Creating a Data Flow

The Data Flows have two states: Draft and Published and are associated with an asset of our inventory.

If the asset hasn’t got any Draft or Published data flow, the list will show a button with the label “+Create” to start with the creation process.

Open

If you haven't added data flows yet, you will only see the asset information and the button to create the draft.

Draft

The first thing to do to start adding data flows and dynamic properties to an asset is to create a draft by clicking on the "+ Create" button.

Open

If the asset has a published version, this draft can be created from that version. If not, it can only be created from scratch.

A draft is the workspace in which data flows can be created resulting in either direct dynamic properties or complex dynamic properties, which are those that will be linked to our asset to be used, for example, in alarms and dashboards.

Everything we do in the draft will be saved automatically, as shown by the indicator next to the "DRAFT" label.

You can go in and out of the draft as many times as you need until you are ready to publish your data flows.

Back to the list, in the assets that have a draft, you will see several icons, which allow you to delete, edit or view the draft.

There cannot be two users editing the same draft at the same time, so if someone is editing, only the view icon will be active. If you need access to edit or delete, you can click on the padlock icon to disable the current user's edit mode and make all icons active and accessible again.

Once the draft is created and/or during the creation process, some icons will appear in the asset list (column DRAFT):

Published version

A draft cannot be published empty, it must have at least one data flow created that results in at least one direct dynamic property or one complex dynamic property.

It also cannot be published if it has incomplete data flows; all the elements added in each column must be correctly connected.

The "Publish" button on the draft only appears when the edit mode is active. If you are in viewing mode, you have to activate editing to be able to publish.

Once our data flows have been published, the label will change from the gray "DRAFT" label to the green "VERSION PUBLISHED" label. You will also see the date and time of publication information. From this moment on you'll have all the dynamic properties linked to your asset and you'll be able to start using their data to create alarms or visualizations in the dashboards.

In the list, under the column "VERSION PUBLISHED" the information of the publication date/time appears in green, as well as the icon to enter the visualization mode where you will be able to see in detail the data flows and dynamic properties created in the asset.

If you need to edit the published version, it's necessary to click on the "copy as draft" button within the view mode, which will restore it as a draft so that you can make the changes you need and the publish it again.

Previous versions

Once you publish versions, they will be overwritten. But don't worry, you can always go back to a previous version if you wish.

Under the "Previous versions" column of the list you can see the number of versions each asset has. If you click on the arrow next to the number, the information of the previous versions will expand. 

In each of these previous versions you can::

• Click on "view" which will take you to the page where you can view all the information of that version, including the date it was published and all the data flows and properties that are part of it. If you want to restore it, just click on "copy as draft".

• Click on "Restore as draft". By doing this, you will be creating a new draft with the data flows and dynamic properties of this version. You can edit it if you need to or directly click on publish, which will turn it into the published version.