Welcome back to The Automation Podcast, the world's
number one industrial automation product and technology show
thanks to you, our audience of highly skilled
automation professionals.
Thank you for being a member of our
audience, and thank you for tuning back in
this week. And if you're new to the
show, my name is Sean Tierney from Insights
and Automation.
And in this week's episode, I meet up
with Johan Cortez from Rockwell Automation to learn
all about what's new in FactoryTalk
Vue version fifteen and sixteen.
But before we get to that, I have
a couple of announcements.
If you are a member at, YouTube or
the automation blog or you're a student in
my VSC course over at the Automation School,
because this episode is not sponsored by the
vendor, you will be getting an extended version
of this episode
commercial free. So I wanna thank all of
you who are members or who have purchased
my VSC course over at The Automation School.
I actually have some new information coming in
that VSC course, so keep an eye on
that. You may wanna visit in the next
week or two to check that out to
learn what's coming for that course. Now that
said, another public service announcement I have is
that I'm actually holding programmable controller training here
the week of April 21. So this is
the first training I'm doing publicly open enrollment,
for,
classes right here. And it's I think I'm
doing something unique that you will not find
anywhere else. You can choose whether you wanna
do one to four days, and you can
also choose
which PLC you wanna learn on each of
those days. So you could come and learn
on CompactLogix
all week, or you could choose two days
of CompactLogix and two days of Microw 800.
I actually have one student who's just coming
for two days of Microw 800. That's all
he needs to know. And, you could choose
s seven twelve hundred. You could even mix.
You could do a day of s seven
twelve hundred, a day of micro 800, and
a day of CompactLogix.
So the equipment is limited. I do have
eight setups of everything,
but I'm limited on computers and space, so
I can't have 24 people here at the
same time. So if you're interested in some
hands on training, we're one hour East
of Albany, New York. Okay? So two and
a half hours West of Boston. So if
you're in the Greater Albany area or you're
in Southern Vermont, Southern New Hampshire, Western Mass,
you know, Eastern New York,
we've even had people come as far as
way as, Pittsburgh to come here. So if
you're within driving distance, please,
consider coming to that course if or sending
somebody who works for you to the course.
If you'd have somebody who needs to get
some hands on with PLCs. I will also
be doing lectures. This is not a dump
and run where you sit in front of
a computer all day with a lab manual,
and you're not gonna get any valuable insights
into the product. I will be doing lectures.
I actually set up a second office here
just to do the lectures. So when I'm
doing Allen Bradley lectures, the Stevens guys can
do their hands on and vice versa.
So check that out over at the automationschool.com.
And with those PSAs out of the way,
let's go ahead and learn what's new
in FactoryTalk
Vue fifteen and sixteen.
Johan, thank you for coming back on the
Automation Podcast and Show. I'm really looking forward
to getting this update on FactoryTalk Vue, and
I know we had a great, episode when
you came on to talk about Vue 14.
And, of course, now we have fifteen and
sixteen out. So I really appreciate you coming
back on the show. And and for those
who may not have caught that last episode
we did together, could you just take a
moment and introduce yourself to our audience?
Sure. Yes. Thank you, Sean. And thank you
for inviting me back to speak about what
is new in Faculte VU software portfolio.
As you noted,
my name is Johan Kotsa.
I am a product manager for Faculte VU
site edition, Machine Edition, Viewpoint and Alarms and
Events.
I have been with Rockwell Automation for just
over seventeen years. I actually began my career
as a project engineer in
South Africa within the system and solution business,
which is now called our lifecycle Services business.
And in 2016,
I moved to The United States and joined
the Plant PX team. So those that are
familiar with the Plant PX team
and the process libraries, I basically served as
the Plant PX library architect for
several years, in fact. And then later I,
was part of the PlantPX system architect for
around a year. And when you basically when
we spoke last,
I had just recently joined the visualisation business
as the product manager for the visualisation
software.
I've been in this role now for going
two and a half years. And,
as I say, time goes by fast, right?
So when you're having fun.
So I'm just going to dive into
the slides here.
As I mentioned earlier, the last time we
spoke, we reviewed what was new, in fact,
at Talkview version 14.
