TopView® version 6.31 Release

TopView® version 6.31 Release

November 5, 2018

OPC/SCADA ● OPC A&E ● PI ● SQL Events ● SQL Lookup ● Canary Labs ● PerfMon

See the release notes for a full list of changes included in this version

Configurator updates

The TopView Configurator is used to configure the behavior of the real-time TopView Engines including configuration of alarm and notification settings. 

Updates to the Configurator include:

  • Ability to retrieve values of all tags, input and output, used in the current configuration. 
  • CSV Export of the tag list columns including current tag values. This CSV can be used to investigate tags with bad status or unexpected current value. 
  • Export/Import for Notification Groups and Schedules

Schedule Groups

Schedules define valid days of the week and valid time range during each day and can be assigned to alarm conditions, notification recipients, and scheduled alarm reports.

In some cases the requirements for a Schedule may fall outside of the parameters available within TopView’s Schedules. For example, a single Schedule cannot define multiple periods of time during a single day (8am-10am and 3pm-9pm). A user could create two Schedules, one for each time period, but could not assign both Schedules within TopView.

Schedule Groups are designed to satisfy scheduling requirements that cannot be achieved through a single TopView Schedule. A Schedule Group is a collection of multiple schedules assigned to a single name and can be used anywhere a Schedule can be used in TopView. A Schedule Group is active if any of the Schedules in the group are active.

Configuration API (beta)

This release includes a pre-release version of the TopView Configuration API, a .Net programmatic interface to TopView configuration information.

The Configuration API includes access to global information previously available in the Notifications API (Contacts, Schedules, …) as well as access to TopView configuration file information including tags, alarm limits, and notification setting.

With the Configuration API, users can programmatically:

  • List tags, Tag Groups and their settings
  • Add and remove tags, Tag Groups and their settings
  • Edit and adjust tags and Tag Group information
  • Edit basic global notifications settings (Contacts, Schedules, …)

HTTPS Support for the Mobile Web App

The TopView Mobile Web App provides browser-based access to TopView values, alarms, and alarm history. The web server for the Mobile Web App is hosted by each running TopView Engine and is configured as part of the configuration file for each Engine.

In previous versions TopView supported one HTTP listener with the listen port chosen by the user. In this release the user can add an HTTPS listener port to provide secure, encrypted communication between the client browser and TopView.

New testing options : disable all notifications, disable all outputs

During the creation and testing of a TopView configuration it is common for users to frequently start and stop the Engine to test recent changes. If notifications and/or outputs have been defined, the frequent start/stop may send undesired notification messages or output values.

Two new options have been added to assist users during testing:

  • Disable notifications (Email-SMS, Voice, Modem)
    If enabled, TopView will process and log all attempts at Email, SMS, Voice, and Modem/TAP notification but will not send the notification. Since the attempt details are logged the user can view the application log to verify alarm and notification logic. 
  • Disable all outputs
    If enabled, TopView will not write any configured outputs including Output Points, output tags, or acknowledge output tags.

Scheduled Alarm Reports: new filters for alarm start time and acknowledge state

Scheduled Alarm Reports are pre-configured, scheduled reports of TopView alarms that occurred over a period of time. Each scheduled report contains a time range and filters for which alarms to include. The scheduled reports can be emailed to one or more recipients.

In previous versions of TopView, alarms were included in the report regardless of the alarm acknowledge/unacknowledge state, and as long as they were active at some point during the period.

Four new filters have been added to each Scheduled Alarm Report:

  • Include acknowledged alarms: alarms that have been acknowledged
  • Include unacknowledged alarms: alarms that have not been acknowledged
  • Include alarms that went active during the period: alarms with an alarm start time >= the report start time and <= the report end time
  • Include alarms that went active before the period and inactive during the period: alarms with an alarm start time < the report start time and alarm end time <= the report end time

Email/SMS/Voice Notification Groups: Repeat count for recipients

Global Email-SMS and Voice Notification Global Groups can be configured with a delay between each recipient in the group and an option to remove unsent notifications upon alarm acknowledge and/or return-to-normal. Example: make a voice call to each recipient at 5 minute intervals and remove any unsent messages if the alarm is acknowledged. This feature is often used instead of Escalation Templates for simple escalation configurations.

A new feature within the delay setting allows the user to specify a repeat count for notifying the recipients in the group. A similar repeat feature exists for Escalation Templates but was not previously part of the notification group delay setting.

Voice Notification: Option to strip non-numeric characters from recipient phone numbers

TopView’s Voice Notification provides voice call-out for alarm notifications. TopView makes the voice call through a VOIP Server or, for older installations, a TAPI device (TAPI is no longer supported).

The recipient of a voice notification call is usually defined by a phone number. If the recipient’s phone number contains non-numeric characters (e.g. 111-222-3333) the call may fail due to the non-numeric characters.

A new option instructs TopView to remove any non-numeric characters from phone numbers used for Voice Notification calls.

TAPI unavailable for new configurations

TopView’s Voice Notification and Remote Dial-in can use TAPI (Microsoft Telephony API). Due to reliability issues and diminishing support for TAPI, TopView dropped support for TAPI in version 6.29 but has allowed the user to implement TAPI in a unsupported manner.

Selection of TAPI for new TopView configurations is now disabled. Users who wish to use TAPI for new configurations will need to contact Exele Support (support@exele.com) to receive instructions for enabling TAPI.

Licensing: Tag/Point Count for licensing: allow duplicates and common extensions

Each TopView license includes a “licensed tag count”. To enforce the tag count license, TopView compares the number of monitored tags in running TopView Engines against the licensed tag count.

In previous versions of TopView, if the same tag existed multiple times in the monitored list it was counted multiple times against the license tag count. Also, monitoring multiple alarm properties of the same alarm (where the tag names in TopView were different due to different extensions for each property) resulted in each property being counted against the licensed tag count.

This release of TopView includes the following changes to tag count licensing:

  • If the same tag occurs multiple times in the monitored tag list of an Engine/configuration, it will only be counted once against the licensed tag count
  • Common alarm tag extensions for the same alarm tag will be ignored when counting unique tags for licensing.
    Example: MyTag.Alarm.HIHI and MyTag.Alarm.LOLO will count as one tag against the licensed tag count.

To assist with these changes, the TopView Configurator’s Tags and Limits screen has been updated with the following features: 

  • The license tag count details for a TopView configuration can be displayed: Columns…Columns for Tag List…License tag count
  • The total number of licensed tags is displayed under the monitored tag list

TopView 101 and SCADA Connect help

TopView will install new help documents for TopView 101 (an introduction for new users) and TopView SCADA Connect. These items can be viewed from the TopView Configurator Help menu.

See the release notes for a full list of changes included in this version