Announcing VTScada 12.0.52 General Release
In addition to major software version updates, our team regularly releases service updates with enhancements, bug fixes, and new features.
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Version 12 – Award Winning Software
VTScada 12 transforms how users connect to process data and put it to use across their organizations. New features include Performance Improvements, PLC Tag Importing, Excel Plug-In, MQTT, OPC-UA, I/O & Calculation Tag, High-Performance Widgets, Master Applications, Screen Development on VTScada Internet Clients, Historical Data Editing, Support for Foreign Languages, and many more.
VTScada 12 Features by Version
New Features in Version 12.0.05:
- Users can now modify multiple tags at the same time and an Apply button has been added so they can continue editing after applying changes.
- TimeZone(2) and TimeZone(3) now report TimeZone names in English regardless of the language that Windows has been configured to use. This lets you use the output of these functions as input to ConvertTimeStamp.
- The ability to select parameters and variables under Page parameters when editing with the VTScada Graphics Editor has been added.
- Page and Widget Export/Import, as well as Copy/Paste, are now language aware.
- Application Developers can now specify a tag parameter to be Binary in order to prevent the data from getting converted to a UTF8 byte string when moving to VTScada 12+.
- The WinEditCtrl function now supports placeholder text, which is gray text displayed in the edit control when it is empty.
New Features in Version 12.0.06:
- Users can now configure alarms and read/write alarm status information from Allen Bradley PLCs using PLC alarm tags.
- Users can now apply application-wide tag and area filters that affect lists of tags, alarms, sites, etc.
New Features in Version 12.0.07:
- Alarms can now be configured to automatically remove themselves from the Unacked list when they clear.
- A new function, MarshalCredential(), to marshal credentials for use with WindowsLogon.
- Performance of historian has been improved when writing records with text fields.
- Performance of historian has been improved when reading records with text fields.
- New training simulator added to VTScada examples.
- Miscellaneous PLC Alarm tag enhancements.
- The Sparklines widget can now plot any number of alarm setpoints.
- IO and Calculations Tags in string modes now can pad string with spaces before output.
New Features in Version 12.0.08:
- VTScada now handles most conflicting files changes on a file-by-file basis. For example, when two machines are merging conflicting changes to a page file, then the conflict resolution will only result in discarding one machine’s changes to that one page, rather than discarding all changes made by that machine. The only times that all changes from one machine will be thrown out is when the merge produces a compilation error, or when there is a conflict in an application that was created without source files.
- Users can now disable PLC alarm tag alarms via the right-click context menu.
- An automatically unshelved active alarm always transitions to the unacknowledged alarm state. A manually unshelved active alarm transitions to the acknowledged alarm state unless configured not to. An unshelved normal alarm always transitions to the acknowledged alarm state.
- SystemStyle tag now has default settings for Pump equipment values 1 and 0 (Running and Stopped).
- Operator-level translations have been added to the core product for the French language.
- We now allow the viewing of configuration folders for tags from subordinate applications via a master application.
New Features in Version 12.0.09:
- Site pages can now always be opened as in their own window by setting the “OpenSitesAsPopup” application setting to TRUE (1).
- Default page, configuration, and activation translations have been added to the core product for the French language.
- Enron Driver now supports 6-byte time/datestamps in history reads.
- Users have better feedback from the PLC Alarm Control widget, showing mismatches, confirmation dialogs, and security privileges.
- JSON driver now supports GZip and Deflate (ZLib) encoded data.
New Features in Version 12.0.10:
- VTSIO drivers are no longer installed automatically, although VTSIOUpdate.exe is still included in the VTScada installation to allow manual installation of the drivers.
- Users should be able to see the associated tag’s info in the alarm lists for PLC alarm tags.
- Sometimes an alarm notification voice call recipient will press a key on their phone which is not detected by the voice modem. This feature provides audible feedback indicating that the tone has been detected to make it easier to enter the correct digits.