At the time, we described that release as
one of the most feature rich updates,
we had delivered in a long while.
So today, I want want to highlight some
of the key updates. In fact, Adobe Vue
versions fifteen and sixteen.
You will notice several common themes.
We built on version 15 capabilities
that resonated with our users and extended them
to deliver more value in their day to
day use.
This session will really only scratch the surface,
by the way.
Both releases included many additional enhancements.
My goal today is to cover a few
highlights and demonstrate several features live during the
session.
So for those that may not
be familiar, we released Facitalk v version 15
in September
2024.
And the areas we will focus on today
include support for external influx DB and influx
DB cloud serverless,
MQTT support,
performance improvements,
factory talk alarms and events, email notifications,
and the runtime navigation menu support for,
a multiple navigation menus.
Yeah. And just to reiterate what Johan just
said,
there's a lot more things on this slide.
So if you're listening, there's a lot more
things on the fifteen and sixteen slide that
we just can't get, you know, get to
in one show. So,
if you are listening, check out those two
slides at the beginning of the presentation, and
I'll turn it right back to you, Johan.
Thank you, Sean. The same thing here. For
those that may not be familiar, we're is
Packetalk v version 16 in October
2025.
And, again, today, I will focus on several
key areas of this release.
First are new control objects. These include a
toggle switch control and a linear gauge object
with an integrated sparkline.
And next are streamline navigation options.
These updates include a runtime navigation sidebar that
can be docked to the left and the
right hand side
and a new horizontal dock navigation submenu.
We also introduced an enhanced system status portal.
This allows, you to monitor Facetalk View Historian
AC server statuses, which was introduced in version
15,
as well as Facetalk asset center server and
agent status
that was introduced in version 16.
And then finally, what we're gonna focus on
is what was added in version 16 as
DataLog Pro integration with Influx DB three core
and enterprise.
Maybe just before I dive into the slides,
something I just wanna note. I know this
is sort of gonna be some people might
not have the visuals.
But if you do look at the visuals
and there's a slide, you'll notice there's some,
icons here at the bottom.
So this is really where it's gonna show
you in which product,
this feature belongs.
And some will have a little circle icon
with a number in it with either 15
or 16
that will indicate in which version it was
introduced.
So I'm gonna try and keep,
the topics, next to each other. So when
I talk about something that was done in
version fifteen and sixteen, those will just follow,
next to each other in the slides.
The one thing I really wanted to show
here,
most audience members here probably go to our
ROQ Automation Literature Library,
to go search for our documentation and download
it.
I'm not sure how many of our audience
members are aware, but if you go to
our ROQ Automation website,
we have this thing called the technical documentation
center.
You can go to specific products.
And actually, if you go to products, all
our documentation would be grouped together there.
So one of the nice things we did
for version 16, well, I hope it's nice
for the audience members, is we've actually now
included our online help that you get when
you install the product as part of this
web page experience.
So,
what's the advantages
of of having these online pages? You don't
have to go create, let's say, a virtual
machine or machine and go install Facadog Vue
anymore to go get online help. You know,
you have to go to help content and
then online help is usually there. And the
second advantage here is if we have to
do,
documentation updates, so online help documentation updates,
we can actually publish it the next day.
So you don't have to wait for the
next release to see those updated, documents.
It's just live the next day when we
do that.
So
I can just quickly show you what this
looks like. So here, I've actually I'm actually
on our Rock Automation website. I went to
our human machine interface software technical documentation.
What you'll notice is here is all our
documentation grouped together.
Even I have to go search for them
individually on the literature library.
What we've added here, like I say, is
the online help.
So let's say, for example, we've got the
fact that you online help here. I'm just
gonna open this as a new page.
Yeah.
Now this is online. I can go something
like trends,
and maybe I can do something like the
trained interface.
So here's the online help where in the
past, you had to go to the physically
into studio,
go to help, content,
fact of view, and you would have gotten
the same thing, by clicking on the trends
and interface.
Moving on to my next topic,
performance enhancements. So as everybody know with with
any software package,
every time we do a new release, there's
more content. So either the installation media grows,
doing the installation takes longer,
opening up your projects becomes longer and your
runtime clients are doing the same thing. So
we really try to focus on version 15
to enhance this experience and make sure that
we, get some performance,
out of it.
