External Systems

Overview

This chapter records the systems outside the PI System that feed PI Points or receive their data, such as OPC servers, ERP or MES, so that issues and dependency graphs name the source, the owner and the runbook. Users work with them as described in External Systems in the User Guide.

An External System is documentation only. PI Nexus+ stores no credentials for it and never tests whether it is online; its health is derived from the PI Points linked to it.

Add an External System

1. Open Admin > External Systems and choose Add External System.
2. Enter the Name used in your plant, for example OPC Production Interface, and choose the closest System Type.
3. Add a Description, the Support / Owner to contact when its PI Points are unhealthy, and an optional http or https Runbook URL.
4. Under Data Health, set As a Source and As a Target: how a missing, error or warning PI Point affects the system's health. Ignored keeps the point in the counts without degrading the system.
5. Optionally choose a color and an icon under Appearance.
6. Choose Add External System.

Policy changes apply at once, without a scan.

Link it to PI Points

Systems are linked to PI Points through the PI Point Rule that owns them, once for the whole group of tags.

1. Open Admin > PI Point Rules and choose Edit for the rule whose match selects the points.
2. Open the Data Flow tab.
3. Choose the system in Select external system and Add under Sources if it feeds data into PI, or under Targets if it receives data from PI. A system can be in both.
4. Optionally add a Connection label, such as OPC DA or PI Integrator export.
5. Choose Save Changes.

New links appear at once for points the rule already owns. A curated source replaces the InstrumentTag source PI Nexus+ infers for a point; removing all curated sources brings the inferred source back.

Archive or delete a system

1. Remove the system from every rule's Data Flow tab. Archive stays unavailable while the Assignments column is above 0.
2. In the system's row menu, choose Archive. Tick Show archived to see archived systems; Restore brings one back.
3. To remove an archived system for good, choose Delete permanently and type its name to confirm. This deletes its issues and issue suppressions too, but no PI Point inventory.

Reference: External System Settings