PI DataLink is an add-in to Excel that allows
you to retrieve data from the PI server using the
functions you see right here. Now, thank goodness, you don't have to type
these functions in by hand, although, of course, you can if you want to,
because we've got these nice little dialog boxes
that will allow you to construct these and these dialog
boxes are controlled by what's on the ribbon here. So,
to just demonstrate real quick. If I want to see
a brand new -- let's say I want to see the current value
of a tag, and I know what the name of the tag
is, like, for example, our old friend "Sinusoid
" that we use for a lot of training.
Let me make that a little bit bigger. If I just want to see the current value
I just simply go into this field right here,
"Current Value". I choose that on the ribbon
As you can see I can make a cell reference to there, put the time
stamp on the left, and there we go. There's our current value
and as we watch this in real time, it will
update as you update the spreadsheet or recalculate the spreadsheet.
So, this is the function.
These are the arguments to the function. It's the name of the tag,
the name of the server, etc., and
for the most part we're going to be working within these dialog boxes
so you're not going to have to work with,
you know, you're not going to have to remember what the arguments are, you'll see
the arguments right there. Before we get into all that though, we're going to go
over some of the fundamentals about time, and how the functions
work, and how they update, etc. Before we go much further,
we need to verify that you've got the right add-in and it's
working within your current version of Excel, both 2007
and 2003. So let's look at both. Now in
Office 2007, with Excel, you should
see a new tab, and that tab indicates that the
add-in is loaded. It's a com add-in and,
if for some reason you've done the install but you don't see
this, well, there, it may be that a user has
disabled that, so one of the things you can do is re-enable this.
See, during the DataLink installation, we do automatically
configure this, so if you don't see this tab in Office
2007, then it may be that
after the installation somebody else went in and disabled
it. So, we would go into this
button here, the Windows button, choose Excel Options,
and what you're going to look for is the Add-ins tab.
Within the Add-ins tab you want to choose this
Com Add-ins, and we'll just choose
"Go" to go out and verify that PI DataLink,
and then ultimately Notifications, if you're using that,
that those are actually selected.
Yeah, that may be deselected. That's why you would not
see this tab.
Then again, normally you wouldn't need to see that, you would just
need to switch over to this PI
tab here to see all of these options,
because that's installed automatically. Now, let's say, for
example, you're working within Office 2003,
and what you'll see there is slightly different.
You'll find the add-ins under "Tools"
and "Add-ins", and if it's
not currently selected, you need to go ahead and select PI DataLink.
Now, you may not even see PI DataLink
exist there. During the installation of previous
versions of DataLink we did not automatically
associate this add-in. So what you need to do is go out
and browse for it. So, again, the way you would do this,
so you would choose "Tools". Within "Tools" choose
"Add-ins". Again you won't need to do this, you shouldn't need to do this if
you're using DataLink 4, and then,
if you don't see PI DataLink here, you go out and browse for it.
Now normally you would browse for this under the "Program
Files Directory",
under PI PC,
and
under Excel. Now, that's actually something that can
vary, "Program Files, PI
PC" It may be on your "C" or your "D", so you're going to have to know
where that is, where your DataLink was
installed for your particular computer. And the file you're going to be
looking for is this file right here. It's called "PIPC32
Dot xll." We'll go ahead and select that.
Now notice it's acknowledging I already have
that. That's because it had already been associated with this.
So, that's why we see this
menu bar here. So, the way you see
this in Office 2003, you'll
see this with a menu bar option, and
it's this pull-down menu that accesses all those
different functions that are available.
Now let me go ahead and switch over to the Office 2007 version.
With Office 2007, we're implementing
it, not through that pull-down menu but through this ribbon here.
DataLink 4.0 can be used within both versions of
Excel. In this class, though, we concentrate on the
Excel Version 2007, with Office 2007.
If you are interested in using
it, using the traditional dialog boxes you'd see
in the earlier versions of Excel, our previous version
of our computer-based training is available.
It has all those dialog boxes explained.