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Connecting industrial historians to Microsoft Power Automate. One connector to get them all…

In this blog post, I will demonstrate how a simple connector can bring real-time process values as well as Alarm and Event (A&E) data together from many different types of industrial historians (the out-of-the-box list can be found here). Seamlessly integrate plant and corporate data, streamline tasks and share with any colleague on any device, enabling faster, better, real-time decision making. The Industrial App Store Power Automate Connector connects to Intelligent Plant’s Industrial App Store, while all data remains secure and safe on-premises.

Problem

Data historians are used throughout industry for mass-long term storage of time series data. There are a number of Historians on the market with varying popularity but one thing they tend to have in common is their lack of integration options to popular business-level tools such as Microsoft Power Automate. As such, this valuable Operational data is often inaccessible to the business making cross-data analysis with commercial data impossible. Often companies have to develop custom applications which are expensive, difficult to support and can sometimes lead to security issues.

Solution

Intelligent Plant developed the Industrial App Store which enables interaction with all the different historian data through a unified API. At the start of May 2020 Intelligent Plant released an official, Microsoft certified Industrial App Store connector for Power Automate. No more hefty SQL queries or Excel document interrogations with no easy real-time update option or complicated architecture solutions, simply install Industrial App Store connect and out of the box you will be able to connect to Aspentech IP.21, OSIsoft PI, Honeywell Dynamo, OPC DA & HDA, Siemens and many more. This allows our customers to bring data from various sources into Microsoft Automate flows to deliver insights that weren’t possible before. Real-time updates prompt money-saving decisions by engineers that also increase plant safety and efficiency.

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The set up

Download and install Industrial App Store Connect. Connecting to the Industrial App Store allows you to use your own data sources, it does this via a secure outgoing connection. It will not compromise the security of your server or network.

A short video explaining how the App Store Connect works.

 

Once installed, open a browser window and navigate to the configuration. There you will be presented with a list of available data sources - each with its own properties and settings. That’s it, once the data source of your choice is configured it will be available for you using any tool that interfaces Industrial App Store API. Many tools such as Gestalt Trend, PnID, Microsoft Power BI, Power Automate are ready to connect to live data for immediate interactive analysis.

Open Power Automate, start creating new flow, once a new step is added search for Industrial App Store connector and choose one of the available actions. For example, Get Snapshot action will get you the current value of your tag(s), Get Processed will retrieve aggregated data for a specified time range.

Once the action is configured and the flow runs you’ll need to create a connection for it. Use one of the methods provided (Linked IN, Google or your organisation account) to sign in and that’s it – you can now configure many actions depending on the values you received.

One example is shown in the video below. Here I will retrieve the current value of a Flow (water flow value) tag and make sure engineers are aware if its higher than the limit specified.   

A walkthrough video explaining how to retrieve your historian data using Industrial App Store Power Automate Connector.

 

This powerful functionality can bring different data sets together and help streamline many time-consuming tasks. Using future templates you can automate your asset performance reports eliminating multiple steps of data extractions and analysis.

Roundup

Intelligent Plant’s Industrial App Store Connector enables Microsoft’s powerful analytics to be applied to real-time and historical process data. Seamlessly integrate plant and corporate data and share with any colleague on any device, enabling faster, better, real-time decision making. The Industrial App Store Power Automate Connector connects to Intelligent Plant’s Industrial App Store, while all data remains securely and safely on-premises. The plant data may be centralized in a corporate data lake or globally dispersed across many sites and historians. Either way, Industrial App Store Power Automate Connector brings it all together and delivers to your fingertips.

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About us

We are an ISO 9001 registered company, focused on providing services and solutions to industry. We specialise in the performance monitoring of equipment and processes through analysis and visualisation of real-time data, and in the management of alarm data. The company consists of both engineers and computer scientists forming a team of very capable and skilled professionals who provide innovative and tailored solutions to their global clients. 

 

Useful links

Intelligent Plant

Industrial App Store

Industrial App Store Wiki

Intelligent Plant YouTube channel

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