Ignition 8.1 was released in late 2020, bringing many exciting new features like Perspective Workstation, Perspective Symbols, Power Chart, and plenty more. Ignition 8.2 will still be in the works for a while, but that doesn't mean that you have to wait long for new features and improvements. The Ignition software development team puts out “release train” updates nearly every month, and each one comes loaded with significant features that are based on user requests.
5. Inductive Automation’s Upgrade Philosophy
Ignition is Improving All the Time
● Instead of the more traditional schedule of one big release
every few years, Ignition is constantly evolving.
● Many features and changes come from the Ignition
community.
● Small upgrades can have large impacts.
6. The Release Train
Ignition 8.1.0 — 8.1.19
● Every 5 weeks, the latest version of
Ignition introduces new features,
updates, and improvements.
● Since Ignition 8.1, approximately 170
new features have been added to the
platform.
● With each new release, we publish a
blog post outlining the most critical
upgrades, along with release notes
that go into even more detail.
14. Ignition 8.1 Highlights
Visualization Highlights:
● Equipment Schedule Component
○ Create/view schedules for specific equipment
● Perspective Pipes
○ Innovative tool for drawing pipes
● Numerical Locale Support
○ Format numbers based on session locale
● Themes Dropdown Selector
○ Select custom themes from a simple dropdown menu
15. Ignition 8.1 Highlights
Visualization Highlights:
● Mapping - GeoJSON
○ Expanded format support in Map Component
● Split Container
○ Display two child elements divided by a user-adjustable slider
Gateway Tool Highlights:
● Metrics Dashboard
○ Drag and drop pre-defined metrics to build out a custom dashboard
17. Ignition 8.1 Highlights
Designer
● Ignition comes with a built-in design environment.
● Improvements to the platform aren’t only meant for the
plant floor, they’re also for accelerating the development
process.
18. Ignition 8.1 Highlights
Designer Highlights:
● Tag Report Tool
○ Generate report for all tags on a system that meet specific criteria
● Perspective Tooltips
○ Add tooltips to any component
○ Use custom text with customizable styling
● Resource Documentation
○ "Resource documentation" now applies to all resources, whereas
query and report resources were previously unique
19. Ignition 8.1 Highlights
Designer Highlights:
● Diagnostic Tags
○ Each driver now includes diagnostic tags
● Improved Tag Editor
○ Requires fewer clicks
○ Keeps relevant information visible
○ Category panes
○ Updated editable areas
21. Ignition 8.1 Highlights
Scripting
● Since 8.1, we’ve added a whole lot of features to make
writing scripts easier, but more importantly faster.
● Features in the past few versions of Ignition have been a
big leap forward in increasing development speed.
22. Ignition 8.1 Highlights
Scripting Highlights:
● Updated Script Editor
○ New interface and features including find-and-replace, code
folding, and visible whitespace
● Autocomplete
○ Gives hints for project library scripts
○ Customizable scope for hints
● Scheduled Scripting Events
○ Trigger an event to execute repeatedly on a specified schedule
● Dock Configuration
○ Can alter dock configuration on the fly
24. Ignition 8.1 Highlights
Supporting Technology Changes
● Ignition’s feature set is improving all the time.
● Underlying changes to some of Ignition’s supported
protocols and subsystems.
25. Ignition 8.1 Highlights
Data Collection Highlights:
● Authentication Challenge
○ Operators can document supervisor approval without logging out
● Cache and Share
○ Consolidates identical polling tasks to optimize data queries
● Third-Party OPC UA Support
○ Supports OPC UA redundancy for third-party clients
● Project Update
○ Built-in parameters report what changed in a project and who was
responsible - For version control support and advanced auditing
27. Inductive Automation’s Upgrade Philosophy
Ignition is Improving All the Time
● We invite your feedback about what you’d like to see in upcoming
releases.
● https://ideas.inductiveautomation.com/ignition-features-and-ideas
28.
29.
30.
31. International Distributors
Australia iControls Pty Ltd. www.icontrols.com.au
Brazil FG Automação Industrial www.fgltda.com.br
Central America NV Tecnologías S.A. www.nvtecnologias.com
France AXONE-iO www.axone-io.com
Italy EFA Automazione S.p.A www.efa.it
Norway Autic System AS www.autic.no
South Africa Element8 https://element8.co.za/
Switzerland MPI Technologies https://mpi.ch/
Contact International Distribution Manager Annie Wise at: awise@inductiveautomation.com
Notas do Editor
[DON]
Hello!
Welcome to today’s webinar: “New Ignition Features in Action”. It’s going to be a fun one.
[DON] My name is Don Pearson. I’m the Chief Strategy Officer for Inductive Automation, and I’ll be moderating this webinar.
With me today are Kevin McClusky, who is one of the Co-Directors of Sales Engineering at Inductive, and Matthew Raybourn, a Sales Engineer at Inductive.
Kevin, could you please tell us about a little more about yourself?
