Sensors

This is the area that was known as Monitored Data in NEXUS IC 5. Sensor data is recorded against assets, at a series of points in time (for example, once per hour).

Here you can configure sensor data forms.

(Icon, Colour and Shape are not used for asset information forms, though they are for Event forms. ‘Allow Inheritance’ is not yet implemented.)

In the top half of this dialog, you can add, edit and delete forms. In the bottom half, you can add, edit or delete fields within forms.

To add a form, click Add in the top toolbar. To edit, click Edit. Once you do either of these things, you should see the ‘Table Definition’ dialog. (From NEXUS’s point of view, form data is stored in tables, which is why it gives the dialog that title.)

Table Definition Dialog

On the Table Definition page you can choose the form’s Name (as it will appear in the user interface), and an optional Description, Category, Icon, Colour and Shape.

If you tick Allow Security, then in the Database ‣ Security menu, you can control which users (and groups of users) will have what access to this form (no ability to view, ability to view but not modify, or ability to view and modify).

On the Library tab, you can optionally add one or more Library Items to this form. This might be useful if you want instructions for filling out the form to be stored in the database.

On the Asset Types page, you can select the asset types for which this form will be available. (By default, no asset types are selected, so this form won’t be available anywhere in the database.)

To move a field up or down in the form or grid, use the Field Order button in the Asset Information main toolbar. For example, if you want to place a field between two other fields in the form, select Form ... from the drop down list, then a ‘Form Field Order’ dialog will appear. From there, you can move the field with the Move Up or Move Down buttons available in the toolbar.

Fields

Forms are only useful if they contain fields. Each field can contain data of a single type (except for fields of type Position Link and Table Link).

To add a field, click Add. That will bring up the ‘Add Field Definition’ dialog.

Field Definition

On the Field Definition page, you must give the field a Name and a Field Type. The remainder of the form will change, depending on the Field Type you select.

For Numeric fields, you can specify Unit, Format and number of decimal places or significant figures to display. (This can be helpful if a user chooses to display data in a different unit: an integer number of millimetres might be a non-integer number of inches.)

Field Layout

On the Field Layout page, under Grid, you can set Visible to determine whether this field will be visible when the form data is viewed as a grid (e.g. on the Children tab for asset forms, or in the Event Listing for events). You can also set Order to control the column order within the grid — the column with the lowest Column Order will be at the left of the grid, and so on. Text Alignment controls whether this field aligns left, centre or right. If you do not set an alignment, text fields will default to left, numeric fields to right, and date fields to centre.

Similarly you can set Visible Form to control whether the field appears on the form itself. You can set Category to group fields within a form. Setting Order controls the order of fields within Categories, and the order of Categories on the form: the Category that contains the field with the lowest Order will be displayed first. Within the Category, the field with the lowest Order will be displayed first.

Set Columns to control how wide this field appears on a form: if this is a two-column-wide form, setting this field’s Columns to 1 will cause the field plus caption to fill 50% of the width of the form; setting it to 2 will cause it to fill the full width. Forms default to two columns wide, unless you specify otherwise in a Category — edit the Category (click on the button, then click Edit) and set its Columns. While editing the Category you can also set an image or descriptive text to appear at the top of this category. This might be instructions on how to fill in the form, details of how calculations on the form are worked out, etc.

Visible Report controls whether this field will be shown when the table is exported in a report template.

If you set Blank Text, the text you set will be displayed greyed out whenever the field is empty. (You can see several fields with Blank Text set right here on the Field Layout tab.)

Note that as you add (or edit) fields, you can see a preview at the lower right of the dialog, showing how the fields will appear on either a form or a grid. Fields that are selected will be shown with a blue exclamation mark next to them in the form preview. If the field is a lookup list, you can drop down the lookup list to see its values. (You can also see and edit a lookup list’s values when choosing the lookup list: on the “Select Lookup List” dialog, click Edit, click Items.)

Edit

To edit a field, click Edit. That will bring up the ‘Edit Field Definition’ dialog. (This is the same as Add Field Definition, but has more tabs. This is because a variety of field settings are only available after a field has been created.)

If your field is of type Calculation, there will be a Function tab. This tab will allow you to choose a function for this calculation, and will also allow you to choose parameters for the function. You can either set “Parameters (Inputs)” or “Parameters (Values)” for each parameter. “Parameters (Inputs)” lets you choose some other field as the input for that parameter; “Parameters (Values)” lets you assign a constant. These are mutually exclusive — you can only fill one or the other for each parameter.

Workflow Rules

Sometimes you want a field’s properties to be controlled by other data. If you want, for example, a field to be visible only when some other field is filled in (or vice versa), edit the field and go to the Workflow Rules tab. Click Add, and under Trigger Type choose “Set Field Visibility on Form”. Then add a function, and parameters for that function. The function should return a Yes/No value. When it returns Yes, the field will be visible, when No, the field will be invisible. Similarly you can use Workflow Rules to set a field as read-only, or to mark a field as required. The remaining trigger type, “Clear Field Value on Form”, can be used to automatically empty out a field’s value when some condition is met — for example, it can be used to make two fields mutually exclusive, so that users can fill in one field or the other, but not both.

There are a set of system functions that you can use that mean you don’t need to create custom functions:

• Compare - Is Null
• Compare - Is Not Null
• Compare A = B
• Compare A <> B

Note that workflow rules are run when forms are viewed interactively, but are not applied during imports. If you have ticked the “Required” box on the Field Definition page, this will be enforced during imports — rows that are missing required fields will be rejected. But if a workflow rule makes a field required, this will not be enforced during imports.

Field Specific Units

This feature works in coordination with Unit Groups. Suppose you want Easting and Northing to display in metres, even when US Weights and Measures are selected – you can specify that here. (You’ll need to specify it once for the Easting field, and once for the Northing field.)

Anomaly Triggers

Here you can add anomaly triggers to a field. When an anomaly trigger is violated, a yellow exclamation mark () will appear next to the field. You can set lower/upper bounds to be constant values (so a field might trigger if it was outside, say, 1 to 5) or to pull from a field, on this form or on another form. So for example if this field is Measured Wall Thickness, it might trigger if its value is less than Minimum Allowable Wall Thickness. (For Yes/No fields you can set the trigger to fire on any combination of Yes, No or blank; but you can’t compare to another field.) A trigger can have an anomaly Code and a Severity, and you can have several different triggers on a single field, with different codes and/or severities. The dialog may also show a preview chart, showing which triggers apply at which KPs or depths.

(You may need to close and re-open the database for any newly added anomaly triggers to take visible effect.)

Auto-increment Fields

It’s possible to set a field to auto-increment. For example, if you wanted each new anomaly you created to automatically have an as-yet-unused anomaly number pre-populated, you would do this by setting the Anomaly Number field to be an auto-increment field. To do this, set the field’s Default Value to @autoinc. For system tables like Anomaly, you can’t do this through the NEXUS IC user interface, so you should ask support@nexusic.com for assistance.

Auto-populate date/time or user name

Similar to @autoinc, you can set a field to pre-populate with the date/time the record was created by setting its Default to @now. This works for any sub-event, AIG or sub-AIG field.

You can also set a field to pre-populate with the logged-in user’s name by setting its Default to @user. This works for any event, sub-event, AIG or sub-AIG field.

These default values are populated when the row is created. For an AIG, that’s when the asset is created. For an event it’s when the event is created. For a sub-event or sub-AIG it’s when the user clicks the ‘+’ to create the new sub-event or sub-AIG row.