Historian Administrator

Introduction to Historian Administrator

The Historian Administrator is a Windows-based application, which allows you to access administrative functions. Using Historian Administrator, you can monitor, supervise, archive, retrieve, and control data gathering functions from the server, a client, or one or more remote non-web-based nodes.

Note: You can install multiple instances of Historian Administrator. Changes that you make to parameters on one instance are not automatically updated in other instances.

Historian Administrator communicates with the Historian server using the Historian API. You can install Historian Administrator on a local or a remote machine that has a TCP/IP connection to the Historian server.

Intended Audience

This guide is intended for people who need to:

Retrieve and analyze archived information.
Monitor Historian system performance.
Set up and maintain configuration and other parameters for tags, collectors, and archives.
Perform specific supervisory and security tasks for Historian.
Maintain and troubleshoot Historian.

About Historian Administrator

Using Historian Administrator, you can:

Examine key operating statistics for archives and collectors, and display or search system alerts and messages.
Perform archive maintenance, including:
- Setting archive size.
- Selecting options and parameters.
- Accessing security parameters.
- Adding and restoring archives.
- Performing backup and restoration tasks
Perform tag maintenance, including:
- Adding, deleting, and copying tags.
- Searching for tags in a data source or in the Historian database.
- Starting and stopping data collection for a tag.
- Configuring, displaying, and editing tag parameters and options.
- Displaying trend data for selected tags.
Perform collector maintenance, including:
- Adding or deleting collectors.
- Configuring, displaying, and editing parameters for all types of collectors.
- Creating calculation formulas.
- Displaying performance trends for selected collectors.

Limitations

If the number of archives is large (that is, more than 5,000), Historian Administrator takes a long time to start.

Access Historian Administrator

Before you begin

Install Historian Administrator (available under Client Tools).
Create a Windows user on the Historian server.
Use a page with a resolution of 1024 x 768 or above.

Procedure

From the Start menu, select Historian Administrator.

Note: By default, The system attempts to connect to the default server using the username and password of the currently logged-in user. If you want to use a different server or user account:

Select Main.
A login window appears.
Provide the server name, username, password, and domain information, and then select OK.

The Proficy Historian Administrator window appears, displaying the following pages.

System Statistics: Contains system status indicators, data collector performance indicators, system alerts and messages, with links to the data store maintenance, collector maintenance, tag maintenance, message search, and help pages.
Tag Maintenance: Contains tag names, parameters, and controls.
Collector Maintenance: Contains collector names, parameters, and controls.
Data Store Maintenance: Contains archive names, parameters, alarms, security, and controls.
Message Search: Contains alerts and messages selected by user-defined search parameters.

Historian in a Regulated Environment

Many FDA-regulated industries are required by the United States government to be compliant with regulations such as the 21CFR Part 11 regulation. If your industry is one of them, you will need software that allows you to build a compliant application or process. The flexibility and versatility of Historian lets you create a compliant process by:

Providing limited system access to authorized individuals.
Adding a timestamp to annotations, and displaying timestamps from the Historian archive.
Requiring electronic signatures on annotations.
Note: This option is available if the Electronic Signatures/Records option is enabled in the Historian Server.
Supporting human-readable printouts and computer-readable format for audits (by exporting data to a CSV file that can be imported to a Microsoft Excel document or an SQL database).

Disabling Guest Accounts for a 21 CFR Part 11-Compliant Environment

If you want to use Historian in a 21 CFR Part 11-compliant environment, make sure that you disable guest accounts on your computer. This action applies whether or not you use Historian security.

Compliant Parameter Settings

You can set the following 21 CFR 11-compliant parameters in the Security section of the Data Store page.


Field	Description
Require Point Verification	Indicates whether you must enter identifying information whenever you attempt a restricted action. Whenever you attempt to change the system configuration (for the tag, archive, or collector), a tag value, or another record, you must electronically sign the action with a username and password. If the user is authorized to make this change, the identity of the person, the action performed, and the time it was performed, are all recorded in the audit trail. Note: The audit features are not dependent on this feature being enabled. Historian audits all user actions regardless of whether this option is enabled. If you plan to create multiple archives at the same time, select the Disabled option. Enabling electronic signatures and electronic records also requires you to reverify your identity when you use the Historian Excel add-in, modify or create a tag, or import data or messages. Note: This feature is available only if you have purchased the Electronic Signatures and Electronic Records option.
Verification Message	When point verification is enabled, you are prompted to enter the username and password whenever you attempt to perform an action specified as requiring point verification.