TopView® version 7.1.1 Release

TopView® version 7.1.1 Release

July 19, 2023

OPC/SCADA ● OPC A&E ● PI ● SQL Events ● SQL Lookup ● MQTT ● PerfMon

See the release notes for a full list of changes included in this version

Microsoft .Net Framework 4.8 requirement

Previous TopView versions (6.33-7.0) required .Net Framework 4.7.2

Because of this new .Net Framework requirement TopView is supported on the following Windows versions:

  • Windows 11
  • Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903)
  • Windows 8.1
  • Windows 7 SP1
  • Windows Server 2022
  • Windows Server 2019
  • Windows Server 2016
  • Windows Server 2012 or 2012R2
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

Acknowledge multiple alarms when one alarm acknowledged
(including acknowledgement from notifications)

Previous versions of TopView include a feature “Acknowledge Group” which allows a group of alarms to be acknowledged when one is acknowledged. Once set, the behavior was always on for the group and did not allow the user to selectively perform a group acknowledge vs. a single acknowledge.

Tag Group Acknowledge All
Each alarm tag in TopView can be a member of one or more Tag Groups. When an alarm in TopView is acknowledged, other unacknowledged alarms in the Tag Group can also be acknowledged.

New acknowledge settings for each Tag Group allow the user to enable “Acknowledge the Tag Group (Acknowledge All)”. Notifications that allow alarm acknowledge can then acknowledge the notification alarm (single acknowledge) or the notification alarm and all unacknowledged alarms in the same Tag Group.

Global Email/SMS/Voice Groups: Notify repeat count per recipient

In a Global Notification Group, a user may want to notify the same recipient multiple times before moving to the next recipient.
In previous versions, the solution was to add the recipient multiple times to the Notification Group.

A new per-recipient “repeat count” property has been added to Email-SMS and Voice Notification Groups. Repeat is the number of times to repeat the recipient (1-20).

Redundancy Watchdog: New options for topview_engine_ok tag

The Watchdog tag topview_engine_ok is commonly used in TopView failover/redundancy configurations as an indicator of TopView Engine health on the primary machine. In previous versions of TopView, topview_engine_ok was not True if we were unable to connect to the primary Engine or we were connected but the primary heartbeat had not updated in 30 seconds.

The user can now enable/disable conditions and configure enabled conditions for topview_engine_ok.
The tag topview_engine_ok will not be True if:

  • Initial connection failure to the Primary Engine
  • A lost connection to Primary Engine after a configurable duration. The duration allows brief restart of Primary Engine.
  • Enable/disable: Primary Engine heartbeat flatline after a configurable duration
  • Enable/disable: Primary Engine has more than x% tags with bad status for a configurable duration
  • Enable/disable: Primary Engine not connected to data servers (OPC, PI, …) for a configurable duration

Web Configurator

Improvements and additions include:

  • A message will now appear on configuration pages when the user has unsaved changes to the configuration. This message will also contain a link to discard unsaved changes.
  • A message will now appear on the Configurations index page when the user has unsaved changes to any configuration
  • Tag settings: Add collapsible to secondary tag groups.
  • Upon saving a configuration, added a warning if the current number of tags would exceed the number of tags allowed by their license
  • Only applicable when the TopView Engine is running
  • Added the ability to create a copy of a configuration
  • Added “Reports and Audits” section of the navigation menu
  • Added the ability to view Audit Change logs
  • Added an interface for easily adding Simulation Tags, TopView Status Tags, and Manual Tags to a configuration tag list

Contacts: Additional options to disable notifications for a Contact

Existing versions of TopView include a per-Contact setting “disable all notifications” which disables notifications to the Contact. This setting remains in effect until it is reversed by a user.

TopView now includes additional Contact “disable all notifications” settings:

  • The existing “disable all notifications” setting remains. If set, the additional settings are not evaluated.
  • Disable during Schedule: Notifications are disabled for the Contact when the selected Schedule is active
  • Disable until ‘date’: Notifications are disabled for the Contact until the selected ‘date’

Remote Viewer: Engine Health visibility

Engine Health provides automatic health monitoring of running TopView Engines for a wide range of potential issues.
Engine Health is now visible in the Remote Viewer:

  • Engine Tree (left)
    • Each Engine icon color will now indicate if there are any health warnings. Green = no warnings, Yellow = one or more warnings
    • Hovering over the Engine name in the tree will display a pop-up with connected state and warning count
  • Warnings label: Per-Engine, at the top of the application next to [Current values and alarms] and [Alarm history]
    • Displays if there are one or more warnings
    • Hovering over the label will display a popup of the warning count and a description of each warning

OPC Classic improvements (TopView OPC/SCADA)

Improvements and additions include:

Timeout for synchronous OPC calls

OPC calls from TopView to the OPC Server are synchronous – TopView makes a call to the server and waits for the server to respond.
Although uncommon, it is possible that an OPC Server does not respond to a synchronous call, thereby preventing the TopView Engine from continuing to perform alarm and notification tasks.

Global Option to verify tag handles

OPC clients use server-assigned tag handles (integers) to read from and write to OPC tags. These handles should remain static for the duration of an active OPC Server connection. Although uncommon, upon an OPC tag read or write the OPC Server may respond that a handle is no longer valid even though the connection remained active. It’s also possible that the handle is valid but no longer pointing the expected tag.

A new TopView Global Option will instruct TopView to verify the OPC tag handles during each refresh of the Engine.

OPCUA improvements

Improvements and additions include:

  • Tag browsing: Improve performance by only browsing a node for children upon entry (and not each time). Nodes can be re-browsed using right-click menu to retrieve updates.
  • If a node has no children, but is monitorable, that node will show up in the “Monitorable items” listing.
  • Fix: tag read tag through <%tagvalue||server||tagname%> returns error on first read only

WhatsApp: new experimental implementation available

TopView 7.0 included an experimental feature that allowed users to send WhatsApp messages through Twilio. Although the Twilio WhatsApp solution works, the configuration was complex and the rules for message format were difficult to match when sending TopView notifications.

This release includes a new experimental WhatsApp message delivery feature using a 3rd party hosted service that links to an existing WhatsApp account. This solution will most likely be fully integrated into a future TopView release.

See the release notes for a full list of changes included in this version