AVEVA™ Plant SCADA 2023

ReadMe

(Updated 07/10/2022)

Please refer to the Plant SCADA 2023 Installation and Configuration Guide for information on the installation of the product and the upgrade process for existing projects.

What's in this Document?

1.    Disclaimers

2.    Features

3.    Known Issues

4.    Requirements

5.    Operational Notes

 

1. Disclaimers

1.1. Disclaimer of All Warranties

As detailed in paragraph 9 of the End User Licence Agreement, AVEVA GROUP PLC excludes all warranties and liabilities to the fullest extent permitted by law.

AVEVATM PLANT SCADA and all documentation are provided "AS IS" and your company understands that it assumes all risks pertaining to your use of AVEVATM PLANT SCADA.

YOUR COMPANY AGREES AND ACKNOWLEDGES THAT AVEVA GROUP PLC SHALL HAVE NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER TO YOUR COMPANY FOR ANY PROBLEMS IN OR CAUSED BY AVEVATM PLANT SCADA OR THE RELATED DOCUMENTATION, WHETHER DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL (INCLUDING LOSS OF PROFITS).

  

2. Features

The following features have been added to Plant SCADA 2023.

2.1    AVEVA™ Enterprise Licensing

AVEVA Enterprise Licensing (AEL) is now fully integrated for use with Plant SCADA 2023. AEL is a common platform solution that allows you to manage AVEVA Enterprise Software product licenses.

The AEL system is comprised of a browser-based License Manager and a License Server that allow you to share and deliver licenses to installed AVEVA applications. This distributed architecture enables centralized management of activated licenses and flexible topologies that support systems of any size.

AVEVA Enterprise Licensing is required if you intend to use AVEVA Industrial Graphics.

Note: With this release, Schneider Electric's Floating License Manager is no longer supported by Plant SCADA. Existing users of the Floating License Manager will need to migrate their systems to AVEVA Enterprise Licensing. 

 

2.2    Add Web Content to a Graphics Page

Plant SCADA now allows you to incorporate modern web-based content in your runtime system. This is achieved by adding a Web Content object to a page in Graphics Builder, replacing the need to use the Microsoft IE-based Web Browser ActiveX control. Each instance of a Web Content object has a URL property that allows you to specify the content that is displayed when the host graphics page is launched at runtime.

 

2.3    Configuration Parameters Database for Equipment Types

In Plant SCADA 2023, "configuration parameters" replace "custom parameters" for Equipment Types.

Configuration parameters provide the same functionality as custom parameters. They can be used to represent specific information about a physical piece of equipment, such as a set point or delay setting. However, they are now stored in a dedicated configuration parameters database. This means you will no longer be restricted by a 256-character limitation, providing greater flexibility if you need to add multiple parameters.

Only Equipment Types created in Plant SCADA 2023 (or later) will make use of the new database. You can identify one of these new Equipment Types via the following version "2.0" label in the source XML:

<template version="2.0" desc="Equipment template">

Note: This change requires any existing equipment types to be migrated to a new format. If Plant SCADA detects any version 1.0 equipment types, a dialog will appear asking if you want to migrate them. The Migration Tool now has a "Migrate equipment database, types and parameters" option to support this. See the topic Migrate Custom Parameters to the Configuration Parameters Database in the Plant SCADA documentation for more information.

 

2.4    Tag Writes Enabled for Industrial Graphics Applications

You can now write to Plant SCADA tags and equipment.items directly from Industrial Graphics applications. This involves the following changes to Plant SCADA:

·        The "Industrial Graphics R/W Users" security role is now enabled on any computer hosting an Industrial Graphics Server. It is used to manage access for client application users that require read/write access to a Plant SCADA runtime system.

·        Variable tags now include a Write Roles property that is used to enable writes for users from specific Plant SCADA roles. The current user of an Industrial Graphics application needs to be associated with the role specified in this property to write to a variable tag.

 

2.5    Tag Writes Enabled for OPC UA Client Applications

You can now write to Plant SCADA tags directly from an OPC UA client application connected to a Plant SCADA OPCUA Server.

To do this, you need to set the Write Roles property for each variable tag that will have writes enabled. The Property Grid allows you to select one of the roles configured in your Plant SCADA project, or you can manually enter a comma-separated list to include multiple roles.

To write to a variable tag, the user that is currently logged in to the OPCUA client application needs to be part of a Windows™ domain group that is associated with the role specified in the Write Roles property.

 

2.6    Alarm filtering performance improvements

The performance of filtering operations on the Sequence of Events and Alarm Summary pages has been improved. Queries that return a small number of alarm records from a large alarm database will see the greatest performance improvement. For example, filtering alarms that have occurred on a single piece of equipment.

