ACE1.x_Scheduler, and ACE2.x_Scheduler. The Core feature must be installed for
any other ACE component to function. For example, the following installs ACE Manager and ACE for
VB.NET (ACE 2.x) Wizard:
msiexec /i piace.msi ADDDEFAULT="Core,ACEManager,ACE2.x_Wizard" /q
In a silent installation, piace.msi does not check for component requirements, nor does it install
any required components (for example, .NET Framework and PI SDK). To install the whole
package silently, modify the silent.ini file delivered in the install kit. See Historian Server
Installation and Upgrade Guide for details on how to do this.
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Types of Scheduling
The type of scheduling determines when a calculation will be performed. There are two types of
scheduling, clock and natural, available in ACE. The scheduling information applies to an ACE
Context (that is, an instance of ACE Module).
Clock Scheduling
With clock scheduling, an ACE Context is evaluated at fixed intervals. Two attributes, period and
offset, determine when to evaluate the ACE Context. The period specifies the interval between
calculations and the offset specifies the time since midnight. While the period can use fractional
seconds, the offset should be an integer between 0 and 86399 seconds. When specifying a small
period (the smallest period allowed is 0.001 second), make sure that the resources (for example,
CPU and network) are adequate. The clock for the Historian Server specified in the ACE Context (for
example, aceserver2k3 for an ACE Context of \\aceserver2k3 and MyPIServer for
\\MyPIServer\MyPIModule\Controllers\PID) is used to generate the calculation times.
Natural Scheduling
Natural scheduling means that an ACE Context is evaluated whenever one of its trigger Historian tags
receives a new snapshot event. The trigger tags must be a subset of input tags or aliases used in the
ACE Module. Tags or aliases used as both input and output cannot be used as trigger tags, because
this can easily result in an infinite loop if not handled properly. By default, the calculation result has
the same timestamp as the trigger tag event. Natural scheduling is highly accurate; it has the same
effect as if the calculation were performed continuously.
Event Scheduling
There is another type of scheduling in the Performance Equation subsystem (PIPE) called event
scheduling (that is, evaluate an equation when certain conditions are met). This has been eliminated
in ACE since any condition can be directly specified programmatically within an ACE Module. For
example, suppose we would like to evaluate an ACE Module (and send results to Historian Server)
only when the Historian tag pumpstatus is ON. This can be accomplished by specifying the tag
pumpstatus as a trigger tag and by including the following condition in the ACE Module:
:
If UCase(pumpstatus.Value) <> "ON" Then mblnSendDataToPI
= False
Exit Sub
End If
' Code for carrying out actual calculations
: Equation Ordering
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Equation Ordering
Unlike the PIPE Subsystem where each tag consists of its own calculations and does not depend on
calculations for other tags, an ACE Module can contain calculations for many tags. Thus, it is a
simple task to programmatically order the calculations within the ACE Module. However, calculations
in different ACE Modules may be executed in an arbitrary order.
Message Logs
ACE messages are logged to the central log file for the Message Subsystem and can be retrieved using
the pigetmsg utility. See the Historian Server System Management Guide for details. Different levels of
message logging are available for each ACE Context (that is, ACE Module performing calculations on a
specific Historian Module) and the ACE Scheduler.
Scaling ACE Schedulers to Multiple Machines

You can configure multiple ACE Schedulers on multiple machines to simultaneously run different ACE
class libraries stored on Historian MDB. However, one class library must belong to one and only one
scheduler. The default ACE Scheduler is responsible for all the class libraries created using the ACE
Wizard. You would need to use the ACE Manager to change the ACE Scheduler for each class
library.
The ability to simultaneously run different sets of class libraries using multiple ACE Schedulers allows you
to distribute resource intensive calculations across multiple machines.
High Availability
In addition to simultaneously running different sets of ACE class libraries on multiple machines
(scaling), you can also configure redundant ACE Schedulers on multiple machines against these sets of
class libraries. Only one of these ACE Schedulers (the master ACE Scheduler) would actually run the
calculations while the rest are in a standby mode. When the master Scheduler stops either gracefully or
ungracefully, one of the standby ACE Schedulers becomes the master and runs the calculations.
With proper buffering setup, ACE automatically sends data to all members in a server collective. Since
the HA buffering is not currently supported on a Historian Server, you should not run the ACE
Scheduler on a Historian Server if you need to send data to all members of a server collective.
When retrieving data from a Historian Server collective, ACE Scheduler automatically connects to the
available collective member.
For more information, see the High Availability Administrator Guide.
References
For additional details and information, see FT Historian ACE User’s Guide for Visual Basic.NET.pdf.
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Appendix H – FactoryTalk Historian to Historian
Interface Overview