So what will you see when you install
FactoryTalk for you a version 15?
When you do the installs, it's actually significantly
faster now to do the install on your
machine.
Number two,
specifically, well, not specifically, but typically for larger
applications,
if you now open up Vue Studio,
you should see a 30% to 40%
increase in speed of opening up that application
as well,
which is significant.
As well if you open up your runtime
client,
especially again with large applications and multiple HMI
applications in that, HMI service in that application,
you'll see a 30 to 40% boost there
as well, opening up that runtime client.
And then lastly is probably going to be
a once off for the audience members. But
if you are doing migrations, let's say from
a v 10 application to a v 15
application,
you should see an increase of
on about 50% faster doing that migration over
to, let's say, v 15.
One of the things which was really great
to hear when I was at automation fair,
we actually had a couple of customers come
up to us and say they really appreciate
this. They could could see the performance increase.
So, my recommendation to anybody that's still struggling,
do I go to version 14? Do I
go to version 15?
This is one of those easy decision makers.
The just be because of the performance enhancement,
go to v 15,
because you'll have a better experience at the
end of the day.
Alright.
Let's go on to the next topic. So,
some of our audience members might not be
familiar with what we did in version 14,
so I'm just gonna talk through that. In
version 14, we introduced
a new data log, logging system, which we
basically call data log, pro with InfluxDB.
It's basically logging to a time series database,
far from InfluxDB.
In version 14, we were
telling you you could only, lock the data
onto your local local HMI server,
which also supported redundancy.
So if you had a redundant system, you
just had to install that same database on
your secondary HMI server
and you got that redundancy support.
Now, obviously, we're trying to keep off with
user requirements
and we're trying to keep up with the
technologies that InfluxDB is putting out there.
So this was an easy one for us
because being able to connect to an external
InfluxDB
and connect to something like InfluxDB cloud serverless,
the workflows
were very similar. So now we have that
those capabilities.
The one thing I just want to mention
that everybody asks all the time, well, what
if I lose my connection to my external
InfluxDB?
The nice thing is we just automatically
start logging to our local DB once we,
that connection is lost. And once that connection
is reestablished,
it will actually just backfill the data to
the external influx DB,
so you will have no,
losses.
The one thing that you will notice if
you now open up that Datalog Pro configuration
menu from version 14 to 15
is now you have the capability of either
selecting your local database which is your on
your HMI server or connecting to that remote
database
out out there.
In the past, if we go way into
the past, right, we were typically if we
just wanted to create some, you know, quick
historical trends, we'd use the data log with
the built in file sets. And then, you
know, if we're doing something more that we
really needed data in a database, we're using
ODBC.
A lot of times, we'd go to SQL
Server Express because it's it's you know, there's
already instances installed, so you can install another
instance on the same box.
But it sounds like what you're saying is
there's been a lot of demand for influx
in the in the from your customers. So
in '14, you added that support.
And now,
and what that gave you was the ability
to also,
not only do a local influx DB,
but also a remote connection. And that brings
us to this slide where you're talking about
the new Datalog Pro features. So let me
just pitch it right back to you, Johan.
Yeah. That's exactly correct.
So,
the feature was was driven into the product
because of customer requests and the popular, popularity
of Airflowx DB. Again, coming from version 14
to 15, we had a lot of interest
in, in this feature. So there was some
additional ask or enhancements requests. So this is
what this slide is all about.
One of those enhancements were, hey, how do
I know if my connection to my InfluxDB
is still healthy? Right? So what you've now
introduced is if you go to your functions
and go to developer pro, there's a new,
function called DB connection state,
which basically gives you four states. So what
you can either do here is you can
either go and animate something on your HMI
with a state to say, well, you've lost
your connection.
Or you can actually create an alarm, which
will come up in alarm banner and say,
well, you've lost your connection. Please go investigate,
why that connectivity,
has been lost.
So,
that was a pretty
good feature to add. The same thing here
was if you are familiar with data lock
models, if you go click on the right
right click on the data model, you had
a context menu where you could stop and
start that data that data lock.
Now we didn't have that in version 14
on our data lock pro, so that was
like a small enhancement.
