In this video,
we're going to explore how we can leverage collections to create multi-tiered filters that help our users
navigate PI vision displays. In this example, I'm working with a room rack and server set up.
My first level is a room. I'm going to have one or several rooms in my facility. I'd like to keep track of.
Additionally inside each room. There's likely going to be multiple racks.
So now I have different rooms and all of them have a unique number of different racks and on each rack
we have a number of different servers
So I would like an easy way for my users to look at a PI vision display the different rooms
racks and servers so that way they can easily see the information that they're looking for
Going back to PI vision,
I can see that I have a filter at the top called room.
I can scroll through and you can see that I have a scroll bar to the right and
if I'm in DC room one, I'll double click...
...this may take a second to update the display because it has to go back and communicate with AF
to make sure that it's pulling in all the right options.
Now you can see that it updated my rack information when I click on it, and now I'll need to select a rack.
Let's select a one
and
now that I've selected a one,
you can see that my servers are updated as well and I can see all the different servers that exist in
the DC room one on rack a zero one and I have the whole complete list of server.
When I click on a server it updates my display.
Let's get started with configuring how the display is from the bottom up to begin I'll click on new display,
I'll go to my database.
Here you can see my rooms the different racks in each room and eventually the servers.
So I can just choose one of my servers and begin building my display from there
I'll start off by making the graphs that I'd like to show at the end, one for demand and then one for the
temperature of the exhaust and the temperature of the inlet.
I can resize these.
I'll also want to get the value
of my element name.
That way anytime this updates I'll know which particular server I'm looking at.
I'll format this to only show the server name.
Next I'm going to start creating my collections so we can start by building out the room collection first.
So if I go back up
my main level you can see I have three rooms here.
So I'm just going to click on one, and
I'm going to get the room name,
and
similarly I'm just going to get the value, and
now I'm going to convert this to a collection.
You can see on the right that there's a lot of editing that you're able to do with collections.
We have another video on the channel linked in the description that goes over more general aspects of collections.
I like to limit the visibility of my collection to just one room in this particular case
because that way if someone is looking at this display, it's clear which room rack and server they're looking at.
Next I want to make sure that I keep everything labeled you can just add in some text boxes,
and next I'm going to create similar collections for both the rack and server levels. So if I go down one more level,
I'm going to take the rack location as the value that I'd like to create into a collection.
I'll format the value
showing only the coordinates of the rack location, and I'll add some text,
and lastly I'll do my server collection.
So now comes the important part which helps make this multi filter work and that's going to be creating these navigation links.
So what I'll need to do is right-click and do modify the collection.
I need to select my individual attribute,
right click and
do add a navigation link.
For this navigation link. We'd like to change the context of the current display
because that's going to adjust how the other items on this display behave, and we want to use this current asset as the root for
the rest of the display.
We're going to do the same steps for the other ones as well,
and that ensures that the rest of the display adheres to the route that we're selecting as we drill down through these multi-tiered filters.
I just need to click here to exit the modify mode,
go back into my editing mode, and
perform the same steps for the rack and server levels.
It's going to be the same selections for all of these levels.
So, let's see our display in action.
If I'm viewing PI Vision as a user, I'll select my room. In this case it's going to be room 1,
I can select my rack, I'll choose A04,
and then I can choose one of these servers,
and just like that my display is updated.
Another example, if I wanted to choose A01,
and then choose one of my servers there,
the display updates, and I can see all the relevant information that I need. Keep in mind
there are many different use cases where this could be helpful for the room rank and server is one general use case,
but you could have many different types of equipment that if arranged in a hierarchy
correctly will help you leverage collections to produce those multi filters.
This differs from
the use of using the asset drop-down in configuration menu as well different filters limit our possibilities
that our users will have to click through at the end of the day.Again building this display,
it's highly dynamic as I can add in different servers racks and rooms accordingly as my operations
necessitate it and I get a lot of value because it increases my ability as a user
to only have to select a few options that are relevant.
I hope you enjoyed this video and are able to implement something similar in your company