 

2.7    Unique IDs for Variables

A unique ID is now applied to each of the variable tags in a Plant SCADA project to provide consistent identification over the lifetime of the tag. The unique IDs are Global Unique Identifiers that are generated by Plant SCADA whenever tags are added to a project. These IDs will be utilized by features in future releases. The Migration Tool has a new option to automatically add IDs to any existing project.

 

2.8    Unique IDs for Projects

With the release of Plant SCADA 2023, unique IDs are now applied to each Plant SCADA project. This provides consistent identification across the lifetime of a project.

Each unique IDs is a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) generated by Plant SCADA. The project IDs were introduced to provide consistent identification for integration with future software releases.

 

2.9    Debug Cicode without Compiling

To start a debugging session without the project being recompiled, you can use Start Debugging Without Compile to quickly start debugging your Cicode.

The Start Debugging Without Compile option can be selected from Cicode Editor's Debug menu.

 

2.10    Plant SCADA Studio user interface update

The colors, buttons and other elements used for the Plant SCADA Studio interface have been changed to provide more efficient workflows and a common look-and-feel across AVEVA's products.

 

2.11    Microsoft® Windows 11 and Server 2022 Support

Bring applications forward onto the latest operating systems from Microsoft.

 


Note: The following features are no longer supported with the release of Plant SCADA 2023.

 • Schneider Electric's Floating License Manager is no longer supported by Plant SCADA.

 • Plant SCADA's legacy Active X Web Client is no longer supported.

 

3. Known Issues

The AVEVA Plant SCADA 2023 release includes the following Known Issues.

3.1. Licensing

3.1.1.     AVEVA Enterprise Licensing standalone installer does not run

Running the standalone installer for AVEVA Enterprise Licensing will produce an error message. AVEVA Enterprise Licensing components can only be installed via the Plant SCADA installer.

 

3.1.2.     AVEVA Enterprise Licensing does not support host licenses in RDS environments

The acquisition of a local license by setting the command switch /o or the citect.ini [Client]UseLocalLicense=1 is not supported when using AVEVA Enterprise Licensing. Instead the /x client in RDS environments will need to acquire a license from the AVEVA Enterprise Licensing server directly.

 

3.1.3.    Offline activation of AVEVA Enterprise licenses

To activate a license for a computer that does not have access to AVEVA’s activation server, you need to follow the procedure described in the topic Activating Licenses in Offline Mode in the AVEVA™ Enterprise License Manager User Guide (accessible from the AVEVA branch of the Windows Start Menu). Be aware of the following:

·        A valid AVEVA Knowledge & Support Center account is required to access the license activation web page.

·        When navigating to License Activation, please click on the “Wonderware” tile to access the license activation portal (https://licenseactivation.wonderware.com/) to complete the request and response transaction as per the instructions in the License Manager User Guide.

 

3.1.4.    Industrial Graphics Server and device reservation

If you are using AVEVA Enterprise Licensing device reservation for a computer that hosts an Industrial Graphics Server, you need to use the Checkout feature. Be aware, however, that you should shut down the AVEVA Industrial Graphics Service before you remove a checkout for a computer. 

 

3.1.5.    Licenses are not released following shutdown

In some cases, an AVEVA Enterprise License may not be released by a computer that has shutdown unexpectedly or is currently inaccessible. If this occurs, you can use the "drop device" operation in AVEVA License Manager to release licenses. For more information, see Dropping Devices in the Enterprise License Manager User Guide, available from the AVEVA branch of the Windows Start menu.  

 

3.2. Deployment

3.2.1.    Reconfiguration of Deployment

The deployment architecture installed with Plant SCADA 2023 is no longer compatible with deployment servers running an earlier version. This means:

·        You cannot use Plant SCADA to add projects to a deployment server that is running a different version of Plant SCADA.

·        You cannot deploy a project from a deployment server to a deployment client if they are running different versions of Plant SCADA.

If you have a distributed system that includes some computers on an earlier version of Plant SCADA, you should retain your existing deployment server to distribute projects to these computers until the roll out of 2023 is complete. You will also need to configure a new deployment server to deploy 2023 projects to any upgraded computers. See the topic Upgrade Deployment for Plant SCADA 2023 in the documentation for more information.

 

3.2.2.     Changes to the System Management Server port after a Deployment Server and Client have been configured

The Deployment Client, Deployment Server and the System Management Server use port sharing. This allows all these services to use the same default https port number (443).

After configuring these services, we recommend you not to change the port. If you need to do this, then perform the following steps:

1.   On the Advanced Settings page of Configurator’s System Management Server plugin, change the port number on the Ports tab.