Instead of going to the command line and
starting and stopping the data locks, can you
have that same context menu on there?
And because we've had such a big interest
in,
this new Datalog Pro feature, people were asking,
well, how can I migrate my current Datalog
models to,
InfluxDB
Yeah?
Or Datalog Pro. So we try to make
that easier. So we do now have a
migration option.
How this is handled essentially
is you have to go add all the
tags that you are using in your Datalog
models into your Datalog Pro. Once that's done,
you click on the migration button. You go
to the database,
for the data lock models.
Click on that DB file and you just
say migrate. And then that basically backfills all
your data,
to your new data lock,
flow with InfluxDB
and,
you basically can just automatically switch over to
that logging mechanism.
So No, I think that that could take
a long time if you had a very
large database that you're moving, right? Correct. It
it could take some time,
but I think the benefits of it
is
still is still valuable if you want to
go to the new,
or to newer technologies.
Yeah. And we won't get into this today.
But if you guys wanna look up the
difference between a relational database and a time
series database,
relational databases are not the best for the
kind of data that we collect with with
a SCADA system or an HMI system. So,
I could tell stories about that, but I'll
I'll pitch it back to you, Johan. Maybe
maybe something to mention to the audience here
as well.
Licensing.
This is all free, by the way. So
if you're using the if you're using the
local database, there's no additional licensing cost there.
But if you are logging to something like
an external
external influx database,
like an enterprise, influx DB, or like the
cloud, obviously there's cost of services,
associated with that.
But that's something outside of you. That's how
you,
license those products internally in your organisation.
But essentially using this feature is no licensing
cost, it's free out of the box experience
that you can just use.
Nice.
And the last one here that I just
going to talk, I'm not going to talk
a lot about this, but again, I mentioned
earlier,
we're trying to keep up with InfluxDB and
all the technologies
or services that they are providing out there.
So last year, I believe, I think it
was in November or December, they released InfluxDB
three core and enterprise.
This the workflow to connect to these are
exactly the same.
There's no there's no difference in the connection
properties.
It's just we now can log to Influx
DB three core and enterprise with no issues.
The one thing here just to note is,
we recommend if you are gonna connect to
an Influx DB three core or an Influx
DB enterprise,
deploy those on a Linux operating system.
It does work on Windows, but we've seen
some stability issues with which we are working
with Influx DB, to help resolve those. But
from their point and stance, they say, well,
it's better to actually just deploy those on
Linux operating systems.
Hey, guys. I just wanna break in here
quickly for a minute to thank our members
over on YouTube and the automationblog.com
and my VSC students over at the automationschool.com.
You all will be receiving an extended version
of this unsponsored
episode in appreciation for your $5 a month
or for rolling in my course
because,
this this episode was not sponsored by the
vendors. So really appreciate you guys. Check that
out. You should be seeing it very quickly
if you're a member. The automation school will
come a little bit later because I have
some traveling to do, and and it's actually
gonna be part of a lot of other
things you're gonna be getting in that BSC
course. So keep that out. Thank you both
very much. And now let's get back into
learning what's new with FactoryTalk
Vue version fifteen and sixteen.
So I got a couple questions for you.
I mean, InfluxDB,
I'm seeing a lot of usability features that
I like in what you're showing versus, like,
SQL Server Express. So I can see why
some people, especially corporate wide, would be using
InfluxDB,
And and, of course, it's time series not
relational.
But,
it also seems like Datalog Pro, one of
the advantages is per tag
scan rates or data collection rates, I should
say. Like, I don't remember that as being
a feature. It was your data log model
was set up to be either you know,
it was the whole model. You you had
to get all the data at a particular
rate. Am I correct about that, or is
am I missing something? You are very correct
in that stating that. That seems like a
huge advantage.
That is a huge advantage.
Obviously,
we are currently saying, if I remember correctly,
you can log 50,000 tags per scan,
on your deadlock models,
but that's either one scan interval.
