RMS - Report Management System

RMS completes the IGSS reporting system 

RMS is the new reporting tool for customized reports in IGSS. The new tool will be included in the standard version.

RMS adds an extremely useful array of features to the existing IGSS reporting system:

• Design your own report layout with no restrictions
• Design user defined reports based on any data source in IGSS
• Create event reports, for example, for batch production purposes
• Use all the well-known functions in Excel to create attractive reports in a breeze
• Embed all your RMS reports in one Excel workbook for optimal overview
• Seamless integration with Microsoft Excel 2003 and 2007

What about my Event Report Writer reports from previous versions?

In the next generation of IGSS, RMS will replace the Event Report Writer (ERW) known from previous versions. ERW will, however, still be active in version 7 and ERW reports generated in previous versions will still be fully functional.

RMS starts where IGSS standard reports stop

IGSS comes with a complete standard report system which will meet the requirements of most IGSS customers. The standard reports are:

• Periodical Reports (based on hour, day and month values)
• Snapshot Reports (online values)
• Alarm Statistics Reports

However, some customers want to do more than that. This is where RMS comes into the picture with the following features:

• Use any data source in IGSS –
  log data (LOG), reduced data (BCL) and hour, day and month values (HDM)
• Combine the data sources according to the customer's requirements
• Apply additional data reductions to the raw data
• Show data sets with custom intervals
• Filter out irrelevant data with standard boolean operators, < > AND OR
• Calculate synthetic signals, for example: Leak = q1  + q2 + q3 - q4
• Design event reports based on digital start and stop events

Starting up RMS

The first thing that will meet the eye, when starting up the new module, is the RMS Control Panel. The control panel will be used by both the system designer and the operator:

• The system designer can design user defined reports and event reports
• The operator can run user defined and event reports
• The operator can run standard reports – Periodical Reports, Snapshot Reports, Alarm Statistics Reports




The RMS Control Panel is used by both the IGSS system designer and operator.

All RMS report design tasks are done in Microsoft Excel

The report designer in RMS integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Excel 2003 or 2007. When you design RMS reports, you are working exclusively in Excel with an embedded RMS Action Pane.

Example of a user defined report

To illustrate how you design a user defined report, we've made a sample daily report where we show the following:
• Hour values based on LOG data where we apply different data reductions (minimum, maximum, sum and average)
• Day values calculated on the above hour values

The report we want to create should look like this:


A user defined report showing hour values for flows and tanks


and a daily summary at the bottom.

To make the report, do the following:

1. From the RMS Control Panel, select Create New Report Design.
2. Create two sheets in the Excel workbook – Data and Report.
3. On the Data sheet, drag in the relevant objects and choose the relevant RMS parameters. This is the sheet that holds the raw data definitions.
   This will allow you to design multiple RMS reports using the same data source.
4. On the Report sheet, design the final report as it should appear to the operator runtime. On this sheet, we insert cell references back to the Data sheet.
5. Finally, preview or print the report.

Drag and drop the objects into the report

On the Data sheet, insert the objects you want in the report. Drag each object into the relevant cell(s) in Excel and the Data Extraction wizard guides you through the rest of the process.



The object is simply dragged from the RMS Action Pane to the relevant cell in Excel.

First you select the data period and apply the relevant data reduction(s) and filters. Then you apply the parameters to the raw data and you get a preview of the final report's data.



A wizard guides you through the extraction of the relevant report data.

Next, you can preview the report output, select the data fill direction and decide how many data points you want, etc.



The last page of the wizard allows you to decide the data fill direction, number of data points and preview the data as they will appear in the final RMS report.

Preview and print the RMS report

The Report sheet will thus contain the report template with all the static text. The value fields will have cell references to the Data sheet and will be filled out dynamically when you generate the final report. The picture shows a print preview of report data.


Print preview of the final RMS report.

The RMS report is now ready for printing. Set up the printing parameters in Excel and the RMS report is completed.

Creating an event report in RMS

Event reports are widely used in various industries for reporting events, for example, during a particular production batch. 7T has included a simple coffee brewer in the IGSS Demo configuration which can be used to illustrate this functionality.

To create an event report in RMS, you must:

1. Define an event which is started and stopped by a digital object.
2. Design a report with the following elements:
   - A header section with basic information about the event (batch)
   - A main section with all the objects you want to report on
   The objects are simply dragged into the report as shown in the previous example.
3. Associate the objects with the relevant event.

First you define an event in the RMS Action Pane as shown below:



Assign an event name and define its start and stop event.

Secondly, you design the report in Excel. Notice that you can automatically extract event information like start/stop time and duration. The times in the first four fields are placeholders for the dynamic data that will be calculated when the event report is generated.



Design the final report layout in Excel using drag and drop from the RMS Action Pane.

Thirdly, you drag the relevant objects into the report. In this example, we have taken the object Coffee Dose and associated it with the event called Coffee Production. Notice that you can preview both the raw data and the report data in the Data Extraction Wizard.



Decide what you want to show in the event report and associate the object with the relevant event (Coffee Production).

Subsequently you specify that you want to view all events happening between the event start and stop time and, of course, include their time stamps.

Finally, you are ready to preview or print the report. This very simple coffee production report will look like this:



The final event report in HTML format.

Export RMS reports to HTML or PDF format

If you want to distribute or archive your RMS reports in other formats, you can save them in HTML or Adobe Acrobat PDF format. You can, of course, specify rules for filenames and location of the export files.



The final RMS report in HTML format presented in Internet Explorer.

Expression Builder and command line interface

When you are familiar with the basic functions in RMS, you can explore the Expression Builder and the RMS command line interface.



The Expression Builder allows you to build complex expressions and show the results in your RMS report.

The command line interface allows you to print or export RMS reports either at a specific time or triggered by an IGSS event. This can be done from the Windows command prompt or graphically through the IGSS Job Scheduler, which is also part of the standard version of IGSS.