Creating and arranging boards
A board is a page of widgets. What it means is decided by the widgets on it.
Boards and the menu
Section titled “Boards and the menu”Boards and the menu are separate: a board exists on its own, and a menu entry only points at it. One board can hang at several places in the menu, or at none.
Settings → Boards lists every board of this plant — with its number of widgets, where it hangs in the menu (or not in the menu) and when it was last changed. From there you can open, rename, delete or add it to the menu (offered for a board that is not in the menu yet). Anyone who can reach the settings sees this list.
Every board has its own name. Creating or renaming a board with a name another board already has is refused wherever it is done — here, in the board itself, in the navigation editor or through the assistant. Here and in the board the message reads A board called “…” already exists. If two boards shared a name before this rule existed, the update of the board package renamed the younger one to Name (2), (3) and so on; the diagnostics log names each rename.
In the navigation editor, Add with the type Board asks New board or Existing board. Existing creates nothing; it only adds an entry pointing at a board you already have. Boards that already hang in the menu are listed but cannot be picked a second time there.
Removing an entry in the navigation editor asks what is meant:
| Choice | What happens |
|---|---|
| Only remove it from the menu (preselected) | The board stays and is listed under Settings → Boards, from where it can be put back |
| Also delete the board | When you save, the board is deleted — and with it every other menu entry pointing at it. Discard keeps it |
Deleting a board — in Settings → Boards, in the board’s own bar or in the navigation editor — deletes the board and its widget arrangement, and removes every menu entry pointing at it. So do the assistant and a script, whether they delete the page or the board itself. The underlying data and tags stay untouched.
An entry whose board no longer exists is not removed automatically. The menu marks it as missing; opening it says that the board no longer exists instead of showing another board, and the diagnostics log records it. Point the entry at another board or remove it in the navigation editor.
If another board appears instead and the entry carries no missing mark, the board plugin on this site is older than this check. The diagnostics log then says that the plugin offers no list of its pages. To fix it, update the board plugin under Settings → Plugins.
Editing
Section titled “Editing”The Edit switch releases the arrangement: widgets can be dragged and resized at their bottom right corner. Add widget puts a new widget on the board, the gear icon sets it up.
Every change is saved right away — a board running on a hall screen shows it at once. Done only leaves edit mode. The way back is two arrow buttons right beside Done:
- Undo takes back the last step — a widget added, removed, moved or set up anew. Pressed again, it goes back step by step to where editing started. After a widget is removed, the button also sits right in the notice.
- Discard changes restores the state from when editing started, after asking. With nothing changed it simply leaves edit mode.
Only what was changed in this editing session is taken back. What somebody else or the assistant changed on the board meanwhile stays; only the arrangement returns for all widgets. A restored widget is a new widget with the same setup — input widgets stay bound to their save button. Done ends the session, and the way back with it.
Cancel in the first setup of a widget just added (or ✕, or Esc) removes it again — no empty widget is left on the board. In the setup of a widget that was already there, Cancel only closes the dialog.
Add widget is a split button. Its left half opens the widget catalogue as a dialog: on the left a list of all widgets, divided into sections (Recently used, Capture, Mask display, Figures & charts, Tables & lists, Text & layout, Filters & controls, Advanced), on the right the details of the selected widget: a picture, the name, a label saying whether it captures or displays, and a short description. Add places the selected widget and closes the dialog. By keyboard you pick from the list with the arrow keys and place with Enter; Esc closes. The arrow beside the button opens a quick-add menu: the recently used and all widgets as a menu, one entry places the widget at once; Browse all in the large dialog … opens the catalogue. Green marks widgets that capture an entry, teal widgets that show something — the calculated field stands under Mask display because it belongs to a mask, but is teal, as it stores nothing. Colour is never the only cue: section, icon, name and the label Captures / Displays say the same. The search field is only a shortcut; without a keyboard every widget is reachable through the list. Recently used holds the widgets last placed on this device; with none, the section is not shown.
Configuration changes to a board — creating, renaming, adding, setting up or removing widgets,
the arrangement — require the tenant-admin role. Anyone who can see the page may read it.
Capture and display on one board
Section titled “Capture and display on one board”A board has no type. Display widgets (tiles, charts, tables) and input widgets may stand on the same board in any mix — a capture mask with the live figure beside it, a fault report with the open fault list below it. There is no mode switch; the Add widget catalogue always offers both kinds.
The mask switches itself on as soon as the board holds at least one capturing input widget. A board without one stays pure display and loads nothing of the capture technique. Existing boards behave as before.
Input widgets: Field, Choice, Note, Repeat (several lines, one record per line), Stopwatch (one record per run), Save button (the button that stores the entry and says where it lands), and AI capture (the operator describes the entry in their own words, the assistant proposes the finished record — stored only after they confirm). Calc shows a figure from the mask and stores nothing; it therefore does not count as a capturing widget and does not switch the mask on.
One press of the save button appends a record to the configured destination — one per line or run for Repeat and Stopwatch, all tied together by a shared capture id. With no connection the entry is held on the device and sent later.