2.   Click on Configure button to configure SMS with the new port.

3.    Restart Configurator.

4.   Stop the Deployment Server and Deployment Client services.

5.   Delete the following files from the default location “%PROGRAMDATA%\AVEVA Plant SCADA 2023\Config", or from the location specified during installation.

o    SE.Asb.Deployment.Node.WindowsService.exe.config

o    SE.Asb.Deployment.Server.WindowsService.exe.config

6.   Launch the Configurator.

7.   Reconfigure the Deployment Server and Deployment Client using the “Configure…” option. The Deployment Server and Deployment Client services will start up without any error messages.

8.   If you have also changed the HTTP port, then restart the connectivity service.

9.   Launch Plant SCADA Studio.

10.  In the Settings view of the Deployment activity, add a Deployment Server with the new port number and make it active.

11.  Log in to the Deployment Server and delete the computer that belongs to the old port. The status of that computer will be "Offline".

All deployment activities will now work with the new System Management Server port.

 

3.3. AVEVA Industrial Graphics

3.3.1.    Industrial Graphics alarm border animation not supported

The Alarm Border Animation will not be supported by Plant SCADA 2023.

 

3.3.2.    Industrial Graphics Web Client does not display data if the browser’s Duplicate Tab function is used

The Duplicate Tab function is not supported by Industrial Graphics. If you want to duplicate a tab, you must manually create a new tab and copy the URL into the new tab’s address bar.

 

3.3.3.    Industrial Graphics Web Client does not login when opened in an incognito/private web browsing tab

When trying to open the https://<yourcomputer>/aig in a private browsing mode (for example, Incognito in Chrome), the home page will not display and become stuck in a login progress loop. Please use a standard browser tab.

 

3.3.4.    Industrial Graphics Styles dialog in Plant SCADA Studio has some fields truncated/overlapping

The Styles dialog does not support High DPI settings. You will need to reduce your OS scaling to 100% for the dialog to present and function correctly.

 

3.3.5.     Industrial Graphics Web Client page may go blank after refresh

If an Industrial Graphics Web Client page goes blank after a refresh, resize the browser window to make the content reappear.

 

3.3.6.     Misconfigured user roles within your Plant SCADA project may allow an unauthorized user to view data in Industrial Graphics clients

This scenario can occur if a user on the Industrial Graphics Server is a member of either of the Industrial Graphics roles ("Industrial Graphics Users" or "Industrial Graphics R/W Users") but is not a member of a security role in the project. If you restart the "AVEVA Plant SCADA Connectivity Service", this may allow a user that is logged in to an Industrial Graphics client to view data when unauthorized to do so. This scenario is considered to be a misconfiguration.

To avoid this issue, ensure that:

·         All users and user groups that are members of either the "Industrial Graphics Users" or "Industrial Graphics R/W Users" roles are also valid members of a security role within your Plant SCADA project.

·         Always restart the "AVEVA Industrial Graphics Service" after restarting the "AVEVA Plant SCADA Connectivity Service".

 

3.3.7.     Changes to the System Management Server port after the Authentication Settings have been configured

After configuring the Authentication Settings for an Industrial Graphics Server, we recommend you do not change the System Management Server port. If you need to do this, then perform the following steps:

1.    On the Advanced Settings page of Configurator’s System Management Server plugin, change the port number on the Ports tab.

2.    Click on Configure button to configure the SMS with the new port.

3.    Restart Configurator.

4.    Reconfigure the Authentication Settings for the Industrial Graphics Server in Configurator.

Using the new System Management Server port, you can now launch the Industrial Graphics Web Client using the fully qualified domain name (for example: https://myaigserver.mydomain.com:425/aig).

 

3.4. AVEVA Industrial Graphics and OPC UA Connectivity Issues

3.4.1.     OPC UA Server Enable Encryption/Anonymous Access settings

The Plant SCADA OPC UA Server will not operate if both the Enable Encryption and Allow Anonymous Access options are disabled.

 

3.4.2.     OPC UA and Industrial Graphics Server tag limitations

Alarm Properties as Tags are not supported by an OPC UA Server or an Industrial Graphics Server.

 

3.4.3.     Importing tags from a different Plant SCADA OPC UA is slower than expected

Importing tags in Plant SCADA Studio via OPC UA from a different Plant SCADA system may be slower than expected.

 

3.4.4.     Date/Time format is fixed in some log messages

In the aaLogger, the “ValidTo” field for Authenticate User log messages for the component “Citect.Connectivity.Server” component is in the fixed time format:
“m/dd/yyyy h:mm:ss TT”.

 

3.5. General Issues

3.5.1.    Changing Security Roles requires manual service stop/start

When attempting to change the groups assigned to a security role, the Configurator will report “security roles could not be updated as one or more processes are running”.

When this error message is displayed in the Configurator, you can double-click on it to see all the applications that need to be manually closed and started, and all the services that need to be restarted.

 

3.5.2.     Localised versions of Plant SCADA 2023

The Industrial Graphics Editor (and its associated Styles and Languages dialogs) are only available in English, French, German, Simplified Chinese and Japanese. Using Plant SCADA Studio in Russian, Portuguese, Korean, Italian and Spanish will display in English instead.

