Page Levels
- Last UpdatedJul 13, 2023
- 2 minute read
The principles of Situational Awareness propose that your content pages should adhere to a hierarchy that provides different levels of detail about the processes being monitored. This allows an operator to assess a specific process while maintaining a broad view of the overall status of a plant.
The following diagram shows the proposed hierarchy of pages.
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Level 1 – Area-wide overview. Pages include KPIs and summary status information.
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Level 2 – Operational overview. This is the primary operational display. Pages include key operational information related to a particular production process within a facility.
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Level 3 – Detailed operational processes. Pages includes information about the equipment in a production process and their connections. Level 3 pages are the most similar to traditional SCADA system graphics pages.
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Level 4 – Auxiliary information. Includes trends, help screens, and so on.
Ideally, a client workstation should have multiple screens with different page levels displayed on each screen. This allows a broader perspective to be maintained while operational details are investigated on lower-level pages.
Typically, a Level 1 page will be on a dedicated screen. An operator would then use a second screen to navigate between Levels 2–4.
In a large system, you might consider having a screen dedicated for each Level 2 area.
You need to consider the impact the page levels will have on your equipment definitions, in particular the Page and Content properties (see Add Equipment Using Equipment Editor). If the equipment hierarchy is pre-determined or needs to conform to an industry standard, you should use it as a starting point and plan your page levels accordingly.
If you are using the Autofill modes "WS_CONTEXTMODE_CurrentThenUpThenDown" or "WS_CONTEXTMODE_CurrentThenUp", you also need to consider how the page levels align with your equipment hierarchy, as the autofill process will be scanning up and down the hierarchy looking for content to place in your workspace.