Obviously, if you the more tags you have
with a smaller interval,
the smaller that,
the on scan tags, will become at the
end of the day. But 50,000 tags on
scan, is quite a lot for for a
lot of users out there. Well, that brings
up another point. I know with the data
log models for years and years, it's always
been, you can have up to 20 data
log models,
you know, in under your in your data
logs, and you can run well, on the
p w plus was always something different. Machine
edition was different. In SC,
you could run them all or just run
some of them. You could I guess you
could have 20 running at a time. But
with Datalog Pro, it looks like you have
one configuration to one Influx database. Is that
correct?
Correct.
Okay. Great. So that that's a differentiator as
well,
and something that the audience needs to know
about.
Yeah. Well, thanks for bringing that up. Yeah.
Thank you. No. Appreciate it. Alright.
I'm gonna switch gears and go to the
next topic.
So I don't know our audience members how
far they are down with the MQTT,
journey. I know a lot of people request
the functionality for MQTT, but once you actually
talk to them and say, well, are you
actually doing the implementation?
My experience is no, they haven't really touched
it or they're not really have implemented on-site.
It's only on their testbeds at the moment.
But what we try to do here in
version 15 is make MQTT support a little
bit easier,
for our, user base out there. Now you
can do MQTT
today in, let's say, version 14.
The catch there just is is everything is
done in VBA. You have to go create
your own VBA code to make this support.
Now in vision 15,
it's still VBA in the background. What we
try to simplify this for you, we try
to, to reduce the amount of VBA code
that you have to use and,
give you examples of exactly how to do
this. So in version 15, we actually,
support MQTT clients,
for
supporting publisher and subscribers. We do not support
brokers.
And we're basically giving you integrated VBA libraries.
The nice thing about these libraries is it
does support TCP and WebSocket with optional TLS
for reliable secure messaging
and also works with MQTT version five dot
o and three dot one for, a broad
system,
for broad system user
capability.
Alright. Gonna move on to the next one.
Facatalk alarms and events email notifications.
Now I actually always started with this.
So this is really not intended to go
and replace your third party solutions,
which already does your email notification systems.
This is really for those users out there
that don't want to spend the money on
an email notification
system. They just want something that's very basic.
An alarm comes in and they get notified
over
email. So,
again, this is not intended to replace that,
but just support on those customers that don't
either don't have the funds,
or don't want to spend the money on,
something like this. So this is gonna be
a very, very limited functionality.
Obviously, we we get requests all the time
to do enhancements, so we take those into
consideration
and we'll see how we can do this
in the future. The one thing I do
want to mention, this is not dependent on
FactoryTalk View, it's actually dependent on FactoryTalk Service
platform.
So if you're running version 13 today and
you update your FactoryTalk Service platform to six
fifty, you will get this functionality.
Hey, guys. Just breaking in here quickly to
pay some bills, and I wanna tell you
about some of the unique features of this
course I'm holding right here, April 21 through
the twenty fourth.
When you sign up, you're gonna be picking
what hardware you wanna work on, CompactLogic's micro
800 or s seven twelve hundred. But then
when you're here, you're gonna be able to
choose from four different labs. Okay? So we
have PLC basics.
We have beyond basics.
We have mastering applications with factory IO. That's
right. I have factory IO installed on all
the computers in there. So you'll be able
to do that and actually solve some pretty
complicated applications.
And then the fourth option is distributed IO.
I got nine distributed IO options here.
I have more in the other room.
Some are Siemens only, some are Rockwell only,
some will work with both. But in any
case, you'll be able to sit here in
a nice safe environment and try plugging in
and connecting all kinds of different distributed IO
to your PLC. Of course, you're gonna have
to put your lab number down on top
of the device that you're using so somebody
else isn't trying to connect to it at
the same time. But with over a dozen
different distributed IO options,
hopefully, not too many people will be trying
to use the same exact one at the
same time. In any case,
so that's gonna be something unique. So that,
in addition to be able to solve applications
with FactorIO, you don't have to go out
and spend a few $100 to buy a
license. You can actually just do it here
for the day, and it's all self paced.
So you can go from the basics, beyond
basics, factory IO, distributed IO, and whatever are
you want. You're just reserving which hardware you're
gonna use that day when you sign up
for that course on April 21 through the
twenty fourth. Again, you could choose one day,
two day, three days, or four days, but
the seats are limited. So if you wanna
come, again, we're one hour east of Albany.