 

3.5.3.     Configurator pages may be unresponsive when initially opened

Configurator displays the AVEVA Enterprise License Server page by default when opened. If you quickly navigate to a different page, the destination page may remain unresponsive until the AVEVA Enterprise License Server page is fully loaded.

 

3.5.4.     Plant SCADA Driver installation results in the message "Cannot load DLL 'kernel32.dll'"

This may occur if you have "Cisco AMP for Endpoints" enabled on your computer. To work around this, copy the Plant SCADA installation media to your desktop or a local folder and run the Plant SCADA installer from there.

 

3.5.5.     BACnet tags are imported with incorrect names

The import tags functionality for BACnet devices may produce incorrect tag names for imported objects. This can occur when the "Use object name as Tag Name" option is checked on the BACnet Device Configuration dialog. This will be addressed with the next update of the BACnet driver.

 

3.5.6.     Clicking Restart Later during .NET 4.8 installation will cancel install

During the installation of .NET 4.8, if the user selects Restart Later it will cancel the installation. This will cause the installation of Plant SCADA to also cancel as a required pre-requisite is not installed. It is recommended that you restart your computer when prompted.

 

3.5.7.     Deployment Server can be configured even though the System Management Server icon in Configurator indicates it is "Not Configured"

After uninstalling and re-installing Platform Common Services on a computer that has been configured as a System Management Server, the icon in Configurator for the System Management Server will indicate it is "Not Configured".

If you also want to configure the deployment server on this same computer, then you will be able to successfully configure the deployment server even though the System Management Server is showing "Not Configured". However, to ensure that your system functions correctly, ensure that you re-configure the computer as a System Management Server.

 

3.5.8.    The CtAPI function CtClose may time out when connected to server running Citect SCADA 2018 R2 (8.20)

A timeout delay can occur when closing a CtAPI connection if you have connected to a CtAPI server running Citect SCADA 2018 R2 (8.20) or earlier and the connection was opened with CT_OPEN_RECONNECT mode. Under these circumstances, when you attempt to close the connection using CtClose function, the call will be blocked for approximately five minutes until it times out.

 

 

4. Requirements

4.1. Software

The following operating systems are supported (64-bit only):

·         Windows® Server 2022

·         Windows® Server 2019

·         Windows® Server 2016

·         Windows® 11

·         Windows® 10 build 20H2 or later

·         Windows® 10 LTSC build 1607 or later

 

Notes:

·         Microsoft™ .NET Framework 4.8 is required (installed with Plant SCADA if not detected).

·         Internet Explorer® is not supported by the Industrial Graphics Web Client.

 

4.2. Hardware

The hardware requirements for a Plant SCADA computer are dependent upon the role the computer will play in your SCADA system. See the hardware requirements for a particular type of installation in the Plant SCADA Installation and Configuration Guide.

 

5. Operational Notes

5.1. Update pages has changed

The Update Pages process changed in Plant SCADA 2018. The ability to toggle "Fast Update Pages" from within Graphics Builder has been deprecated. Update Pages only supports incremental updating of graphics. It is recommended that you do not delete pg*.dbf/ndx files. You should instead use the Pack command in Plant SCADA Studio regularly to ensure the database files are optimized. If you do delete these files, or replace them with empty files, you will need to use the Graphics Builder Automation Interface to Open and Save each page individually in your project(s) to rebuild the expression data into those files. The Pack Libraries command should also be used regularly to keep your graphic library files optimized, especially if you are using Composite Genies.

5.2. Version Control recommendations

If you wish to add your project(s) to a version control system, it is recommended that you use a system that can efficiently store binary files. Do not directly add the project folder under the Plant SCADA User folder to version control. Instead, you should create a copy of your project hierarchy under a different folder and use a third-party comparison tool to determine which files have changed after a set of modifications. It is also recommended that you only add configuration files to version control, not runtime files and other compiler-generated files. For more information, refer to document ID TN000025393 on the AVEVA Knowledge and Support Center (https://softwaresupport.aveva.com/).

5.3. Driver Classifications

As part of an ongoing effort to set clear expectations and provide better support to our customers, we have introduced a classification system for our driver portfolio to communicate the level of ongoing maintenance and version updates that customers can reasonably expect. These classifications and status of each driver can be found online at https://gcsresource.aveva.com/PlantSCADA/Drivers/.

In line with these classifications, we have limited the number of drivers included by default on the Plant SCADA installation media to a reduced set of ‘core’ drivers that have undergone recent updates, however all other drivers continue to be available for download from the AVEVA Knowledge & Support Center at https://softwaresupport.aveva.com/. It is recommended that you visit on a regular basis and subscribe to the forum so that you are alerted to any updates that occur.