Niagara 3.5 is jam packed full of new exciting features. One of these is the ability for a Web Supervisor to automatically configure itself. If you're doing mass M2M, this will transform the way you engineer Niagara and save you a ton of engineering time.

As more and more customers move towards a Smart Services based business model, the amount of engineering time spent on the Supervisor becomes a major factor. The fact that a lot of these Jaces have very similar Stations (or a one that's configured via an Appliance), increases the need to automate the NiagaraNetwork configuration at the Supervisor end. This is where 'exportTags' come in. By tagging up a Jace, we can completely streamline the process of adding Stations to a Web Supervisor.

Here's the 'exportTags' feature in a nutshell...

• Engineer your Jace in the standard way.
• Tag up the items you want exported to the Supervisor (i.e. Histories, Px Views, Schedules etc.)
• When the Jace (also known as a Subordinate) 'Joins' the Supervisor, the Px Graphics, History Imports, Schedules and anything else will be automatically created on the Web Supervisor based upon the tag information stored in the Jace.

It's a pretty big feature, so let me now explain this in more detail. To start off with, here's a list of all everything that can be tagged on a Subordinate...

• Points: Niagara Proxy Points can automatically be created on the Supervisor. This is probably the easiest to explain. However, the really cool thing is there's very little need to do this anymore (as you'll find out as you read on).
• Histories: Niagara Histories can also be tagged. This creates Niagara HistoryImports on the Supervisor.
• Schedules: Both master and slave Schedule relationships can automatically be configured.
• Files: Files that need to be exported to the Supervisor can be tagged (using the new Niagara File Descriptor feature in 3.5).
• Px Views: One of the typical questions we get asked on the standard Niagara training course is 'do I put my graphics in the Jace or the Supervisor?'. With 'exportTags', you can easily have it both ways. Hence, Px Views can be exported up to the Supervisor. This is the most exciting feature since just about any existing Px view that's been set up on a Jace can automatically be exported. This includes...
  • Automatically copying any associated files (Px files, images etc).
  • Automatically virtualizing any ORDs. Therefore, all ORDs are replaced with their 'virtual' equivalent. As this is all done for you, there's no need to create any Niagara Proxy Points on the Supervisor for any other reason than control purposes.
  • By virtualizing all the ORDs on a page, you don't need to worry about relative or absolute ORDs.
  • If there are any ORDs that fail to virtualize properly, you can simply override the ORD with one that works for you. This is especially useful if you need to change the hyperlinks on a page when its virtualized onto the Supervisor.
• Components: any Component can also be tagged and included in a Join. For example, the standard exportTags' palette comes with a specially configured Program Object that's exported to the Supervisor and run after the Join process has completed. This should cater for 'anything else' that needs to be included when a Join happens.

A Join can be launched from the Supervisor or Subordinate side. This caters for...

• The On Site User: once a user has commissioned a Jace on site, the user can launch a Join and get a full report of everything that's happened.
• The Enterprise User: a Join can be launched from the Supervisor and its progress monitored from a Job. Again the user gets a full report of everything that happened from the Supervisor's JobService.

When questioning customers about how these Jaces are typically configured, we found out that each Jace needs to have some 'meta-data' associated with it. For instance, the geograpical location, the customer id or in fact anything! Furthermore, this information should also be able to help sort and categorize the Station in the Supervisor. Therefore, the Subordinate Station has a special 'Station Info' Component that a user can add Properties too. When a Join happens, this information is all automatically exported to the Supervisor. Once set up, the 'Station Info' can help decide...

• The security Category that's applied to the Station in the Supervisor.
• Which Station Folder the Subordinate NiagaraStation is placed into in the Supervisor.

There's lots of other little features that make life easier when you start working with thousands of Jaces in a Web Supervisor. For instance, dynamically defining a display name for the Joined NiagaraStation in the Supervisor, creating an alarm when there's a problem with a Join and even profiling how long a Join takes (useful for slow connections).

In conclusion, for those of you working on large Enterprise projects, 'exportTags' should make your lives a lot easier.