• Understand Concepts of Using FactoryTalk Historian To Historian (H2H) Interface
• Recognize Supported Architectures and Licensing Requirements of H2H Interfaces
Introduction
The Rockwell FactoryTalk Historian to Historian interface copies tag data from one Historian
Server to another. Data is moved in one direction, meaning data is copied from the source to the
receiving Historian Server (also referred to as target Historian Server). The interface must run on a
Windows Intel-based operating system.
Note: The Rockwell FactoryTalk Historian to Historian interface functions and is
configured the same as the standard Rockwell Automation PItoPI interface, with the
exception that this interface can only connect to FT Historians.
Interface tags are created on the receiving Historian Server. Each interface tag is configured to receive
data for a unique source tag. Tags receive either archive or exception data updates from the source
tag. Exception data is data that has not yet been subjected to compression. The type of data
collection, exception or archive, is configured through scan class assignment. By default, all tags
belonging to the first scan class receive exception data. Tags assigned to any other defined scan
class receive archive data.
The interface supports history recovery. History recovery enables users to recover data for time periods
when the interface was not running or otherwise unable to collect data. The history recovery period is
configurable; the default is 8 hours. Users have the option of performing time-range specific history
recovery by specifying a start and end time. In this configuration the interface collects data for the
specified time period then exits.
Both source Historian Server-level failover and UniInt Phase 2 interface level failover are supported.
When running in source Historian Server-level failover mode, the interface obtains data from one of two
available source Historian Servers. The source Historian Servers must have identical tag definitions
and data streams for each interface source tag. This requirement ensures the interface will obtain the
same data regardless of which source server is active. When running in UniInt Failover mode, two
copies of the interface are connected to the source Historian Server at the same time. When the
primary interface stops collecting data, the backup interface assumes the primary role and continues
data collection. Source Historian Server-level failover and UniInt Phase 2 interface level failover modes
can be run simultaneously. Failover maximizes interface data availability on the receiving Historian
Server(s).
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Interface Limitations
The FactoryTalk Historian to Historian interface is not a true data replication tool. It does not synchronize
Historian Server data or perform data validation. It simply provides a method for copying data from one
Historian Server to another in an incremental, time forward manner. There is no guarantee that an exact
archive data match will exist between the source and receiving Historian Servers. If the goal is to
achieve data matching (replication) Rockwell Automation recommends using n-way buffering which is
supported with PI API v1.6.x and later. Please see the PI API installation manual for details.
The Historian Archive subsystem may temporarily queue data in memory prior to it being committed to
disk. This can lead to data gaps when using Historian to Historian for real-time data collection with
history recovery enabled. To avoid data gaps the recommended configuration is to run in history
recovery only mode without snapshot updates. Note that this means current real-time data from the
source Historian Server will not be available on the target Historian Server.
The interface is a PI API based application. It does not currently support tag annotations, which
are only available through the PI SDK. This means it cannot be used to copy Batch Database data
between Historian Servers.
The interface is a single threaded process. This design increases performance dependencies on the
responsiveness of the source and receiving Historian Servers and dependencies on network quality.
It is highly recommended that users use tools such as Rockwell Automation’s Performance Monitor
interface and Historian Ping interface to monitor these interface dependencies. These interfaces are
distributed by default with the latest Historian Server setup kit. This information will be invaluable for
troubleshooting Historian to Historian interface issues if they should arise. Using these tools to monitor
system health is also part of Rockwell Automation’s Best Practices Recommendations for FactoryTalk
Historian System Managers.
Supported Architectures
The FactoryTalk Historian To Historian Interface is used to transfer data from a Rockwell Historian
Server (Source Server) to another Rockwell Historian Server (Target Server). This includes a
Rockwell FactoryTalk Historian ME module, a FactoryTalk Historian SE server or a collective of
FactoryTalk Historian SE 3.0 servers being transferred to another Rockwell FactoryTalk Historian SE
3.0 server or a collective of FactoryTalk Historian SE 3.0 servers.
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The diagram below presents a typical architecture topology for the FactoryTalk Historian To Historian
Interface:
The H2H Interface can be installed on the following architectures:

• FactoryTalk Historian SE 3.x Target Server
• FactoryTalk Historian SE 3.x Source Server
• “Other” computer that is not a Historian 2.x Server, Historian FTLD Interface Node or
Client Note: If the above SE 3.x Target or Source Servers are parts of Collectives,
the interface would need to be installed on “Other” computer, not one of the
Servers.
In all the architectures only a FactoryTalk Historian SE 3.0 server may function as the Target Server.
If the Target Server is an OSI PI Server, you need to install the OSI PItoPI Interface, rather than
the Rockwell H2H Interface.
Target Server Tag Licensing Requirements:

