Workstation Status Tag

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Workstation status driver tags can be associated with one or more I/O tags to access data that the driver obtains from the Windows Management Instrumentation (an API in the Windows operating system that enables devices and systems in a network to be managed and controlled).

In order to access information about the workstation being monitored by a workstation status driver tag, follow these steps:

Create a workstation status driver tag. Set the Workstation Name drop-down list to the name of the workstation you wish to monitor. (You can create one workstation status driver tag for each workstation you wish to monitor.)
Create one Analog Input tag for each piece of data you wish to obtain from the workstation being monitored. (You can create multiple Analog Input tags and associate them with a single workstation status driver tag.)
Use the I/O Device field for each Analog Input tag to associate the analog input with the workstation status driver tag.
Set the Address field of each Analog Input tag to one of the available strings.

See: Workstation Status Driver I/O Addressing

Workstation status driver tags have been configured in such a way that they do not conform to the same server/backup server fail over process like other VTScada drivers. In essence, the PC being monitored by a workstation status driver tag is its own server. If the PC being monitored drops off the network, the workstation status driver tag will be unable to report data about it to the application and will therefore have a value of INVALID. A value of 0 (zero) for the Workstation Status tag means that the PC is running and there are no errors.

Using the Expression() address of Workstation Tags.

The Expression() address of a Workstation driver provides a method to call a script-only function or expression from within an otherwise steady-state expression.
This feature can be a handy way to integrate a script-only function into an expression by referring to the value of the I/O tag holding the Expression() address.
This should not be used for triggers that require perfect accuracy. The function you call may require measurable execution time.
See: Workstation Status Driver I/O Addressing

Troubleshooting

If values do not appear for anything other than battery checks, it is likely that the Windows performance counter needs to be reset on this machine. Test by opening a command prompt with administrative privileges and typing PERFMON. If this opens with an error message, close the performance monitor and type LODCTR /R

Note that the /R must be in uppercase. If you did not open the command prompt with administrative privileges, this command will fail with error 5.

Restart the workstation.

Related information:

Workstation Status Driver I/O Addressing

Monitor Servers, Disk Space, and Memory

Alarm on Low Disk Space

Best Practices for Tags

Workstation Status Driver properties ID tab

The ID tab of every tag includes the same common elements: Name, Area, Description, and Help ID.

Name:

Uniquely identifies each tag in the application. If the tag is a child of another, the parent names will be displayed in a separate area before the name field.

You may right-click on the tag's name to add or remove a conditional start expression.

Area

The area field is used to group similar tags together. By defining an area, you make it possible to:

Filter for particular tag groups when searching in the tag browser
Link dial-out alarm rosters to Alarm tags having a particular area
Limit the number of tags loaded upon startup.
Filter the alarm display to show only certain areas.
Filter tag selection by area when building reports

When working with Parent-Child tag structures, the area property of all child tags will automatically match the configured area of a parent. Naturally, you can change any tag's area as required. In the case of a child tag, the field background will turn yellow to indicate that you have applied an override. (Orange in the case of user-defined types. Refer to Configuration Field Colors)

To use the area field effectively, you might consider setting the same Area for each I/O driver and its related I/O tags to group all the tags representing the equipment processes installed at each I/O device. You might also consider naming the Area property for the physical location of the tag (i.e. a station or name of a landmark near the location of the I/O device). For serial port or Roster tags, you might configure the Area property according to the purpose of each tag, such as System or Communications.

You may define as many areas as you wish and you may leave the area blank for some tags (note that for Modem tags that are to be used with the Alarm Notification System, it is actually required that the area field be left blank).

To define a new area, type the name in the field. It will immediately be added. To use an existing area, use the drop-down list feature. Re-typing an existing area name is not recommended since a typo or misspelling will result in a second area being created.

There is no tool to remove an area name from VTScada since such a tool is unnecessary. An area definition will exist as long as any tag uses it and will stop existing when no tag uses it (following the next re-start).

Description

Tag names tend to be brief. The description field provides a way to give each tag a human-friendly note describing its purpose. While not mandatory, the description is highly recommended.

Tag descriptions are displayed in the tag browser, in the list of tags to be selected for a report and also on-screen when the operator holds the pointer over the tag’s widget. For installations that use the Alarm Notification System, the description will be spoken when identifying the tag that caused the alarm.

The description field will store up to 65,500 characters, but this will exceed the practical limits of what can be displayed on-screen.

This note is relevant only to those with a multilingual user interface:
When editing any textual parameter (description, area, engineering units...) always work in the phrase editor. Any changes made directly to the textual parameter will result in a new phrase being created rather than the existing phrase being changed.
In a unilingual application this makes no difference, but in a multilingual application it is regarded as poor practice.

Help Search Key

Used only by those who have created their own CHM-format context sensitive help files to accompany their application. Refer to Custom Help Files

Workstation Status Driver properties Workstation tab

This tab is used to specify the workstation for which the tag should report data.

Workstation Name

The Workstation Name drop-down list enables you to select the name of the workstation that you wish to monitor (you may alternatively enter a Net BIOS name in this field). The Workstation Name field defaults to the local machine name when new workstation status driver tags are initially created.

Please refer to Workstation Status Driver Tag Addressing for instructions on the correct configuration of a workstation status tag and its associated Analog Input tags.