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How to automatically assign Areas to Alarm and Events?del

Hello Folks,

     Is there a way to assign new Areas to Stations/Alarm and Events in a faster way than manually on each and every one of them? Is there a script/utility out there that could improve this manual process? I would really appreaciate your help.

Thank you,

Valentin

Valentin Borsu

• 14 Nov 2024 8:48 AM
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2 Replies

• Andre Dicaire

  

  • 14 Nov 2024 4:21 PM

  Not finding anything like this. Bulk Edit does not appear to support the workstation components. That would have been nice. It may be possible to create a format file but all I'm seeing is the Alarm and Event container is not supported for bulk edit.
  
  Once long ago, before bulk edit supported history, I was able to manually create a bulk edit format FHX to configure the History parameters on a module. Hmm. So, I tried this for the Alarm areas, and it works. Totally not supported. Basically, I looked at the format of a Bulk Edit Import FHX that is created in the Bulk edit folder. I exported a supported node type (CIOC) with CIOC.FMT and then imported it. The import creates the LastImport FHX, which shows the syntax of the import, where the main item is flagged with merge=T. I compared this to a full export of the CIOC, and then used a Full export of the Workstation to create a matching syntax. Saved this as an FHX and then imported it as a Standard FHX (not user defined).
  
  The Plant area assignments are defined in the OPERATOR_SUBSYSTEM phrase. The entire FHX looks like this:
  SCHEMA
  {
  MAJOR_VERSION=14
  MINOR_VERSION=3
  MAINTENANCE_VERSION=1
  BUILD_VERSION=7332
  BUILD_ID="xr"
  VERSION_STR="14.3.1.7332.xr"
  }
  
  
  OPERATOR_NODE NAME="WKSNAME"merge=T
  {
  DESCRIPTION="Large Screen Station "
  OPERATOR_SUBSYSTEM
  {
  ENABLED=T
  GLOBAL_ALARM_ACK_GROUP=1
  RESTRICT_WRITES_TO_AREAS=F
  AREA { NAME="AREA_A" }
  AREA { NAME="HARDWARE" }
  AREA { NAME="BATCH" }
  AREA { NAME="DEVICES" }
  }
  }
  
  
  I'm thinking one would be able to map this out into a FMT file. I couldn't find how to create that FMT from the bulk edit tools, which would really be the way to go.
  
  Note that this file cannot create a workstation nor can it delete any defined areas in your configuratoin. It can only add AREAs to the named workstation.
  
  Note II: the Area must exist in the database for this import to add it to the workstation's Alarm and Event container.
  
  I copied the Schema header from a valid Bulk Edit LastImport.fhx to get the right syntax version information of my system, which is v14.3.1.
  
  So where can we go from here? Well, an Excel spreadsheet could be created, and a script written to create this FHX file, with multiple rows that define the desired Plant Areas for each workstation. List your plat areas across the top and the Stations down the left and fill in the matrix of what areas go to what stations. Then, run the script and build the above phrase for each station. result would look like:
  
  SCHEMA
  {
  MAJOR_VERSION=14
  MINOR_VERSION=3
  MAINTENANCE_VERSION=1
  BUILD_VERSION=7332
  BUILD_ID="xr"
  VERSION_STR="14.3.1.7332.xr"
  }
  OPERATOR_NODE NAME="WKSNAME1"merge=T
  {
  OPERATOR_SUBSYSTEM
  {
  AREA { NAME="AREA_A" }
  AREA { NAME="HARDWARE" }
  AREA { NAME="NEWAREA" }
  AREA { NAME="DEVICES" }
  }
  }
  OPERATOR_NODE NAME="WKSNAME2"merge=T
  {
  OPERATOR_SUBSYSTEM
  {
  AREA { NAME="AREA_A" }
  AREA { NAME="HARDWARE" }
  AREA { NAME="BATCH" }
  AREA { NAME="NEWAREA" }
  AREA { NAME="DEVICES" }
  }
  }
  OPERATOR_NODE NAME="WKSNAME3"merge=T
  {
  OPERATOR_SUBSYSTEM
  {
  AREA { NAME="AREA_A" }
  AREA { NAME="HARDWARE" }
  AREA { NAME="BATCH" }
  AREA { NAME="DEVICES" }
  }
  }
  
  This would leave you with an Excel sheet to manage the assigned areas of all defined workstations. That gives you visibility of the system as a whole and an easy way to assign a new Plant area to as many workstations as you need.
  
  added enhancements:
  - Add a column to select which workstations to update so the created FHX only contains those nodes.
  - add a function to parse an FHX file and populate the spreadsheet, both the row of existing Plant Area Names and the workstations where they are currently defined.
  - add a function that parses an FHX file and identifies any discrepancies between the database and this file. This would show if areas are assigned that you don't want and areas you want that are not yet assigned.
  
  Bulk Edit might not work for this as each station can have a varying number of areas. The format file requires a fixed number of columns and isn't intended to handle a different number of items per row. It would work to add one Area to multiple workstations. I don't know if that would be all that useful. Maybe someone has a FMT file already they could share. There can be up to 250 plant areas. If you made the format for 250 columns, would it handle blank cells? I don't know.
  
  If your handy with Excel VBA scripts, this would not be hard to accomplish. If I have time, I think I'll try to create these scripts and see how use full it is. A similar sheet would be useful to manage User Span of control, but I have no idea (yet) how that would look like...
  
  Sounds like a pretty decent UDEP request, no?

  Andre Dicaire

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• Valentin Borsu

  

  • 15 Nov 2024 6:53 AM

  In reply to Andre Dicaire:

  Thanks Andre. I will look into this. I appreciate your help.

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