If you wanna come, please sign up right
away over at the automation school dot com
forward / live. And with that, let's get
back to learning what's new in FactoryTalk Vue
SE version fifteen and sixteen.
Alright. I'm gonna move on to the next
one.
This is actually been probably one of the
most popular features that we've had since the
introduction of version 14.
So for our audience members out there that
don't know, about this feature, we introduced,
this capability called the runtime navigation meeting. Now,
you know,
today if you want to go build out
navigations
on your application,
it's a very tedious task, right? You have
to go create buttons, you have to go
put the commands in. If you want to
do some bread crumbing on there, there's some
additional animation that you have to put on
there. So it's a very tedious process to
build that out. So what we did in
version 14 is giving you the capability
of structuring
your displays in a hierarchy.
Once you open this runtime navigation,
configuration, you just drag and drop that hierarchy,
click the save button, and your navigation is
built out for you automatically.
It's really simple and really easy.
You also have the capability
of doing bread crumbing
by selecting your scope of your alarms and
your events,
as well as a search capability.
So I have the capability of click on
the search icon,
type an attack.
If you double click on attack, it will
actually navigate to that display where that tag
is being used and it will highlight that
for you.
So that was just a recap for those
that do not know what the runtime navigation
is. In version 15,
there was a requirement from customers. We only
limited to build out one of those navigation
menus.
Now you have the capability of, building up
multiple navigation menus. You can have as many
as you want.
And the use case here is really, well,
I've got client one and client two. I
want the navigation menus to look different for
the two different operators.
So that's the reason why one of the
reasons why they want multiple navigation menus.
It seems like you're showing another example where
they have four monitors.
Right? And they wanted a different menu for
each monitor, which I think is cool as
well.
Yeah. I think that is the edge cage
cage edge edge case, by the way. I
don't know how many people really want different
navigation menus on the multi monitor display, but
it is possible,
to do that. So,
I might be wrong as I need to
add each case, but I think it's more
relevant to different operating stations.
Alright. So, again,
like I said, it's a very popular
feature,
and we've had multiple requests to make enhancements.
So a lot of our customers have come
to us and say, well, we don't like
docking our navigation menu at the top or
at the bottom.
They want to save that vertical space. So
they want to be able to dock it
to the left and to the right.
So in version 16, we introduced support for
that, that you can do that. It's very
configurable.
I know you might not be able to
see the slide here, but you have the
ability
to specify you only want to show the
icon
of the navigation menu or you can want
to show the icon and the text.
So it's very configurable at that point in
time.
Moving on to the next one. So I'm
not sure how many of you are Plant
PX users, but if you are a Plant
PX user, you will know there's something called
the graphical framework.
And that's an easy way to build out
a navigation menu
using the Plant PX standards.
Now how that navigation menu works. Instead of
having, like, a fly out,
a menu menu, like like, if you do
a on your Windows start bar,
they want the ability to stack
the navigations on top of each other. So
if I can try and give you a
visual representation, you will have a navigation menu
level one with buttons. If you click on
one of the level one buttons, it will
stack second row of navigation menu items on,
at the bottom of that level one, which
is in your level two navigation. And if
you click on that level two navigation,
it will stack another,
one of these navigation bars underneath that level
two,
to go to your level three navigations.
The Plant PX team really want to use
our built in run to that navigation menu
and get rid of the graphical framework,
or keep it in legacy support at that
point in time.
So we basically,
introduced this thing now called supported docked horizontal
sub menus.
Again,
it's difficult for you just for the people
that doesn't have visuals to see it,
but it's the same concept.
You have the ability to stack your navigation
menus as many levels deep as you want.
So this demo, we're gonna show three levels.
But just remember,
the more levels you have, the less vertical
space you get at the end of the
day
to to work with. But again,
if you click on the level one display,
you'll get a drop down,
which then basically stacks underneath that level one,
then it's your level two. Click on level
two, it'll stack another navigation
below that, which will be your level three.
Moving on to the next one here is
just small usability enhancements.
We've got some feedback.
So when you do the navigation menu today,
if you click on it and do the
flyer, it will give you a little bit
of highlight,
to say you are here.