The Target Server must have tag licenses for at least the sum of the tag licenses that exist in Source
Server(s), even if you are only replicating (transferring) a portion of those tags. An exception would
be if using the H2H Interface to transfer Historian ME tags to a Historian SE Server or Server
Collective…in that case the Target Server(s) only need tag licenses for the “actual number” of tags
being transferred.
Note: The above tag licenses in Target Servers would be “in addition to” any tag licenses they
would need for Rockwell and/or 3rd party tags that they are collecting with their own FTLD
and/or 3rd party interfaces.
Note: If the Source Server(s) tag licenses are for a “combination” of Rockwell and 3rd
party tags, the tag licenses in the Target Server must be equivalent to that
number/proportion of the total Rockwell versus 3rd party tags.
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Licensing
To use the FactoryTalk Historian To Historian Interface, you need to purchase an H2H license
activation file, activate the interface using FactoryTalk Activation Manager, and assign the
license activation to the Target Server using the FactoryTalk Administration Console. Assign
FHSE activation to the target FactoryTalk Historian SE Server in properties.
After you have assigned the activation file to the server, a point source FTSS has been created
and set to unlimited. You can check it in the Point Sources tab.
You need to restart the server for the changes to take effect.
Prior to using the Historian To Historian (H2H) Interface, steps must be completed related to the following. See
FactoryTalk Historian To Historian Interface Installation and Configuration Guide for details.
• Installing FactoryTalk Historian To Historian Interface
• Configuring FactoryTalk Historian To Historian Interface o Create an Interface Instance in
the ICU o Create a Target Point on the Target Server o Configure a Trust on the
Target Server o Configure a Trust on the Source Server o Start the H2H Interface
o Verify the H2H Interface
References
For more information and details related to the FactoryTalk Historian To Historian Interface, see
the following:
• FactoryTalk Historian To Historian Interface Installation and Configuration Guide
• FactoryTalk Historian To Historian Interface User Guide
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FactoryTalk Historian

For Rockwell and Partner Use Only!

Copyright © 2017 Rockwell Automation, Inc.

What you will learn:

FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition (SE)

Description: Part Number:

FT Historian Site Edition - 100,000 tags 9518-HSE100K

FT Historian SE Server – 2,000 3rd Party Tags 9518-HSE2K3ADD

FactoryTalk Historian Site Edition Advanced Server 9518-HSEADV

FactoryTalk Historian to Historian Interface

Historian to Historian Interface 9518-HINSE2SE

FactoryTalk Historian SE – Client Access Licensing

Third-Party Interfaces (Current as of Historian 5.01)

FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition

FactoryTalk Historian ME 1GB Module (Hardware w/ME Historian) 1756-HIST1G

FactoryTalk Historian SE Server Machine

FactoryTalk Historian Live Data Interface Machine

FactoryTalk Historian Asset Framework

Performance and Scalability:

Max Tag Count/Server 100,000 500,000

Part A – Overview of FactoryTalk Directory and Application

5. Do the following steps:

6. Close FactoryTalk Administration Console

5. Right-click on Historical Data and select New Historian Server Connection…

6. Do the following steps:

8. Do the following steps:

16. Next, right-click FTLD1 and click on Delete.

17. Click Yes.

25. Do the following steps in this order:

28. Do the following steps in this order:

35. Click Select All and then OK.

41. Close SMT and Administration Console (if still open).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Using “Stop FactoryTalk Historian SE” Shortcut

This lab is complete

Part A – Configuring Security and AboutPI-SDK to Connect to Server

5. Under Connections, click on Add Server…

6. Do the following steps in this order:

11. Go to the Server image.

12. On the Server image, right-click on Computer and select Manage.

14. Click Users, then right-click on Administrator and select Properties.

16. Close the Administrator Properties and Server Manager dialogs.

21. Now click the Browse button for the PI Identity.

25. Select New… to add another mapping.

28. Close the SMT.

31. Close the AboutPI-SDK.

5. To configure this interface for buffering, select Tools > Buffering.

14. Close the Buffer Manager.

19. The selected identity is assigned to the server connection.

23. Leave the ICU open for next steps.

3. Do the following steps in this order:

4. Read this message and click OK.

5. Restart the interface by clicking the Restart interface service button.

7. Close the ICU on the DATA image.

This lab is complete

1. Go to the Server image.

3. Select Network directory and OK.

6. Do the following steps in this order:

8. Click New to create a new Rule file.

16. Click OK.