Operations Hub Release Notes

This topic provides a list of product changes in Operations Hub for this release.

Version: 2.1

Table 1. Enhancements and New Features

The following enhancements and new features have been added.

Description Tracking IDs
Added these features to the Trend Card widget:
  • Introduced the option to trend historical data using ???Now??? (current time) and go back in time to view past trends. Previously in the trend charts, ???start time plus duration??? was employed instead of ???end time minus duration???, which led to missing trends. The ???Now??? enabled charts can be saved to favorites to reload later.
  • Enabled to select a favorite trend chart during designing the application. The selected favorite loads by default in the end application.
  • Added the ability to have a common Y-axis for all the tags/sources trending on the chart.
  • Allowed for configuring a default sampling mode from the available modes during designing the application.
F58643

F54465

F60413

F60129

Provided support for working with alarms in Operations Hub: F49616, F49617
Provided support for working with mimics in Operations Hub: F49619
Introduced the Indicator widget. It contains several options (Analog, Status, and Image), which supports the plugin features released with Operations Hub 2.0. This widget will appear under the Integration > General group in the Designer. All integrated plugins cannot be deleted.

Included the CIMPLICITY HMI Webspace widget for this release.

F58211
Added two new widgets - Solid Gauge and Timeline. F60615, F60534
Support for installing both Operations Hub and Historian on the same box. F58922
Table 2. Known Issues and Limitations

The following known issues and limitations exist.

Description Tracking ID
When you save a favorite in a trend chart, if you include a special character in the name, the error message that appears does not specify the issue. DE123967
In a trend chart, if you add a tag that is identical to the one that is already plotted but the case of the tag name does not match the case of the tag name in Historian, a straight line appears in the trend chart. To resolve this issue, modify the tag name to match the case of the tag name in Historian. DE123833
During Operations Hub installation, when you provide the tenant user ID, the following conditions apply:
  • If you are installing Operations Hub for the first time, do not provide StudioAdmin as the tenant user ID because it is used by Operations Hub.
  • If you want to use a shared UAA to work with Operations Hub, do not provide the user ID of an existing user of the UAA instance. If you do so, the installation fails.
  • If you are installing Operations Hub after uninstalling it without purge, do not provide a tenant user ID that matches any previously used user ID (including any previously used tenant ID). This is because after you uninstall Operations Hub without purge, previous Operations Hub users (along with tenant administrators, their groups, and privilege assignments) still exist in the database.
DE123770
Some widgets, such as a table, do not work as expected when used with a REST query. In particular, features which require additional queries to fetch more data (such as pagination), as well as features limiting data (such as row limits) may not work. DE118883
When you create a data source, you can provide a certificate only in the base-64-encoded format. A DER-encoded certificate is not supported. DE116706
Operations Hub uses Kafka, which generates a large number of logs in the following location: C:\tmp\kafka-logs\. To avoid consuming too much space for these logs, we recommend that you periodically delete the logs, especially if the system has low disk space. N/A
If you encounter intermittent responsiveness issues with the Operations Hub runtime environment when using the Safari browser on your mobile device, it is recommended that you use the Chrome browser instead. DE131011
When adding environment variables to Windows System Variables, be aware that environment variables are case-sensitive. If your environment variables in Operations Hub do not match the case of the ones used by the target Historian Server, the data source will fail when tested. Be sure that you use the same case when configuring data sources in Operations Hub. A data source target in Operations Hub should match the case in the environment variables, as the variables are case-sensitive.

DE130896

Historian REST response time increases exponentially when there are over 30 users logged into Operations Hub accessing an End app that utilizes Historian REST queries. DE134904
When using Safari 13+ on iOS, trend card functionality like adding tags to the trend, favorites, and annotations perform inconsistently. The workaround is to use the Chrome browser on the iPad. DE136597, DE149433
If a Historian data point being trended transitions to a bad quality (such is the case when a collector goes down or loses communications), the trend card displays a flatline for the last known good value. If you experience one or more flatlines in your trends, and all the various requests from the same source, you should check the communication chain for an issue with Historian, a collector, or a SCADA driver, for instance. DE138128
There are currently some page printing issues. For instance, if you have iframe that spills over to a second page, that can cause an issue. DE146462
The uaa-provisioning.log file generates in a new folder if the location path provided during Operations Hub installation contains a space in it. For example, C:\Custom Logs. DE148827
As a workaround to address VC++ (x64) failure, follow these steps to install Task Client on Operations Hub 2.1.
  1. Uninstall the VC++ 2015-2019 Redistributable (x64) version installed with Operations Hub 2.1.
  2. Open the Workflow install media, navigate to the \Installers\Resources\Microsoft\2015_2019 folder, and run the vc_redist.x64.exe.
  3. Open the Services console dialog and restart these services:
    • GE Operations IQP PostgreSQL Database
    • GE Operations UAA PostgreSQL Database
  4. Install Workflow Task Client.
  5. Install the VC++ 2015-2019 Redistributable (x64) version that got installed with Operations Hub 2.1.
DE161643
If the Data Distributor service started at a time when the datasource was offline, reload the end application. DE158762
For REST connection, if you enter an IP address instead of the hostname in the Auth URL field, it results in a 404 error. You must add the IP address to the list of supported subdomains/zones. To do this:
  1. Browse to the location directory on the machine where Operations Hub is installed: ..\ProgramData\GE\Operations Hub\uaa-config
  2. Open the uaa.yml file in a text editor.
  3. Search for hostnames in the file, and enter the IP address.
  4. Save and close the file.
  5. Restart UAA for the changes to take effect.
DE153631
When importing a model containing a second CIMPLICITY namespace table, it overwrites the values in the first namespace table.