- VTScada now supports smart card-based authentication using cards holding Active Directory certificates with Windows Security Integration mode to comply with 2-factor security requirements for both thick client and VIC users. Removing the card used to authenticate logs the user out.
New Features in Version 12.0.13:
- The JSON/XML Driver can now be given a custom data processor for handling complex data sets including timestamped data and historical data.
- The VTScada installer now returns a specific exit code when the installation is cancelled from the progress dialog.
- A new Override Detection tool has been added to determine if an application is using overridden code and/or properties.
- Two new style flags are available for Window() statements. Flag bit 25 disables the horizontal scrollbar, and bit 26 disables the vertical scrollbar.
- Sort, SortArray, and TextSearch now support multilingual locale-based sorting. An example would be how accents on characters are treated in different Latin languages or sorting Chinese characters based on phonetic or stroke order.
New Features in Version 12.0.14:
- The time span for the Sparklines widget can now be set via a parameter, linked tag property, or expression.
- When using the DispMgrHoriz and DispMgrVert settings to put individual Display Manager instances on individual monitors, it is possible to do so with multiple monitors configured for Windows Extended Desktop.
New Features in Version 12.0.15:
- The Excel add-in can now be installed in older versions of Office 2016 that only support Excel API 1.1.
New Features in Version 12.0.16:
- A warning dialog now pops up when creating a changeset while there are undeployed changes.
- Dataflow driver now supports server redundancy when using Dataflow NIM/FIM hardware.
- Optimized text operations in VTScada, reducing application startup time and improving the performance of some text-related operations by approximately 5%, and reducing application memory use by 3.5%.
New Features in Version 12.0.17:
- It is now possible to provide custom addresses for the PLC alarm tag, control ts digital alarm condition, and set delay units based on the PLC type.
There are 3 high priority incidents that affect customers addressed in this build:
- Older VICS can crash the server: Internet Client Versions between 12.0.09 and 12.0.11 would crash VTScada server versions 12.0.12 and up. Customers running VTScada versions 12.0.12 or higher and using older VICs should are strongly encouraged to upgrade to 12.0.17 or higher. A theoretical workaround for customers is to upgrade all their VIC users to a newer VIC executable or use the Anywhere Client. However, on hosted systems, that may not be practical.
- Totalizers and Counters would reset on UTC times instead of local for log intervals of daily or less. This affects all versions since 12.0.11.
- Some types of scrollbar would have over-size thumbs and not scroll on the VIC. Known to be affected were the Alarm Page, the Tag List widget, the HDV’s time range droplist and the left-hand pane on the Sites page. The same scrollbars on the server and in an Anywhere Client function correctly. This only affects version 12.0.16.
New Features in Version 12.0.18:
- Alarm Databases will now log the events of the tags under them.
New Features in Version 12.0.19:
- The IO tag now has the ability to pulse digital outputs.
- A new script interface, HTTPClient.HTTPSend(), has been created for sending HTTP requests (“GET”, “POST”, etc) to external web servers.
- There is now script-level support for encoding and decoding Google Protocol buffers (Protobufs).
- The MQTT driver can now write data (publish) to edge-of-network devices.
- It is now possible to stop a starting application before it has finished loading all of the tags.
New Features in Version 12.0.20:
- A Bristol BSAP/IBP Driver has been added to VTScada.
- All data types of the IO tag can now be treated as calculations, not just analogs and strings.
- VTScada now supports OAuth 2.0 as an authentication method for SMTP and POP3.
New Features in Version 12.0.21:
- Support for customizing the output when printing alarms has been added and printing has been updated to have a separate column for the name instead of combining it into the description column.
- The TI505 driver now supports SIEMENS bit-numbering convention and writing individual bits to 16-bit registers.
- An ABB TotalFlow Driver has been added to VTScada.
- The MQTT Client Driver now supports being a SCADA Host for devices that use the Sparkplug B protocol.