We've got the feedback that it's not that
visible. So what we try to do is
just give a little bar underneath that navigation
menu
to show to give you that we are
here indicator.
Another one was people said, well, they're using
all the space for the runtime navigation menu.
And when that happens, you get the off
page connector
where you there will be a drop down
just to navigate to something else. But let's
say there was an alarm in that off
page connector,
it's not visible, right? You can't go click
on it and navigate to where the problem
is. So they wanted us to propagate
those alarm indicators next to that off page
connector.
So that's one of the enhancements we made.
And we spoke about the search capability,
they wanted us to increase the width of
that search bar as well as word wrap,
all the content. So those are just some
of the things we did here for the
runtime navigation.
Alright. Let's move on to some of the
newer things that we did in version 16.
So we tried to introduce some new objects
into the platform.
So one of them is a new toggle
switch object. Right? So again, it's one of
those things,
we don't have those built in in our
products.
So if you want to create something like
a toggle switch or a checkbox or a
radio button,
you know, you have to go build that
out yourself. You have to go overlay multiple
objects on top of each other and do
animation on it to make it to work?
Now we're basically giving you an out of
the box experience
which is basically on off control.
You create that toggle switch. You have different
shapes. You can either do a rectangle shape.
You could do a pull form. You can
do a checkbox or a radio button. One
of the things about the radio button,
it's not really a pure radio button indicator,
but it's still on off. But you can
go make that, like, a group control for
radio buttons.
Well, by go
doing some VBA in the background, and that
VBA is basically
just, well, if,
radio button one is selected, uncheck
radio button two and three. If radio button
two is selected, uncheck radio button one and
three. Right? So you can make that group
control work through some VBA in the background.
You know, I know that a lot of
times when we're doing selective switches, we'll use
either a maintain button
or we'll use a multistate,
object. Right? But this is nice to have.
These are very quick. You have your toggle
left to rights, and you have your checkbox
and radio buttons.
And I can definitely see people liking these
as just, hey. I don't wanna have to
go and made a picture or find a
picture to do the toggle. I just have
this toggle right here. And, the examples you're
showing are are really good as well. So
for anybody listening and not watching,
you just need a toggle button, left to
right,
checkbox, radio button.
It's now a new new object, which is
awesome. Yeah.
Just to mention here as well, this object
does support esignatures
and also auditing.
Nice.
Alright. Moving on to the next one here.
This has also been a very popular one
at automation fair.
So we created this new linear gauge object.
So same concept applied. Today, if you want
to use a linear gauge,
I think we do have one there, but
it's not very, very great.
And you basically have to go build out
your own linear gauge, group objects together, and
do animation to get something to work.
Now we created this linear gauge. We actually
based this on our PlantPX library process objects,
linear gauge that was created because we want
them to switch out to the,
custom build one, without a wand. So we
tried to get as much functionality in here
as well. Now this is a highly configurable
option
object, by the way. You can have as
many,
properties enabled or you can have a few
properties as you want to enable. I know
the audience here really can't see it, but
I do have a Linear Gauge
configured here which basically has an alarm
indicator,
which is an icon that will show up
if it goes above a threshold.
We have the value indicator, we have a
target and expected range here as well. We've
got underneath the object a value and a
unit.
We've got the thresholds.
We've got set points. And we've got something
that we have a concept of control limits
in the library of process objects.
This linear gauge can be in a vertical
orientation or a horizontal orientation.
And as well, like I said,
you can make this as basic as possible.
I've got another object on my slide here,
which basically just have the value indicator and
thresholds.
So it's very you can make the very
bare bare minimum or as as complex as
you want.
So moving on to an extension of this
feature.
So a lot of people want sparklines and
typically sparklines are used with linear gauges. So
we said, well, why don't we just create
a sparkline with the linear gauge?
So once you go into the properties
of a linear gauge, you just have a
checkbox that say enable the sparkline
and that sparkline will show up. The sparkline
is also very configurable.
You can choose to show your threshold lines.
You can choose your vertical and horizontal
grids, how many lines you want for that.
You can choose not to have a grid.
You can also
choose not to show the linear gauge,
you just want to show the sparkline.