Workaround: Combine the server and namespace information from the two namespace tables into one namespace table, and then import the model again.

DE47669
The inline mimic write operations performed in Operations Hub are indicated as successful even if the entries did not meet the criteria of these CIMPLICITY attributes.
  • WARNING_LOW_N
  • WARNING_HIGH_N
  • ALARM_LOW_N
  • ALARM_HIGH_N

The values do not get updated to the CIMPLICITY point control panel.

DE156030
Error message does not appear when you perform a write operation on a CIMPLICITY tag value that is outside of a given range. DE157698
If you select Acknowledge All in Operations Hub to acknowledge 5000 iFIX alarms, an internal error occurs in the iFIX application. DE161742
Only a single instance of the CIMPLICITY HMI Webspace widget per app is supported. If using multiple instances of webspace widgets across multiple pages, you may encounter access error messages when navigating between pages that contain webspace instances. After confirming the message, the widget loads as expected.
The typeName parameter in the custom widget???s manifest.json file does not support special characters. DE162893
Table 3. Fixed Defects

The following fixed defects have been addressed with this version of Operations Hub.

Description Tracking ID
Data definition queries did not acknowledge a data source by its alias name. References were hard coded to the actual Historian or the OPCUA server, which resulted in loss of data if the data source name was changed. As a workaround, queries had to be rebuilt to recognize the changed data source name to make them work with widgets. Support for data source alias name resolves this issue.

To support data source aliasing, the SIM introduces a change in the format on how data sources are referenced in the extension queries. After the upgrade,

  • Newly created extension queries in Operations Hub 2.01 SIM 1 will reference data sources in the appropriate format.
  • For extension queries built in Operations Hub 2.0, resave the applications to automatically update the existing data source references to use the appropriate format.
DE146120
Added Proficy Workflow as a connection type. This fix allows Operations Hub to import model export files using Workflow 2.6 SP1 SIM3. Refer to Configure the Task Client for setup information. DE149749
Previously, acknowledging a session timeout dialog led to an expired or invalid license key page. This issue has been resolved. DE149966
Previously, the Base URL field was missing on opening a REST query page. This issue has been resolved. DE153796
Previously, app globals were not taking the flowInstanceId into consideration when dependencies were deleted. This issue has been resolved. DE154344
Previously on duplicating a page, app global bindings were lost. This issue has been resolved. DE153940
Previously on duplicating a page, system global bindings were lost. This issue has been resolved. DE151225
Custom widget bindings were lost after upgrading to a newer version or importing the app. This issue has been resolved. DE153791
Previously, the data source server was not updating data to the widgets. This issue has been resolved. DE154705
Previously, the IQP shadow user account was not getting created upon logging into the end application. This issue has been resolved. DE154014
Data source information was missing after upgrading from Operations Hub 2.0 to SIM3/SIM4 version. This issue has been resolved. DE156281
Previously, modifying globals did not allow to save the application. This issue has been resolved. DE156088
Previously, the test connection for a new data source failed with the message, "Failed to connect to the System API endpoint" even when the data source server was up and running. This issue has been resolved. DE154279
Previously, the auto-update requests from the client were not being sent to the server. As a result, the data from the data source was not getting populated to the widgets. This issue has been resolved. DE154653
Issues with copy/paste of widgets in an Operations Hub 2.0 Development Environment have been resolved. DE154604
Previously, it was not possible to run queries if an 'out of range' occurred on the page. This issue has been resolved. DE154628
Previously, SQL error triggered an 'Unknown Error' and locked the query. This issue has been resolved. DE154630
Previously, 'Error running an extension query' popped up occasionally. This issue has been resolved. DE156840
After upgrading from version 1.7 to 2.0, the export model feature stopped working. This issue has been resolved. DE154108
Successfully renamed apps retained their original name after reloading the browser. This issue has been resolved. DE156188
Widgets with inputs, which feed an entity query were not working properly. This issue has been resolved. DE157340
Previously, the OPC UA test connection failed with a ???Certificate Uri is Invalid' error if the URI specified in the UA SDK session call did not match with the URI in the certificate. This issue has been resolved.
If upgrading from Operations Hub 2.0 to 2.1, make sure to revert the changes made to the ServerConfig.xml file. Follow these steps:
  1. Go to C:\Program Files\GE\Operations hub\BrowseService.
  2. Open ServerConfig.xml and search for:
    <ServerUri>urn:<machine name in capital letters>:proficy:webhmi:dataservices</ServerUri>

    Replace <machine name in capital letters> with [NodeName].

