I’m in the planning phase of an Ignition project for a rice milling facility. There are multiple departments like loading/unloading, milling, shipping/packaging. Management will also want to have access to run reports and see overall status of mill. Any advantage/disadvantage to handling roles by having a main application that serves as a front to filter departments based on login and directs to selected application or one application handling everything?
My thoughts are to maybe having the application broke up into sections based upon physical locations. Example: Loading/unloading have their own app and have a screen to view an overview of the subsequent operations when it leaves their building, the same on down the line milling then shipping. The have another application that is strictly management where they can view the overall facility and run reports, etc.
If you are using a common authentication profile across your entire setup, you might be able to use system.util.retarget() selectively to maintain chunks of functionality in different projects, yet visually tie the projects together in an almost seamless whole.
Yeah, any changes affect all users, but you really want them to have the same user experience anyway. And, as long as you have the client set to Notify, instead of Push and changes won’t affect them until they click on the yellow notification bar at the top, or the next login.
HMIs, however, I set to Push. It’s really nice to do a change, save it and have it show up right away. Unlike PanelView Plus.
Back to user experience, I use tabbed browsing, but massage the tab strip based on user roles (now that I think on it, I never submitted a how-to, so thanks for indirectly reminding me! )
I think HMI set to push could be bad. Here is why:
User has a machine moving waiting to press stop button to get it into position, screen happens to be updating at the moment they need to hit stop button (Yes get lotto tickets at corner store ).
Is there a standard or a unwritten rule on how such should be setup? or is it all user preference?
Someday hope to be in your neck of woods to do coffee or lunch.
Pretty well user preference, I think. 99 percent of the time, we’re either out there at the station, or if it’s a non-critical change, it can be done at the operator’s break or lunch.
Generally speaking, I put things like cycle start/stop or reset-- really anything that is often used-- will be put on physical buttons. much cheaper to replace a 35 dollar button than a 500 dollar screen.
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