Software eases reporting plant personnel, system integrators

Sacramento, CA— WorkSmart Automation recently released its ReportBuilder Version 1.30 software tools designed for reporting historical data collected automatically by supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)/human-machine interface (HMI) systems and data collected manually.

ReportBuilder is a set of data access tools and functions available within the Microsoft Excel workbook. These tools allow users to build complex industrial reports by placing data access functions into worksheets. New toolbars, menus and windows added to Excel allow users to choose data points by their respective tag name, description, and engineering units. Custom tag groups allow for storing multiple tags in a logical and easy to find format. Users can then analyze data and reports for different time frames by choosing the date and duration of the report they’re interested in, or by clicking forward and backward buttons to report the previous or next reporting interval. Reports can be set for automatic output to printer, e-mail, HTML web, and Excel file formats for a completely automated reporting solution.

The company says system integrators will appreciate the software’ s ability to build and reuse reports from project to project. Integrators often have to build the same or similar report for each project. Reusing previously configured reports increases profitability and lowers the total cost of ownership for end-users. ReportBuilder accomplishes this by connecting to all of the major SCADA/HMI solutions, such as Fix32, iFix, iHistorian, InTouch, InSQL, Lookout, FactoryLink, RSView, Cimplicity, and others. Optional ODBC drivers for accessing historical data by GE Fanuc’s Fix32 and iFix, and Wonderware’s InTouch log files make it possible to report on data as far back as collection began. Once reports are built, they can be reused on other projects with minimal modifications.

Likewise, plant personnel will appreciate ReportBuilder’s ability to report on more than just SCADA/HMI logged data. Rarely is plant and process data ever collected completely by the SCADA/HMI system. Most municipalities and plants track other types of data by entering it into a database or spreadsheet. With ReportBuilder, plant personnel can report data from both SCADA/HMI and custom databases. Reports can be built that present data from one or more of the data sources seamlessly.

In addition, ReportBuilder’s advanced import and export features include the ability to import project tag names, descriptions and engineering units to and from Microsoft Excel. The new Tag Import Wizard will import tags automatically from iHistorian, iFix, Fix32, and InSQL. With these features, users can be up and running in about 30 minutes.

Also, ReportBuilder’s flexible functions provide options for filtering data based on time, values, and values of other tags in the system. Often, reports will include the minimum, maximum and average values for a given data point and interval. However, other factors must be considered when reporting including limiting these values to when other conditions exist, like high flow, backwash inactive, and others. ReportBuilder supports optional arguments for filtering data for these conditions.

‘ReportBuilder brings a whole new outlook to system integrators and plant personnel when it comes to reporting. No longer are users required to present data without the proper tools to do so,’ says Dan Jones, Work Smart’s CEO. ‘And with ReportBuilder’s ease of use, we’re seeing many system integrators offer reporting as a new service. We are also seeing plant personnel specifying ReportBuilder for their projects. Systems Integrators and end-users need tools that they can sit down with and are immediately productive.’

Control Engineering Daily News Desk
Jim Montague, news editor
jmontague@reedbusiness.com

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