[KEVIN TALKS]
Thank you, Kevin. Now, Matt, could you please tell us about a little more about yourself?
[DON] Thanks, it’s great to have you both here.
Here’s the agenda for the webinar. Today’s focus is on new Ignition features, so for anyone who’s unfamiliar, I’ll quickly tell you about our software platform, Ignition.
Then we’ll briefly discuss Inductive Automation’s Upgrade Philosophy, which is a little different than most organizations.
That will lead us into talking about the release train.
Then we’ll get to the main section of the webinar: new feature highlights since the release of Ignition 8.1 back in Fall of 2020.
After that, we’ll wrap up with some Audience Q&A.
If you have questions during the presentation, type them into the Questions area of the GoToWebinar control panel, and we’ll answer as many questions as we can at the end of the webinar. If we can’t get to your question in time, we encourage you to reach out and one of our talented sales engineers can help answer it.
And to answer one question preemptively, a recording of this webinar will be made available within the next couple of days.
For those who don’t know, here’s a little background about our software platform, Ignition.
Ignition is a universal industrial application platform for HMI, SCADA, MES & IIoT.
Ignition is used by 57% of the Fortune 100, and the latest version is Ignition 8.1.19.
Ignition has an unlimited licensing model,
Cross-platform compatibility,
IT-standard technologies,
And a scalable server-client architecture.
It’s web-based and web-managed,
With a web-deployed designer & clients,
Modular configurability,
And, rapid development & deployment tools.
[DON] So, if there’s one thing to get from today’s webinar, it’s that Ignition is improving all the time.
Instead of the more traditional schedule of one big release every few years, Ignition is constantly evolving through smaller upgrades in between the larger releases.
And many features and changes that we implement into Ignition come directly from the feedback we get from Ignition community.
That open line of communication means that even smaller upgrades can have large impacts because they directly address the wants and needs of the Ignition community.
Kevin and Matthew, you both have a unique perspective on this in that you’ve seen how some of these smaller updates become huge, powerful additions. Can you speak on that a little?
Kevin, we’ll start with you and then go to Matt.
[DON] It was important to us to establish a cadence for these smaller updates and we call that the release train.
About every 5 weeks, we introduce a new version of Ignition with updated features, updates, and improvements.
Since the release of Ignition 8.1, so up through Ignition 8.1.19 which will be released today, there has been over 170 new features added to the platform.
With each new release, we publish a blog post outlining the most critical upgrades, along with release notes that go into even more detail.
Now I’ll hand things over to Kevin to explore some of the highlights since the release of Ignition 8.1.
[KEVIN] Thanks Don.
We realized that some of you might be a little bit new to Ignition too, so we thought we’d take just a minute to orient those newer folks to Ignition in general.
[KEVIN]
[KEVIN]
[KEVIN]
[MATT] - Quick Demo of demo.ia.io if it’s up.
[KEVIN]
[KEVIN]
[KEVIN]
As Don mentioned, we had over 170 updates to choose from so we’ve grouped the highlights into four categories.
The first category of Ignition that we’ll talk about today is visualization, more specifically the ability to more easily and dynamically change the look and feel of a project as well as add new functionality through visual elements.
This is area that has gotten a lot of attention since the release of 8.1
Now let’s take a look at some of the visualization highlights up through Ignition 8.1.19:
the Equipment Schedule Component can create and view schedules for specific equipment
Perspective Pipes is a new innovative tool for drawing pipes in Perspective
Not all countries document numbers the same way so we developed Numerical Locale Support to automatically format numbers in charts based on session locale
A dropdown selector for Themes lets operators simply select custom themes from a simple menu in the Designer. A basic example would be switching between light and dark mode, but it can also switch between any custom theme you build for your project
GeoJSON support has been expanded, including more style options, allowing you create more custom map overlays
the Split Container is an all-new container type, which contains two child elements that can be divided by a user-adjustable slider, giving the user an intuitive way to adjust their screen’s layout
and finally, this one isn’t visualization, it’s a gateway tool. The Metrics Dashboard lets you drag and drop pre-defined metrics to build out a custom dashboard
Now let’s take a look at some of these features in action. Over to you, Matthew.
[Demo]
[KEVIN] As many of you probably know, Ignition comes with a built-in design environment, which means that the improvements we make to the platform aren’t only meant to help operators on the plant floor, they’re also for accelerating the development process beyond scripting.
This first highlight, the Tag Report Tool, is one of the big improvements we made in 8.1.19. There are plenty of Ignition systems with well over hundreds of thousands of tags, so searching for a particular set of tags could take the better part of a day. But now, the Tag Report Tool allows you to generate report for all tags on a system that meet specific criteria.
With the addition of the tooltips feature in Perspective, you can add tooltips to any object, and this includes supplying custom text with customizable styling
Another update in 8.1.19 is "resource documentation" now applies to all resources. Previously only query and report resources had this documentation
Each driver now includes standard diagnostic tags
We’ve also improved the Tag Editor in a couple of ways.
