You can change the look, feel and the
general behavior of DataLink by going into the Settings
option, so I would highly recommend this for anybody who --
well, for example, if you've gone from the previous versions to the current version
and you'd just like to go back to how things used to
be, this is a place where you can do some of that.
So let's just go through this from top to bottom.
We have, first of all, within Settings, the choice
of what your default is going to be when it comes
to pasting the results of a tag search
into your spreadsheet. As you can see, by default, it's in a
column, so, for example, if I were to do a
tag search, using this tag search right here,
and let me just reset this and I'll search for all the tags that begin
with the letters "C", "D".
Okay. There's a set of tags, and I click on OK.
As you can see we paste these into a row.
Excuse me, into a column. Well, notice, that's something that
can be changed. You can specify in a row
instead of in a column, and then it's going to end up being pasted
over a left to right. Actually, that's a
new option you'll find within Tag Search. One of the options
within Tag Search is you can specify is it
going to be in a row or a column. So, what we're doing here
is we're specifying the default. As you can see,
you can always override that default if you choose to.
In the next setting we determine whether a server
name's going to be copied into the spreadsheet
when you do a tag search. The end result of that is you're just going to
see this server name next to the tag name if you choose that.
Now this "Use by Server Time Zone" is
going to indicate whether we're using the local time or the server
time as the time zone when you,
you know, specify specific times. You know, 7
a.m. depends on what time zone you use, so that
allows you to toggle that. And the next item is this "Display
N.A. Instead of Blanks." What this does is
it specifies the behavior when you've got a function
like this in which -- well, for example,
if I were to change this function here
so that we're looking at a different interval of time.
Instead of 24-hour period let me just change this
to a 12-hour period, and you'll notice that this
array here, even though it doesn't automatically change size,
it will show some blanks. So if I say from yesterday
plus 7 hours to yesterday plus,
let's go with 15 hours,
that's actually just an 8-hour. If you notice
now we're showing nothing. Now you can
toggle that by going in here and say "
Display N.A. Instead of Blanks." Let me
go ahead and change this. Y +
T + 7 hours.
I'll change this to Y + 15 hours.
You'll notice now,
as opposed to what we saw before, now we're actually inserting the
indicator, this N.A. for,
you know, to indicate that there's data that's missing
from this. Now, there's another setting here that's very similar to that.
It's this "Disable-Resize To
Show All Values" message. Now I will go ahead
and show you what happens when you get that message. Normally
that happens when you, again, change some
attribute, either the tag name or the
timestamp,
some argument of a function in a way that
increases the results that you would get into
that same array. See this array here that
we're seeing here -- this array doesn't change in size
when we recalculate. So, if I were to change
this, let's say, instead of from Y
+ 7 hours to Y + 15 hours, I
go from Y + 7 hours to the current time.
Well, that's actually going to return 32 values
but there is not enough room to show 32 values
because of the original size of the array.
And there's workarounds to this. You can choose to resize
this array. It's going to go ahead and actually resize
it for me. But this setting
is all about whether we show this message or not.
Some people want to show it, some people don't want to show it, so let me show you before
and after. If I go back to -- let's go to T + 7
hours. This was the original size of the array.
If I go into my settings now and I turn this
on, "Disable-Resize To Show All Values" message,
now if I were to change this to give me those
32 results, as you can see we can't
really tell that not all the data is there.
It's actually something that you -- well, give
some consideration to that because you don't necessarily want
people to think they're looking at the whole set of data
but in fact, the missing data. Now you
may wonder why would you ever not want to show this?
Well, the reason that we support this feature, this setting
here, is to preserve compatibility with earlier
versions. It used to be that we would not show that message, so
in case you would like to continue that behavior we've
supported that. But, we recommend that you do
not check that. So that you do show people when there is some
kind of a change that needs to be recognized.
Now the next setting I want to go through is
this "Locale Independent".
This gives you the option to force
the data link to interpret timestamps using
only PI-Time syntax, the time syntax you
see here, ignoring any of the regional
settings you may have, the window settings. So,
in that timestamp format is going to be either using
these abbreviations here or the day-month-hour,
excuse me, day-month-year, hour-minute-second format that's
standard with PI Syntax. So if you want to
essentially lock out people from using any other
time syntax you can use that.
For those of you who liked the previous behavior of DataLink
in which we did not automatically
display this task pane when you clicked on a cell,
this is a great option for you. Let me
demonstrate. I'll go ahead and accept the default
and if I've -- let's
close this pane out and show you the behavior. This is the current
behavior, the current design of DataLink. When you select a
function, or a cell that has a function
from DataLink, we bring that task pane up.
That's a new feature and some people don't like that feature, so
if you want to disable that, you can just
choose this option right here,
and now as you click around, that behavior
is no longer the default. Next up we have
these two functions right here, these two options right here.
They control the format of the numbers
and the format of the times that are going to be returned by
DataLink. So for example, these are the times
returned by DataLink, as you can see.
We are sticking to the standard PI format,
day-month-year, hour-minute-second, as you can see right here. But you can
control what that output is. You can also control what the
default output of the number format is. So,
for example, if I wanted just two decimal places I could do that. If I
wanted, oh let's say,
whoops, leading,
or using commas, etc., I could do that. So,
all this, all the typical number formatting
that is available within Excel,
these are the options that you have available to you.
The default here is "General" which is going to match whatever your "General"
settings are in Excel.
