The new release of Active-Framework is out and official and we're so impatient to share it with you. We've been working hard those past few months based on your feedback to improve charts. We bring a lot of new features on this release with personnalisation, better usability, better exports... We introduce a new mechanism called "propagation" to easily fill-in the Niagara Network to share data between stations. We pushed the connector Framework to higher limits to let you personalize the payloads from a simple model. And finally but not the least we introduce a whole new range of blocks to manipulate data tables.

Let's deep dive into some of the new features!


Chart personnalisation

Charts are very essential but can be handy to parameter for an end user because it implies a lot of considerations to take into account. This is why we firstly introduced an automatic configuration based on tags so the end user wouldn't need to bother with any of it  ; the charts display with the corrected parameters on the first click. The downside to it is the mandatory tagging to get it well. So we introduced a new configuration popup to personalize each chart: the color, the type of chart, the aggregation, the delta. You can now start with fresh histories without any worry on the tagging and personalize them.



Chart breakdown

A massive feature request was the availability to split charts on the top of each other to improve the similar data readability (like boolean or enum values). We did it with a simple option to activate! You can even use the configuration popup to use the option whenever you need it. A single cursor allows you to explore the different charts on a single timestamp.


Tag Selector

We introduce a new way for selecting historical data for a chart: using successive drop-downs based on tags.You can select multiple values and create dependencies between drop-downs. It combines very well with a HistoryListSelection. You can select all the consumption histories per floor, per building or display all the histories of the AHU you select.


Heat Map

A HeatMap is now available to analyze values magnitude of a Niagara history over a period. You can personalize the plot bands (the set of colors) and can decide to aggregate the data over a day or over a weekday. You can even restrict the analysis to a particular period of the day and see only the working hours for example.




Take the control

We wanted to give you the availability to display points values and commands on the most simple way while giving a much better look. So we created a generic card that you feed with drag&drops from your points or components. Numeric values will be displayed with an horizontal slider, a boolean with a toggle, an enum with a list and a string with a field editor. You can relativise all the data. For advanced user, you can even use a Selection with some SFormat to retrieve some specific points across the station.


Simple Gauge

The existing gauge may be a little too complicated for some use cases. So we introduced a very simple one with a slick look. Whenever you drag a Numeric Point in the FlexView, it's now the default card.



Automatic points propagation

Propagation is one of the big thing we've been working on for the last 12 months and address one of the biggest challenge you face as a System Integrator: how to deal with different Niagara instances, how to propagate data between stations. It's a very manual and time consuming process and usually quite heavy to maintain. So we decided to take over the issue and bring new features to help you with that. One of the feature we introduce is the propagation of your points. You can now decide whether a component and its children should propagate to the top (a supervisor for example) or to the bottom (a JACE for example). And... that's all. All the points will then be created in the target station in the Niagara Network. The tree will be re-created using folders so you can use your relative views, extensions will be propagated. They are not a real one but more like a "shadow" so you can configure it at the supervisor level for example and the original one gets its configuration updated straight away. Histories importer are also created dynamically allowing you to create really nice workflows.




Model propagation

The Model (e.g. Aspects) defined on a station needed to be copy-pasted from a station to another if you wanted to have a common Model. This period is over! The Nodes from the Model can now propagate between stations automatically. As soon as you create a Node somewhere it's replicated in the connected stations if desired. Strategies can be triggered automatically allowing you to create advanced scenarios for multi-JACEs architectures. You can also propagate actions to disable a Node with one action on every connected stations for example. This is a huge breakthrough and we hope you'll enjoy it!



Connectors payload personnalisation

The connectors Framework is one of the main use of the Active-Framework as more Niagara stations are getting connected to different services, databases or platforms. As more 3rd party are involved with Niagara data, they expect more custom data formats. The system was thought dynamic in the setup in the station but the payloads and behaviors on the 3rd party was fixed. We made it entirely dynamic so you can personalize it from a simple JSON model using SFormat. You need a new tag? Declare a new variable using SFormat (you can get any data in the station with it) and add it to the JSON payload. We are excited to be compliant with the UDMI format now!

 



History Table calculations

Manipulating control points is super easy in Niagara with the Wiresheet, you can create mathematical operations between values (a temperature average for example). But it comes about manipulating histories it's not that simple. Series Transform are kind of frozen because you need to select each history manually. While being time consuming you can't reuse it from one station to another. So we introduce a whole new range of blocks to manipulate data tables: aggregate histories together, apply rollups, do some cost calculations etc.




New e-learning

We unveil a new e-learning platform designed to simplify access. No more additional login credentials, you have now a unique access across the different services: forum, downloads, licences... We made it a lot more user friendly, so it's easier to navigate between programs, courses and tutorials. Three new tutorials have been added.




Full release notes


Make sure to check out the full release notes for a list of all the fixes and features.


Happy building!