Tutorial 17: Create a simple Dashboard

Result

Understand how to create a Dashboard and add Charts to the Dashboard

Tutorial steps

1. Create a new Reporting Model - for Engineering related Dashboards
2. Create A new Dashboard - to which you will add different Chart Types
3. Add a Chart - to the dashboard to display our Boiler information
4. Launch the Dashboard – open the dashboard in a Browser to visualize the information

Now that you have a few deployed measures in your Model, all automatically collecting and summarizing data from your Historian, let’s see how we can "see" this summarized information.

Select the "Charts" tab. This is where you are going to create an "Information model" that represents the audience for your Flow System’s information. The Boiler information you have configured in your Flow System would typically be useful for the Engineering or Utilities Managers.

A Flow Dashboard is a great way to pull multiple views of your information together into a single place that can be monitored at a glance.

Create a new folder in the "Charts" tab for "Engineering". Right-click on the "Engineering" folder and click "New\Dashboard". Flow will create a new dashboard. Rename this to "Engineering Dashboard".

Double-click on the Dashboard to Open its editor …

"Right Click" on the top left block of the canvas and select "New", a context menu will appear with all the different chart types that can be added to the Dashboard. Create an Hourly Time Based Table:

Flow automatically expands the new panel to all the available canvas space below and to the right of where you created the Chart Type. The panel’s "handles" can be used to resize it as required. In the tutorials that follow, you will need to resize these panels to be able to fit other panels onto the dashboard.

Double-click the new chart to open its editor …

Change the Following properties to configure the Chart:

General

• Title & Caption – Change the Title to "Engineering Report Hourly" and the Caption to "Steam Production report for all plant sections"
• Font Size - Change this to 20. The Font Size will be applied to the Title text, and the Caption text will be scaled smaller relative to the Title

Sections

Drag the 3 Steam Metrics onto the blank section of the Sections part of the configuration editor…

This will create 3 sections with all three boilers' Steam production metrics. Due to the fact that this is an Hourly report, Flow will only add the top-level Hourly measures to the Chart. In this case, only the Hourly Production Rating [ton/hr] are top-level measures - the other hourly measures are contained within other measures. Locate the Hourly Production [ton/hr], Production Efficiency [%], and Temperature [°C] measures from each metric and drag and drop them into the corresponding sections in the chart

Close the editor and rename the Chart in the Report section to "Engineering Report Hourly":

Let’s launch the dashboard in our browser by right-clicking on the Engineering Dashboard, then select "Tasks" and "Open":

This simple dashboard demonstrates the canvas and panel functionality. Notice how a panel has a "Title" and "Caption" at the top.

Let’s change a few properties in the chart definition. Open the "Engineering Hourly Report" definition again.

• Change the "Default Period" to "Moving Start to Current Value" of 1 "Period Start Intervals".
• In the different Steam sections, delete the "Production Rating (ton/hr)" measure (right-click and "Delete"). Flow will remove the measure from the chart definition, but not from the Model View.
• In the different Steam sections, move the "Steam Temperature (˚C)" measure to the top of the section (right-click and "Move Up"; or by pressing Ctrl + Up Arrow)
• Rename the General.Title property for all of the measures to [Name]

Notice the differences when you refresh your visualization:

• The table has more data because it is defaulting to a "moving window" from the start of the previous production day.
• The order of the measures in the "Boiler" section has been updated.
• The names of each of the measures are concise, compared to the long "hierarchical" measure name that you previously had - we accomplished this by using the [Name] placeholder in the Title, which the Flow Server knows to replace with the measure's name …

Click on the "Sparkline" for one of the "Production" measures to open a graphical "quick view" of the data. Notice how a chart of the data is presented at the bottom of the Dashboard. Depending on the setting of the Sparkline, it can either be a line, bar, or area chart:

Click on an individual cell to drilldown to its Details, insert Comments, and view any other version information relating to that value. In this example, the inputs to the efficiency calculation are provided for clarity. Further drilldown is possible by clicking on the cells in the Detail.

Add a Template Chart to a Dashboard

In the chart that you added above, you added each of the boilers to the chart by dragging each of the metrics onto the chart.

However, since each of the metrics is derived from the same template metric, it is possible to add the template metric once to a chart, and Flow will automatically display all instances in the chart.

Open the Engineering Dashboard. Resize the Engineering Report Hourly chart by hovering over the bottom handle and then clicking and dragging to resize the panel.

Notice that the canvas has a grid to assist with chart layouts. The grid comprises small squares and larger squares made up of 4x4 smaller squares. Resize the Engineering Report Hourly chart to a height of 3 large squares. The width can remain the entire width of the canvas.

Now right-click on the left-most square beneath the resized chart and then insert a New > Time Chart > Time Based Chart > Hourly

Resize the newly inserted chart by reducing its height – leave the bottom 3 small squares in the canvas unpopulated.

Double-click the newly inserted chart to open its editor

In the General tab, adjust the period as follows:

• Period – Moving Start to Current Value
• Period Start Intervals - change this from 0 to 1 (indicating that you want data from 1 day previously)

In the Series tab, drag the hourly Template Measure named "Production (ton/hr)" onto the Axis.

Select the Steam.Production chart item that you’ve just added and make the following changes:

• Under the General properties, change the Title to [Name] and the Type from Line to Column
• Right-click on the Color property, and select Palette Color Provider

• Click on Palette Color Provider, and change the Palette from Blue to Shade

 

 

 

Select the Axis component, and change the Stack Mode property from None to Value

 

Re-open/Refresh the dashboard and note the changes that you’ve just made.

 

 

You only added a single measure to the bottom chart, but because this is a template measure, the Flow Server displays all instances of that template measure.