I find that we have this section here called "Automatic Update". "Automatic
Update" controls the behavior of a feature
we haven't really looked at yet. It's this toggle switch
that you see right up here. This toggle switch,
and I'll go ahead and click it to toggle
it to On, forces now an update
to the PI data. So the data is going to update
based on whatever settings you put
in the Settings option. So if we look over here, we
can see this interval is equal to 5 seconds. Well, that
is determined by whatever you chose
here in your Settings. Now it's not entirely
intuitive how to interpret this, so let's go over this
in some detail. First of all, let's understand
what the difference between "calculate" and "full calculate" is
with regard to Automatic Update. First
of all, this doesn't control, this does not control
at all what the F9 and what the Control-Alt-Shift-F9
do. That's not what this is
trying to set here. What this is doing is
determining which of the two types of
calculations we are going to execute
during an Automatic Update.
Are we going to do just a simple "calculate"?
And during a simple "calculate" what we will do is we will
recalculate all of those volatile fields.
The volatile fields would be those fields like
the "Current Value" field and also if you've got
any time functions in Excel like "Now".
Those will recalculate. Those are considered volatile
because whenever you do a normal
F9 in Excel it recalculates,
those things recalculate. With a "full
calculate", then functions like this one right here,
PI-ArcVal, functions that don't normally
recalculate when you simply do an F9 or change
a cell in Excel, then those will recalculate
for you as well. So a "full calculate" will
notice, or I should say, will observe that
this timestamp here,
D14, this timestamp right here,
that even though that has not changed,
that we will go ahead and re-evaluate this expression
even though that timestamp hasn't changed,
and none of the other inputs have changed. So,
when we go into Settings here, if that
"full calculate" is chosen as the Automatic
Update Calculate, then every time the Automatic
Update triggers we will do a "full calculate",
including those things that are not normally updated
when you simply change a cell. Those would
be the so-called non-volatile
functions. Functions that are not
automatically updating, you know, every
time you change the cell. Now to state this another
way, let's go back to our other example here.
Here's an example in which --
let's say when we originally did this we had Y + 7
hours to T + 7 hours. There we go. That's
from yesterday to today.
This is a non-volatile field.
When I update this
spreadsheet by pressing F9 or just by editing
a cell, this function does not automatically
recalculate. As you can see, if I double-click on
this, you can see this function does take
these two cells as their start-time and end-time,
and because those two cells they're not based on some
kind of a, oh for example, an
Excel function like "Now" which will
automatically update every time I press F9.
Even though these are not based on
one of those volatile functions, when you do a "Full
Calculate" this will go ahead and recalculate
this function right here. Now that
brings us to this last field here in the Automatic Update, and that's
the Interval In Seconds. And normally this is going to be
a number that has to be greater than 5.
The least amount that we can do the Auto Update in is 5
seconds, and that's going to be the
interval at which we automatically do an update.
So, for example, if I were to choose 30 seconds, that
means once every 30 seconds we will be whichever update
you choose - a "Calculate" or a "Full Calculate".
Now, what happens when we put a zero? When we put
a zero, you see this is identified as "Auto".
Does that mean we do a non-stop recalculate? Well, that
wouldn't be supportable. No. What we do instead
is we do either 5 seconds
or whatever
is twice the duration it takes
to normally do the recalculation. Let me go over that
again. Let's say that it takes 10 seconds
to fully recalculate your spreadsheet. Well, if
it takes 10 seconds, and we will, you know, we will
monitor that as we do this recalculation, if it takes
10 seconds to do a full recalculation
and if you set this to zero, it's effectively setting this
to 20 seconds. 'Cause what we want is we want
at least 50 percent of the time for your spreadsheet to be
responsive. Now, we either use
that, or, if it only takes, say, a split second to
recalculate, we'll just use this as 5 seconds
and we will use the minimum. So it's either going to be
5 seconds or twice the
duration it normally takes to recalculate, and that's
what you'll get if you enter zero. Now as you
might guess all of these things are documented in
great detail in the DataLink manual. So,
if you are not familiar with where to find that,
simply go to techsupport.osisoft.com.
Under Download Center you want to choose
Documentation, User Manuals,
and then you use the dropdown list box there
to find the user manual for PI DataLink.
So, I'm going to go ahead and chose under Products,
I'll chose PI DataLink, and for
the User Manuals we can choose, well, I'll choose All Versions.
So here's, here's where you would select
it, then you would choose Download. Now you may be prompted for your user name and password
for your tech support account when you go here.
I'd like to wrap up this discussion by pointing out just a couple
of other things that we find useful. I'd like to point out
at this point. First of all, there's a nice Help file that you'll find
available within, on the ribbon. Choose "Help"
and this is where you're going to find a lot of good advice
about just about everything we're going to be talking about in this class.
And if you haven't seen it, when you hover
your cursor you'll get a nice little tool-tip that explains
what that particular option is.
Another thing that may not be obvious - do you see how some
of these functions have a little triangle
there? That little triangle, if you click on it, it's going to give
you an option to do one of
well, some of the things that we think are some of the, I guess the
most common things people want to see. So, for example,
all the hourly values for yesterday? I'll go ahead and just
click on that. All I have to do now is type the name of the tag,
press Return, and there's the result. So
it gives you a type of a, kind of, one-stop shopping
to very quickly generate something you might
be interested in. So we've tried to come up with some common values.