Communities

Communities allow a tenant to create a private group where operational data can be shared and viewed across other tenants. Using communities, industrial companies can share their data streams externally with trusted business partners, service providers, and analytics providers.

• Seamless Data Sharing: Facilitate easy and secure data exchange among engineering and operational partners.

• Enhance Operational Efficiency: Collaboratively streamline operations and minimize waste through shared operations data.

• Uncover Hidden Issues: Detect and troubleshoot equipment and process problems with insights from your partners' operational data and expertise.

• Proactive Failure Prediction: Predict and prevent future failures by leveraging collective data intelligence.

Want to set up a community now? See Workflow: Create a community.

Community data flow

The following diagram shows the data flow of an established community.

Within this diagram, an administrative user (1) from Tenant A has invited Tenant B to form a community.

Both Tenant A and Tenant B have multiple streams stored in each of their tenants, as depicted by 2. The data from these streams are being collected from various sources: PI Servers, edge devices, and other industrial data sources (3).

Both tenants are sharing only one of their data streams within the community (A and B). A data steward with sharing privileges on the stream must explicitly share it into a community that they have read access to.

All data streams shared within the community can be viewed by any community member (4). Within a community, community administrators can invite and manage which users within their tenant can participate in the community and view shared data. Sharing a stream provides access to that stream across tenants. It does not copy data from one tenant to another tenant.

Community data consumption methods

You can consume data streams shared into a community the same ways that you consume your own native tenant data. Access community data using the following CONNECT data services features:

• Trending: View data streams shared into a community in a trend data session, visualizing community data. For more information, see Visualization.

• Data Views: Include data streams shared into a community within a data view, allowing you to view data within a third-party tool for data science purposes. For more information, see Create and configure a data view.

Community features and benefits

Communities allow you to easily and securely share operational data with trusted business partners.

Connect with trusted business partners

Establish a community by creating it and then inviting your trusted business partners to join from their tenant. Each invitation is a three-way handshake. The tenant that establishes the community, known as the Administrative Tenant, sends an email invitation to an administrator from the business partner's tenant. The trusted business partner then accepts the invitation. The Administrative Tenant then confirms the invitation, allowing the trusted partner to join the community. After confirmation, users from the business partner's tenant can view data from other community tenants or share data streams from their own tenant with the community.

Scalable

Communities allow you to share your data streams with multiple trusted business partners in a standardized way. Each community supports membership for an unlimited number of tenants, and each tenant can join an unlimited number of communities.

Multi-tenant users and permissions

Communities support multi-tenant management of users and permissions.

Within each tenant, community administrators can independently invite or remove users, separating users and permissions from other tenants in the community. Each tenant within the community has individual control over which of its users can access the community or share data within it. Community administrators cannot control users or permissions in other tenants.

Additionally, community roles allow each tenant to manage users and roles specifically for communities. Users can be assigned granular permissions to view community data or share data streams within the community.

Secure data sharing

Communities allow tenants to securely share operational data with their trusted business partners.

Any tenant invited to a community must accept the community invitation and be confirmed by the inviting tenant before they can share data with other tenants or view shared data from other tenants. After joining a community, each tenant must explicitly share any data stream that they want the community to view. Each tenant shares individual data streams with the community—not their entire operational data set.

Each tenant in the community can stop sharing their data streams at any time. When you stop sharing a data stream, the other tenants within the community can no longer view it, nor its history. When you share data streams, you provide the community with access to your streams rather than copying data across tenants.

Because tenants can share their data natively within CONNECT data services, IT departments no longer have to:

• Manage access for external users within a corporate firewall.

• Create workarounds like VPNs or custom apps.

• Allow business partners onsite to access local operational systems.

Easy setup

Because communities are in the cloud, using them does not require installation of additional hardware or software.

Communities can accommodate trusted business partners who are not sharing data or do not have a PI system or another historian system of their own. With communities, business partners can sign up for their own CONNECT data services tenant to read and gain access to data shared, without having to implement an on-premises PI System or other software.