We’ve just started rolling out Perspective Workstation on touchscreens and have noticed that there’s no onscreen keyboard that pops up when a user tries to enter a new setpoint into a numeric input field. We have to ensure that Windows 10 is set to tablet mode, and tell the operators to click on the onscreen keyboard icon in the windows tray to enter values… however then the keyboard covers the bottom half of the Perspective screen, 50% of the time which is where the input component is located, so they can’t actually see what they’re typing… 
Our operators are rather unhappy…
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Wow that’s a rather big oversight.
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Yeah… It’s a bit useless as a touchscreen at the moment. Not really sure what to tell the client, or how to work around it in a productive way 
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I’m seeing the same issue. I hope that we can get some kind of an official answer soon.
This is a high priority item in our backlog.
Not that you’re looking for more to do, but you could program a popup window to do the job like we used to do in some other SCADA packages. As a bonus, you get complete control of appearance and features of your keypad.
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Hi, Are there any additional setups to have the keyboard show up? I don’t seem to know how to make it work. Thanks!
@jfan
What OS?
If Windows, do you have tablet mode on?
If tablet mode not on, do you have the option under ‘Typing’ in the control panel something like “show on screen keyboard when not in tablet mode and no keyboard found” turned on?
I had turned on what you suggested but it still doesn’t work. It seems to be a window issue according to tech support from ignition.
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What version Ignition are you running?
Version 8.1.4
Does the keyboard show in other apps like chrome/edge?
What’s your device?
(you definitely don’t have a keyboard attached? wireless?)
I am new to the ignition platform and currently operating on 8.1.5.
I seem to be struggling with how to launch an on screen keyboard when the user interacts with a text or numeric input with perspective workstation.
was curious if anyone could point me in the right direction as it seems others have been discussing this topic
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the operating system is windows 7.
i was able to use the following code in the script console in the ignition designer environment and a keyboard pops up (which is exactly what i would like to achieve).
system.gui.showTouchscreenKeyboard(“Enter Text”,12,0)
i was hoping to apply this same script to a numeric entry off an event such as mouseClicked, but i have not been successful
Firstly, you shouldn’t still be using windows 7 as it’s been end of life now for more than a year, and security updates are no longer being released.
Are you using Vision or Perspective?
Perspective doesn’t have an OSK yet so you need to use the inbuilt Windows OS OSK. I don’t think this is possible to do automatically in Windows 7, and in Perspective this won’t be possible to launch at all (without writing a module) as all scripting runs on the gateway, not on the client. The OSK you brought up using that system function is for Vision only which will not work with Perspective.
If you’re using Vision, then you can set the project to touchscreen mode to auto pop the OSK up when a user entry field is pressed.
https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC80/Using+Touch+Screen+Mode
Specifically this part:
Note: Vision is the older visualisation module and is actively being replaced by Perspective.
@nminchin thanks for you time
totally agree on windows 7. I have a new machine set with windows 10 and ignition 8.1.5 running on it.
i am indeed using perspective as i was told this is the latest and greatest and vision will eventually be phased out
It is kind of crazy to think that as powerful and flexible this platform is that it doesn’t have an OSK available.
I
Yet. It will, and is actively being worked on I believe. As with all things new, all functionality can't possibly be included within a product's first few years. Perspective already has so many enhancements and features that Vision doesn't have, and while I agree that basic functionality (such as a native OSK) should be available from the get-go, I guess sometimes these things are missed, however this feature is provided at least at this stage via the native OS.
Perspective is latest and greatest but, after two years, is quite short of the stability and feature-completeness of 11-year-old Vision. And IA has committed to supporting Vision for the foreseeable future. Perspective does have capabilities unavailable in Vision--particularly mobile device support. But Perspective lacks capabilities available to Vision. Some simply due to the impossibility to re-implement every component of Vision in zero time. But also because the security environment of browsers and constraints on where scripts run make some things (local resource access) impossible. At least, for now.
I'm actually a bit concerned about the scripting environment, as we now know that poor Perspective UI programming practices can crush an entire gateway, where only the client in Vision was so vulnerable.
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Or simply using the native alarm status table 
It would be nice, especially for newcomers, if there was a list of things to avoid doing that are known to scale poorly and/or cause performance issues
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