Stopwatch types. Setup decides what the stopwatch is: Cycle time (average), Cycle time (cumulative), Downtime, or — as before — Cycle / downtime with a switch on the widget. On the cycle types each run carries a category (Setup, Main Value, Operator, Load, Unload, Wait by default; they can be renamed, removed and extended), on Downtime a reason from its own list. The active category is picked above the clock; Lap or Stop writes it into the run, and the list lets it be corrected before saving. A downtime only starts once a reason is picked. Average and total on the widget cover only the running study that is not saved yet — the figure that counts is a board over the saved records.
Several masks on one board. Each input widget belongs to exactly one mask through the save button it picked; a press sends only the fields of that one mask.
Setup errors are reported. A capturing input widget without a save button (none picked, or the picked one is no longer on the board) sends nothing. The board reports it visibly, the widget shows the note instead of the input, and the setup dialog cannot be saved until a save button is picked.
A missing write right is shown. If the signed-in user or screen may not save entries, the mask and the save button say so visibly — nothing is sent. The permission itself is still checked by the data layer.
Display: desk or wall
Section titled “Display: desk or wall”| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Normal (scrolls) | behaves like a page. Right for a desk |
| Wall mode | never scrolls. If the board does not fit at this zoom, it is scaled down until it does |
| Zoom | scales the whole board, like a browser zoom |
| Ratio | the shape of the screen this board is made for. A ratio, not pixels — the same board runs on a 40-inch and an 85-inch panel |
| Content zoom | enlarges the content of one tile on top of that. The tile keeps its size |
Wall mode only ever shrinks, it never grows the board on its own: a deliberate zoom setting is not overruled. If it has to shrink a long way it says so — then there are too many widgets, or the zoom is too high.
Kiosk: home board, idle return, carousel
Section titled “Kiosk: home board, idle return, carousel”A touch screen at a machine is left alone most of the time, and it should not stay on whatever somebody tapped last. Kiosk in the edit bar sets how the board behaves then:
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Home board | where the Home button and the idle return lead. Empty: the board the screen was opened on |
| Idle timeout (s) | after this many seconds without touch, mouse or key input the screen returns to the home board |
| Carousel | the boards the screen moves through while nobody touches it, in the order listed |
| Carousel interval (s) | how long each board of the carousel stays on screen |
A board without its own setting follows the board the screen was opened on. Set the kiosk up once, on the board the screen’s link points at — the detail boards its buttons open then go home on their own.
A touch stops the carousel. Once the screen has been left alone for the idle timeout (without one: for one interval) it carries on. A board that is part of a running carousel is shown for its interval and is not sent home in between.
Boards are named, not linked. The home board and the carousel are stored by board name. If a board is renamed, that entry leads nowhere any more: the carousel skips it, the Home button says so, and the diagnostics log names it.
Seconds are whole numbers from 5 to 86,400. This works in kiosk mode and in the normal view alike, but never while the board is being edited. A touch inside an HTML widget counts only the first time: the widget runs in its own isolated frame, and the board sees no more than that the frame took the focus.
Tile refresh: how often tiles read again
Section titled “Tile refresh: how often tiles read again”Tiles whose value is not announced when it changes (queries, scripts, records) read it again on a clock. By default that is every 3 seconds, which is right for a light board and too fast for a board of heavy queries over a long period: if one read takes seconds, the database never rests.
Set Tile refresh (s) in the Kiosk dialog (the field is at the bottom). Whole seconds from 3 to 3,600; empty keeps the 3 seconds. The setting belongs to the board, not to a tile.
- Tiles that are not announced read again at this interval.
- Tiles that are announced (memory, connector, timer and link tags) update the moment the value changes, whatever you set here. They also have a safety clock of 10 seconds in case a message was missed; it never runs faster than your setting, so a board set to 60 seconds checks them every 60 seconds, a board set to 5 seconds still every 10.
In a configuration file the board carries it as refreshSeconds inside its filter object, for
example "filter": { "refreshSeconds": 30 }; a value outside 3 to 3,600 makes the import refuse the
file. The AI assistant reads it from the board description and can change it.
On a screen in the hall
Section titled “On a screen in the hall”A navigation entry can be released for wall screens. Under Settings → Screens you set up a screen and get a link for it that is revocable at any time. The link is shown exactly once and cannot be retrieved later. Revoke it and the screen goes blank.
Nobody logs in at such a screen, and it writes what its boards offer: a touch terminal’s buttons, a maintenance call, a setpoint. Whoever puts a writing widget on a screen’s board decides that everybody standing in front of it may use it. Presentation mode has no visible way out there - see Keyboard shortcuts.
Demo board
Section titled “Demo board”Add demo board creates a finished production overview. If the tags it needs are missing in this tenant, nothing is created, and the message names how many tags are missing and one of them by name.
On a phone-sized window
Section titled “On a phone-sized window”Viewed on a narrow window — a phone, or the phone app this product also ships as — a board’s widgets stack into a single, full-width column instead of the freely arranged grid, in the same top-to-bottom, left-to-right order they read in on a desk. The arrangement itself is not changed or saved; the stack is only how it is shown there. Edit is not offered on a window this narrow, because dragging a tile needs room a phone does not have — arrange the board on a larger screen, then come back to look at it.