It is not always possible to retrieve information automatically from a data source. Some information is just not available in a data source. For this reason, Manually Entered Measures are used to allow insertion of information into your Flow System by people.
Examples of where you would use a Manually Entered Measure include:
- Instrument data that isn’t available in your control systems and historians
- Calculation factors that you will want to change over time
A Manual Measure must be given a "Default Value". Depending on the Interval Type of the measure, at the beginning of each interval, the Flow Engine will generate a time period for the Manual Measure and set the initial value of the measure for that time period according to the Default Value configured in the Retrieval section of the Measure Editor:
The available options are:
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Flow will set a new time period’s value to the value of the measure’s previous time period. A “Initial Value” setting tells Flow what the first time period’s value will be set to. This option is useful for calculation factors you may want to change over time, but not too frequently. |
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Flow will set a new time period’s value to 0. |
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Flow will set a new time period’s value to a null (empty) value. This option is useful when creating a measure for an instrument or value that needs to be inserted manually by a person every time period (e.g. daily electricity reading from an external meter). |
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Flow will set a new time period’s value to the value of another Flow measure at the same point in time. This option is useful when you need to, for example, set an hourly measure’s value to that of a weekly measure. |