  3. Save and close the XML file.
  4. Go to Operations Hub trusted store C:\ProgramData\GE\Operations Hub\pki\trusted\certs and delete the existing certificate.
  5. Visit your data sources and trust them all over again to reissue the certificate.
DE149878, DE149879
At runtime, when you mouseover a visualization widget (bar chart) after zooming in and moving the X-axis, the text box containing time and value was displayed away from the mouse pointer. This issue has been resolved. Data is displayed whereever the mouse points even if you zoom in and move the X-axis on the widget. DE150562 / SF 00907369
Previously, multiple attempts to open an application page at runtime led to display freeze. This issue has been resolved. DE153382 / SF 00919035
When working with the dropdown widget, there was no check box for the Submit on Change property. This issue has been resolved to provide a check box option to submit the query. DE153383 / SF 00919907
Previously on launching an application, images in the application were loaded incorrectly. However, after refreshing the page, all images load correctly. This issue has been resolved. DE153386 / SF 00921978
Previously, Operations Hub login was unsuccessful with an error stating that the email or password could not be verified for the OphubAdmin account. This issue has been resolved.

For 2.0 version, the password cannot be 15 characters long. This rule does not apply for versions 1.7 and earlier, and also for 2.1 and later.

DE154026 / SF 00927322
Previously for SQL data source, if you changed the default static port for SQL to a different port, it was not getting saved. This issue has been resolved. DE155933
The Favorite dialog in the trend widget appeared blank on attempting to add a trend to favorites. The fields in the dialog box did not display any text. This issue has been resolved. DE155935
The date picker widget had inconsistencies in choosing a date and time. This has been fixed. You can use the 24-hour clock time format to pick a time. DE156422 / SF 00934396
Previously, interactive map images in a duplicated app were lost if the original app was deleted from Operations Hub. Code has been modified to fix this issue. The image references also get duplicated instead of referring to the images from the original app. DE156513 / SF 00935551
Previously, check box was always aligned to the left at runtime even when you specified a different alignment in the Operations Hub designer. This has been fixed to align as expected. The check box includes a label to enter text. DE156613 /SF 00936087
Deleting one of the many queries from an application page with interactive map led to data loss on all the markers. This issue has been resolved. DE156754 / SF 00935377
Widget IDs were getting deleted on duplicating an application page. As a result, the UI page globals that utilized the IDs as a reference stopped working. This issue has been resolved. DE157191
Previously, the table widget properties Allow Download and Load <number> rows at a time were not delivering results as expected at runtime. This issue has been resolved. DE157267
If the grid and breadcrumb widgets were used in an application page, the grid overlapped the breadcrumb at runtime. This issue has been resolved. DE157790 / SF 00937306
The date picker widget was not displaying properly at runtime due to a CSS issue. The CSS for the widget was being imported via. CDN URL, which failed at times leading to improper display of the date picker. The CSS stylesheet is now bundled with the date picker to fix the issue. DE158072 / SF 00940530
Previously, the trend card did not respond to the selected asset context. To fix this, enabled to read the manual and global value on loading the breadcrumb at runtime. DE158133 / SF 00940524
Previously data sources in Operations Hub were loaded only after waiting for a few minutes. Initially an error message appeared that data sources cannot be loaded. The error message has been updated to fix this issue. If the IQP Tomcat service has just started (under 10 minutes), then an error message alerts to try accessing data sources again in a few minutes. DE158134
Previously, you were not able to delete Actions defined for an interactive map widget. This issue has been resolved. DE158410 / SF 00939430
Previously during app import, duplicating an app that is already present in Operations Hub led to inconsistencies in naming convention. The query/entity in the duplicated page appears with its original name instead of the duplicated name. This issue has been resolved. DE158423 / SF 00935860
Previously, application pages were accessible to users who did not possess access permission to those pages. This issue has been resolved. DE158827 / SF 00939012
On opening an application page with breadcrumb, the root was always getting displayed. This has been fixed to load the default asset whenever loading the page. DE159272 / SF 00936366
Table 4. Compatibility Matrix

The following products are compatible with Operations Hub.

Product Required Version
Proficy Historian
  • Historian 7.2 with the latest SIM
  • Historian 8.0
  • Historian 8.1
  • Historian 9.0
  • Historian 9.1
Note: Historian REST APIs are required for REST integration between Operations Hub and Historian 8.x and above. Historian REST APIs are installed automatically when you install Historian web-based clients.
Proficy Plant Applications
  • Version 8.0, SIM3, for Integrated Process Apps
  • Version 8.1
  • Version 8.2
User Authentication and Authorization (UAA) service Version 2.1
Proficy iFIX
  • 6.0 (read operations)
  • 6.1 (read operations)
  • 6.5 with latest SIM (OPC UA + Workspace) (read and write operations)
Note: Mimic and model publish to Operations Hub 2.1 is supported only with iFIX 6.5.
Proficy CIMPLICITY
  • 10 (read operations)
  • 11 (read operations)
  • 11.1 (read and write operations)
Note: Mimic and model publish to Operations Hub 2.1 is supported only with CIMPLICITY 11.1.
GE Common Licensing Version 19.3