The new Tag Editor now requires fewer clicks and keeps relevant Tag information visible while modifying bindings, alarms, and event scripts.
Category panes group related items together, making it easier to find and focus on specific properties
Editable areas also received updates, including Alarms and Scripting, which now open alongside the categories pane instead of taking over the entire editor window
Matthew, can you show us how some of these updates work?
[Demo]
[KEVIN] One of the great things about Ignition is that if you don’t want to, you don’t need to do much scripting. That being said, there are plenty of integrators and controls engineers who love to write custom scripts as a way to increase their system’s functionality. Since 8.1, we’ve added a whole lot of features to make writing scripts easier, but more importantly faster.
A few of the new features from the past few versions of Ignition have been a big leap forward in increasing development speed.
We’ve also redesigned the Script Editor. Now it has a new interface and features including find-and-replace, code folding, and visible whitespace, which we’ll demonstrate in a second.
The new Autocomplete function gives hints for project library scripts while you’re scripting. So no more looking up specific scripts in the user manual. On top of that, your custom script libraries and functions are also included in the Autocomplete system
Scheduled Scripting Events is pretty self-explanatory and can be quite useful. It triggers scripting events to execute repeatedly on a specified schedule
You can now alter dock configuration on the fly using a new system function.
Matthew, let’s see how some of these features work.
[Demo]
[KEVIN]
The Authentication Challenge is a big deal for systems in 21 CFR Part 11-regulated industries. What it does is use IdPs to allow operators to document supervisor approval without having to log out. The supervisor can log in and sign off that a process has been completed correctly without disrupting the operators’ session.
The Cache and Share function consolidates identical polling tasks to optimize data queries
We’ve added Third-Party OPC UA Support for redundancy with third-party clients
There are also new Project Update parameters that are built-in to the Gateway project update event. When a project is updated, the parameters report what changed in a project and who was responsible
Now I’ll hand it over to Matthew for one last demo.
[Demo]
[KEVIN] Like Don said at the beginning of the webinar, Ignition is improving all the time.
Ignition 8.1.19 was released this week and we’re already hard at work on Ignition 8.1.20.
We invite your feedback about what you’d like to see in upcoming releases and you can do that by going to ideas.inductiveautomation.com/ignition-features-and-ideas
And with that, I’ll hand it back over to DON
[DON] Thank you, Kevin and Matt.
If you’ve watched this demonstration and never tried Ignition for yourself, you can download the most recent full version of Ignition, Ignition 8.1.19 right now.
It only takes about 3 minutes to download, then you can use it in trial mode for as long as you want – absolutely free.
[DON] Once you download Ignition, we’ve got a free, online training website called Inductive University, where you can learn all about how to use Ignition.
We’ve got hundreds of free training videos there, so you can learn Ignition step-by-step at your own pace.
We’ve also got a comprehensive Online User Manual that you can refer to at anytime.
[DON] Inductive Automation will be hosting the Ignition Community Conference, but this year we’re giving you two ways to attend. You can attend the live in-person event in Folsom, CA on September 20th & 21st and/or virtually on October 3rd–5th. The virtual event will include exclusive workshops for those of you who want some technical training on more complex topics.
There’s still time to register for both the in-person and virtual events.
Visit icc.inductiveautomation.com for more information on the conference schedule, speakers, and anything else you might want to know.
[DON] For those of you outside of North America, we want you to know that we have a network of international Ignition distributors who provide business development opportunities and sales & technical support in your language and time zone.
For learn about the distributor in your region, please visit their website, or contact Annie Wise.
If you’d like to speak with one of our account executives here at our headquarters in California, please call 1-800-266-7798.
Now, let’s get to your questions!
Made-up Seed Questions:
“When should we expect to get Ignition 8.2?” (Answer: Coming to ICC is the best way to find out about that.)
“Is Ignition 7.9 still supported?” (Answer: We have continued to support 7.9 and just released 7.9.21, but support will end soon, so if you’re still using 7.9 we recommend that you upgrade as soon as possible.)
When did Inductive starts using the release-train strategy? (Answer: It started with Ignition 8.0 in 2019.)
Is the Tag Report tool available outside the Designer? (Answer: Yes, there is a new script function associated with it that can be used to expose that kind of functionality outside the Designer.)
Real Questions from Marketo:
“Will you improve the drawings tools for Perspective? Like: Circle, Lines, Snap-To-Grid, Grouping, Layering, Automatic text sizing in Label.”
“What's the best way to setup an Ignition HMI that continues to operate even if communication with Ignition Server is lost?”
“Are there any new cloud solutions for Ignition?”
“Are there any advanced data analytics solutions built in to Ignition?”
“Are there any new mobile viewing solutions for HMI?”
“Will we see any DevOps integrations making its way into the designer, like git native integration, JIRA, Slack, or even external code editors?”
Thanks for joining us!
We’ll be back next month with another webinar. Don’t miss it!
Until then, get all of our latest updates on social media and our weekly News Feed email.
Bye for now. Have a great day!