Publish schedule data to plant operations

The Publish Environment lets you publish data from your schedule to the software that controls the plant, so that plant operators can set up and execute all the activities that have been planned.

You must configure a connection to a staging server in your profile before you can use the Publish Environment. The staging server forwards the data to a connector, a specialized piece of software that translates the information into a format understandable by external systems such as AVEVA Offsites.

Open the Publish Environment

There are two ways to open the Publish Environment:

From the Model Explorer

1. In the Navigator pane, select the model containing the scheduling case you are interested in.

2. In the case list pane, select the scheduling case.

3. Do either of the following:

   • Right-click the scheduling case and choose Open Publish from the context menu.

   • In the Cases group of the Home ribbon tab, click the lower half of the Open button, and choose Publish from the menu.

From a scheduling case

4. Click on the Environments ribbon tab.

5. Click the Publish button in the Environments group.

Publish data

Follow these steps to publish data from your scheduling case.

6. Open the Publish Environment.

7. Choose the assets for which you want to publish data. Select an asset filter from the Filter drop-down list in the Simulation group of the Home ribbon tab. Leave the default setting of <All Assets> if you want to publish data for the whole scheduling case.

   

8. In the Publish group of the Home ribbon tab, set the period of time for which you want to publish data. Setting the time filter is equivalent to adjusting the schedule start and end on a temporary basis.

   • By default, the Start time is set to the start of the schedule. Click the calendar icon at the end of the date box to open a calendar widget and choose a different start date and time. Alternatively, edit the value in the box directly.

   • To set the End date and time, click the arrow icon at the end of the date box to open a calendar widget. You have two choices:

     • Click the Duration option and set a number of days and hours from the start date and time.

     • Click the Date option and choose an end date and time.

     In either case, the resulting end date and time cannot be after the end of the schedule.

     You can also edit the value in the box directly instead of using the calendar widget.

   Your settings for the start and end date and time are preserved across sessions.

   

   The list of activities to export is populated according to these rules:

   • To be included, an activity must be partially or fully contained within the time filter window. Activities starting before the start date or finishing after the end date of the filter can still be included, provided they run at least partially within the filter window.

   • The schedule simulation (see the next step) begins from the most recent baseline before the time filter start date. Consequently, no activities are generated before that point.

   • An activity is simulated only until the end date of the time filter, even if it runs beyond the filter end date. However, if you narrow the filter window after simulating, previous simulation results are preserved even if they now fall outside the filter window.

   • The simulation merges generated activities if they have identical rates and are adjacent in time. This can affect which activities are included in the list.

9. Optionally, choose an option from the Time Point Data list to publish additional schedule data that can be used for analytic purposes. The following options are available:

   • None: do not publish any time point data. This is the default option.

   • Daily: publish initial values for each 24-hour period.

   • Hourly: publish initial values for each hour.

   • Actual: publish all values.

   Note: When choosing to publish time point data, the considerable amount of additional data can affect the performance of the publish operation.

10. Simulate the schedule. Click Simulate in the Simulation group of the Home ribbon tab, unless simulation is set to Automatic. The various tabs fill with information according to the criteria you have set in the previous steps.

11. In each tab, except Asset Instructions, choose the activities you want to publish by selecting or clearing the check boxes in the Publish column. All check boxes are selected by default at first. Clearing a check box also clears all check boxes at lower levels of the hierarchy. For example, clearing a feed in the Transports tab also clears all the associated transports.

    In the Transports and Unit Feeds / Rundowns tabs, select or clear the check box next to the top Publish column header to select or clear all check boxes in the tab. You can also press Ctrl + A to select all the items in the tab. To select multiple items, hold Shift while clicking each item you want to select.

    In the Transport tab you can use the Transport Filter drop-down list to show only imports, only exports or both imports and exports (default). This setting only affects which items are shown, not whether they are selected for publishing.

    

12. Choose the connectors you want to publish data to from the Connectors list in the Publish group of the Home ribbon tab. Select the check box next to each connector you want to publish to, or the (Select All) check box to publish to all available connectors. You can also start typing in the text field to select all connectors with matching text.

    Press Enter or click OK to confirm your choices. Press Esc or click Cancel otherwise. The number of selected connectors is shown above the text field.

    Note that only external connectors appear in this list. Staging database data sources are not listed.

    Warning: Publishing is currently supported to a single connector at a time. Please select only one connector from the list.

    

13. Optionally, click Check Connectors under the Connectors list to check the availability of the selected connectors.

    The Check Connectors dialog opens. The status of each selected connector is checked in parallel, and the results are displayed in the Status column. The Message column contains further information on the status of each connector. Note that general messages common to all connectors are still shown in the Diagnostics pane.

    When a check has completed, you can click Check in the Check Connectors dialog to perform another check.

    The results of the status check are not stored after you close the Check Connectors dialog. If you click the Check Connectors ribbon button again, a new check is carried out.

    

14. If you have special instructions about activities for external system users such as plant operators, enter them in the Instructions column of each tab. Similarly, enter instructions for specific assets in the Instructions column of the Asset Instructions tab.

    

15. Click Publish in the Publish group of the Home ribbon tab. The Publish dialog opens, with a summary of the updates you are about to publish for each tab. You can exclude all the updates for a tab (for instance Product Blends) by clearing the corresponding check box.

    Select either of the Include Properties check boxes if you want property values for unit feeds and rundowns or for tanks to be included in the published data. Both check boxes are selected by default.

    If desired, you can also enter a general comment for the data you are publishing.

    

    Note: Enable the Save Transports to Staging Database for supported connectors option if you want exports in your published data to be converted into imports and saved to the Staging database. This is useful if you want exports from one scheduling model to be later reimported into another model via the Reconciliation Environment.
    Note that this option works only with supported connectors.

16. Click Publish in the dialog. The data is published to the plant operations software. Next to the Publish column of each tab (except Publish Instructions), a green tick appears if data for the corresponding activity has been published correctly. Otherwise, a yellow warning icon or a red error icon appears, depending on what issue was encountered. See the Publish Status column for more information about the issue. You can find useful information in the Diagnostics pane as well.

Refresh schedule data

If you make changes to the schedule model after opening the Publish Environment, these changes are not automatically imported into the environment. You have to manually refresh the data in the Publish Environment to make sure you have the latest changes.

To do so, click Refresh in the Modelling group of the Home ribbon tab.

Note that after a refresh a simulation is required before you can publish.