New Features in Version 12.0.22:
- IO and Alarm tags can now specify which Alarm Database tag to use rather than needing to inherit the database via its ancestry.
- The Source Debugger now shows the name and instance count of structures on the summary page.
- Soft-failover for Modicon driver is now more efficient.
New Features in Version 12.0.24
- The drivers for the hardware key (dongle) have been updated to the latest version.
- Well Test tags have a new parameter that will allow the Well LSD field to be editable.
- Support for the document/literal style of SOAP messages and handling of SOAP headers have been added.
New Features in Version 12.0.25
- VTScada now supports map tiles in .jpg format.
- Exporting tags to Excel now uses translated tag type’s label as the worksheet name.
New Features in Version 12.0.26
- The Droplist control widget now supports displaying the linked tag’s Equipment type labels. The Equipment type values in the StyleSetting tag can now be text values.
- VTScada now offers configuration options in the panels for Alarm Priority Icon and Alarm Priority Box to disable showing the Shelved or Disabled alarm status.
- Provide the ability to set the horizontal alignment of text in Numeric Entry, System.Edit(), and WinEditCtrl.
New Features in Version 12.0.27
- The VIC can now use Smartcards for signing in and out within the same session.
- VTScada now supports specifying a thin client disclaimer in an application or an OEM layer.
- VTScada now gives users the option to copy and rename, override, or do neither when they try to open an OEM page in a derived application’s Idea Studio.
New Features in Version 12.0.28
- Sparkplug B Node Control metrics are now published by name instead of alias.
- The PLC alarm tag in the Oil & Gas Solutions is now deprecated. A manual process by which to upgrade deprecated PLC alarm tags to the one included in core VTScada can be found in the help documentation.
New Features in Version 12.0.29
- VTScada now supports copying Phrase Keys from the Language Panel of the Application Properties dialog.
- The MQTT driver in Sparkplug B mode now creates tags under the top-level parent Driver Multiplexer for redundant broker applications.
New Features in Version 12.0.30
- The IEC Driver running in both Master and Slave mode supports Reading Bit-strings using ASDUs #7 & #8 and writing using ASDU #33.
- The OPC UA client driver configuration folder and communication statistics widget now has a “Show Details” button which displays the last endpoint’s response from the OPC UA server.
New Features in Version 12.0.34
- The VTScada Excel add-in’s tag browser is now capable of showing more than one level of tags at a time in order to make it easier to find the tags you are looking for when filtering.
New Features in Version 12.0.35
- Support for popup alarms from PLC alarm tags has been added.· The Site Map page and widget now have a tool for opening the legend.
New Features in Version 12.0.39
- We now allow for different languages to use different Twilio voices via the #TwilioVoice setting in the language (CSV) files.
New Features in Version 12.0.41
- We now allow for the use of map tile providers that require the URL to be constructed with the X, Y, and Z parameters in non-standard order.
New Features in Version 12.0.42:
- VTScada now displays trace information for Motorola ACE RTUs in Trace Viewer.
- VTScada now displays alarm popup status on the configured list of the alarm page.
- VTScada now supports more detailed tracing for the OPC Client Driver.
New Features in Version 12.0.43:
- New settings, AlarmPageBackgroundColor and AlarmPageTextColor, can now be set to override the colors of the Alarm Page.
- VTScada now supports tag exporting to MariaDB and MySQL ODBC data sources.
New Features in Version 12.0.44
- Workstation specific Twilio settings can now be configured from the Alarm tab of Edit Properties.
- VTScada now performs Twilio Signature Validation.
New Features in Version 12.0.47
- Flow computer tags in the Oil & Gas Solutions layer now allow users to overwrite their default CFX mapping, allowing CFX report files to be created for flow computers with non-standard programs (such as Bristol devices).
New Features in Version 12.0.51:
- It is now possible to control the PLC alarm tag control widget’s parameters using tags, expressions, and linked tag properties.
- VTScada now supports specifying a port and protocol for a Twilio domain different from those of the Twilio realm.