So again,
people can't really see what's on the slide
here. We was listening, but I do have
an object here which has the full configuration
with the linear gauge and the sparkline with
the grit and the trench showing up. And
then at the bottom, I've got one that
doesn't have the linear gauge, but only shows
the sparkline. There's no grids. It's really just
the trends that you are currently seeing.
And we also support a vertical orientation and
a horizontal
orientation
for this object.
Yeah. And for those who may not be
familiar, if you're listening, the sparkline looks like
a trend.
And you can you can have it without
no background and without you can even have
it without the, with the linear gauge on
it. So it just looks like the sparkline
itself. So it's very interesting.
Yeah.
So like you said, it's very it's like
you're gonna have this do with a linear
gauge and sparkline,
just the sparkline,
or just the linear gauge.
Alright. Moving on to the next one.
I think this is the last one that
we're we're last feature that we're going to
talk about.
I always try and promote this one because
I don't think a lot of people are
aware of the system status portal.
So for those that do not know what
the system status portal is, it's basically a
web page which shows you all your,
servers and what the health status of it
is at that point in time. So the
nice thing is you, go click your application.
It will show you all your HMI servers.
It will show you your AlarmNet event servers.
It will show you your data servers.
And recently, in version 15, we introduced the
capability of showing you a Facade Talk historian
server as well.
And in version 16, we introduced now being
able to see the health status of your
Facade doc asset center server and its agents.
But you don't have to install this on
all your machines, by the way. You only
have to install it on one. We typically
recommend you install the system status portal on
your Facade doc directory.
And when you go create your HMI application,
you can just do an embedded web,
page and just point, to that,
link
on the Facitoc directory
basically bring up the system status portal showing
the overall health of your system,
at that point in time.
We made a couple of enhancements
in version 16 as well. In version
16, they people want the ability to go
into dark mode and into light mode.
And they also
one of the things that they
asked us, well, every time you go to
the system status portal, you have to enter
your credentials to be able to access the
information in there.
Once you navigate away from the system status
portal and come back, you have to reenter
those credentials.
So can you actually give us the keep
me signed in
functionality?
So, we were able to do that,
in this release.
And
moving on to my last slide here,
I just wanted to talk about support. So
version 16, we now support Windows Server '20
20 five.
Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. This this these charts are
are key when you, when you're looking to
install the the software to know which operating
systems are supported.
And that's everything I wanted to run through.
I I hope the information we provided was
helpful to you as well.
If you have any questions,
feel free to contact me directly.
I don't have my details here, but I
could probably give it to you, Sean, and,
people can just reach out to me if
they
have any questions or need to reach out
directly to to us.
Yeah. I I'll definitely put it on the
screen here.
Johan, I wanna thank you for coming on
the show. I know I mean, we've been
talking for quite a long time, and you
obviously can't show all of the new features
in '15 16.
But, you know, for those of you who
want us to know everything that was released
and updated in those, go back to the
very beginning where he had those slides up
with all the the new features. But I
do appreciate you showing us what you did,
and that is some really cool,
innovations. And I think the the one great
thing is it's you you your team took
the time to make it faster. And
I think we all appreciate that because,
you know, over time, some products get slower.
And so when the team takes time to
go through and, optimize the software to make
it faster, that is such a huge thing.
And then, of course, to see that you're
adding new things like the linear gauge and,
like, you know, the the toggle button, and
you're adding things to the, you know, to
just to all the things you covered today,
especially, you know, expanding the menus, expanding the
docking.
I think, the users really, really appreciate that,
and I know I do. So thank you
again for coming on the show, and I
really appreciate it. I appreciate being on the
show. Thank you. Well, I hope you guys
enjoyed that episode, and I wanna thank Johan
for coming on the show and bringing us
up to speed on FactoryTalk
Vue fifteen and sixteen. I also wanna thank
our sponsors, our members over at YouTube and
theautomationblog.com,
as well as our students and our VUSC
course over at The Automation School. We would
not be able to bring you these type
of unsponsored
episodes without your sponsorship, so we really appreciate
it. Look out for that new extended edition
ad free extended edition of this episode coming
your way soon.
With that said, I wanna thank you all
for tuning in. I wanna wish you all
good health and happiness. And until next time,
my friends.
Peace.