Is there a simple / fast way of taking a project that has full functionallity and making a copy of it on the server. I want this copy to be read-only. Simular to in the designer where you can force the tags to read only mode. This would be used for someone who just wanted to view everything in the pmi project but wasnt able to control anything.
A read-only copy? That would be a pain to maintain. You would have to delete the old one and make a new copy every time you you did any kind of update. No, you should set up component level security in the existing project instead. Just right-click on a component (or window) and click Component Security to set access permissions. Then when anyone logs in to the project, they will be able to see the component (grayed out) but not interact with it. That way you don’t need to make a copy of the project!
Or you could set up tag permissions to only allow read/write to non-guest roles, this way the screens would all look the same but the tags wouldn’t be writable.
Thats a good idea Carl. That will definitely be the quickest in my case.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that having the “read-only / disconnected” mode from the Designer would certainly be a possibility in the Client (as a future feature). I think I’ve heard this requested in the past, and it does seem like a solid idea…
Did this officially make the request list? If not, I’d like to request it does.
Generally in our existing software, we give two connections or shortcuts to manager types - read/write where they have access to the functions they can do, and just read only for instances when they connect for just observation or instructing operators remotely.
We use to just let them connect and only have rights to their functions, but had several instances where we had people observing processes, generally managers, and had Rube Goldberg type incidents where about ten things happen and then the description of the incident usually ends in something like, ‘…and then it slipped and bounced and hit the mouse button and the mouse pointer happened to be over the button.’
The functionality you described with tags would work, however, at times we do want to be able to enable the write ability. In order to accomplish this, I believe we would have to change roles dynamically or have them login with a different user name that had different roles associated with it.
Ok, a global “read-only” mode is now officially on the feature request list (for Ignition, anyways). You know the gateway communication controls in the Designer? (Off, R/O, R/W) - that system could very easily be exposed in the Client as well, allowing a global R/O mode regardless of permissions.
We were talking about this and were wondering if this could be something that we could set upon project startup based on shortcut/script (this would be desired) or if you were implying using the same type of buttons in the designer and making the end user select? Also, would write error message popups that you get in the gateway be suppressed?
You do make this sound pretty easy 
. Would you provide a general time frame when we might see
It would be something you’d do in a startup script or something of that nature - there wouldn’t be any buttons for the user to change this.
I’d expect this in the Ignition 7.2 timeframe.
Could you update the status of this? I’m hoping it is still in the works. Thanks!
Its on my short list - should be either 7.2.4 or 7.2.5.
This made it into 7.2.4, you can now call system.util.setConnectionMode(2) to make a client go into read-only mode at runtime.
For reference, connection mode 1 is disconnected, 2 is read only, and 3 is read write.