Hi everyone,
First post here so bear with me. I have created a report to do a summary report on a system on the floor. How can I get the report to be auto generated at a set time every day?
Welcome to the forum!
Ignition 7.7 is not good for automatically generating reports.
But… reporting in Ignition 7.8 is specifically designed for automatically generating reports at set times and doing things with them like emailing them.
The new reporting functionality in Ignition 7.8 looks fantastic. I recommend downloading Ignition 7.8 and trying it out.
Best,
[quote=“nmudge”]Welcome to the forum!
Ignition 7.7 is not good for automatically generating reports.
But… reporting in Ignition 7.8 is specifically designed for automatically generating reports at set times and doing things with them like emailing them.
The new reporting functionality in Ignition 7.8 looks fantastic. I recommend downloading Ignition 7.8 and trying it out.
Best,[/quote]
Agreed, but be aware V7.8 is still a Release Candidate version . I attended the workshop for V7.8 reporting here at ICC 2015 and the bugs and issues were quite evident. Even Travis admitted there is a memory resource issue with V7.8 RC1 that requires a designer reboot when performance grinds to a halt.
I’ll check with Travis about what he meant today, but AFAIK the issue is that the default memory size on the Designer was too small to be doing intensive work with reports, which by their nature are generating large files like PDFs (even when you just preview). The available memory would get used up, causing a garbage collection that was very slow because no memory was left when it happened. (The Designer would seem frozen, but always came back if I didn’t rage quit)
We’ve since adjusted the default memory size requested by the Designer, and haven’t seen this problem even after 8 hour stretches of working with reports. The larger memory chunk gives you enough cushion so that garbage collection can happen in a reasonable time frame.
If I hear something different from Travis, I’ll let you know.
Also to keep in mind- The new reporting module is going up 5x’s in cost. We use Ignition for OEM type jobs, (so we buy multiple lic for each job) and they took away the Limited Report Client in 7.8. For a 1 Client License in 7.7 it was $700 it is now going up to $3495 with no limited versions at this point.
I know my salesman said they are working on a pricing structure, just hope that comes about, or we won’t be able to sell a 1 client vision system with reporting at that price point.
[quote=“DSI600”]Also to keep in mind- The new reporting module is going up 5x’s in cost. We use Ignition for OEM type jobs, (so we buy multiple lic for each job) and they took away the Limited Report Client in 7.8. For a 1 Client License in 7.7 it was $700 it is now going up to $3495 with no limited versions at this point.
I know my salesman said they are working on a pricing structure, just hope that comes about, or we won’t be able to sell a 1 client vision system with reporting at that price point.[/quote]
You are correct. I just received a quote for the new Ignition Pro ( previously called the Works ) and it is almost 15% higher than what I used to pay.
I am afraid Inductive is becoming more like the competitors they used to bash for their pricing schemes.
Thats going to be little concerning because we just splashed out for the Works package!
I would argue that the new reporting module is 10X better than the old one, so a 5X increase in price is not so bad. Keep in mind that the cost of the old reporting module included the cost of the vision module. The new reporting module works without the vision module (so without its cost).
Best,
That is a good point on not requiring the vision module. But still need the SQL module to store the info we are generating on the report. So we would still be $2200 over what the original system cost.
But I would argue my first impressions that the reporting module is 100x better. 
Its hard to go to a customer and say there is a new module that does everything you want but it is going to cost this much more per job.
Hi DSI600,
Yes, I understand.
Are you using transaction groups or the tag historian to log/store your data for the reports, or both? Because transaction groups and the tag historian have been split into two different modules so that you only need to buy one if you are only using one of them.
Best,
Yeah I see they broke that out as well, also have to pay for the Allen Bradley driver suite as well now. But the pricing there is really close to what it was before.
It really is the reporting module, but with being able to bring the old reports forward into 7.8 is the route we will have to go for now.
This project using transaction groups. Using both for other projects.
Ok, wow, a lot of mis-information in this thread. Lets see if I can clarify.
The reporting module did NOT go up 5x in cost. The reporting module used to cost $2,300. Now it costs $3,545. This is a 1.5x price increase. For what we did with reporting, and the capabilities it now offers as a standalone, unlimited industrial reporting server, this price is more than reasonable.
It’s completely unfair to compare what you’d been quoted for a 1-client limited reporting to the cost of a completely unlimited version and say “oh, the price went up 5x”. You’re comparing apples to oranges.
Now, let’s talk about how the reporting module might be limited in order to come in at a lower price point for smaller installations.
First off - we still have the capability to have the reporting module act as a “Vision plug-in only” where all of the scheduling and automatic report generation capabilities are disabled. So, if that’s what you need, you can still get it and it will be priced accordingly to the number of Vision clients you have.
This is not promoted on the pricing page because I think (and, I could be wrong) that this is the wrong way to sell reporting. The feedback we’ve gotten over the past many years was that people want automatic reporting, not embedded reporting. So, I was thinking that if the price point of reporting needs to be brought down for smaller systems, it would make more sense to do something like limit the # of reports that you could define. I’d be interested in feedback on this point.
[quote=“Curlyandshemp”]I am afraid Inductive is becoming more like the competitors they used to bash for their pricing schemes.[/quote]Really? I don’t see how you reach this conclusion, we offer solutions with unlimited devices, tags, clients, designers, etc for a reasonable price. How has this changed? It hasn’t.
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Carl - I agree you can’t compare what we have had in the past to the new module. But we need some type of limited reporting feature. On this project we are using only 1 report, and they will never add any reports to this system, it is a basic datalogger using SQL bridge module, and the operator uses the system to pull out that data automatically into a report. So to have an unlimited report at 3545 does us no good. As they sell the application we created to their end users, they won’t be able to sell their product in the future once the old report and pricing goes away. I know I was talking with our salesmen and I had voted for the limited # of reports as a way to limit it.
The report did go up 5x in cost (in my limited situation) if there is no limited version coming out for 7.8. The limited 1 client report was $700 before 7.8. At least that is what we were buying it for previously. With the vision client needed and a limited SQL bridge is was $3300 total. For the same system in 7.8 using the SQL Bridge, Reporting and the AB Driver suite it is $5495 - Which is not bad for an unlimited reporting feature, but our client will not give us another 2k for that, as they are only using a portion of it.
The reason I was waiting to complete this project for our customer was because they require Automatic printing and Saving of the reports on a schedule, and knowing it was being released with 7.8 i was holding off completing this project. I was hoping to not have to generate all of those scripts with 7.8 release so close. So we are waiting on a resolution soon, as we need to deliver the final application with in the next month. Whether we stick with 7.7 and try and creating the scripting to do the automatic scheduling or hopefully some resolution on a limited version comes out soon.
The great thing about ignition for us, has been for us that it is so customizable, and as an integrator that is nice to have the ability to have a 1 client or a 100 client system to compete with others. We won this job because of these features over a wonderware solution using dream report.
[quote=“DSI600”]The report did go up 5x in cost (in my limited situation) if there is no limited version coming out for 7.8. The limited 1 client report was $700 before 7.8[/quote] Remember, the 1-client version of reporting wasn’t on the old price list either, so I don’t understand why you think this option is going away.
[quote=“DSI600”]I know I was talking with our salesmen and I had voted for the limited # of reports as a way to limit it. [/quote] Good to know, 1 vote for what I think is the proper way to limit the module.
Please don’t think you’d have to use 7.7 with script workarounds just because of a pricing issue. That’s just not how we operate.