Overview

About APM Connect

The APM Connect system provides the means to load data from the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) into Predix Essentials.

The system uses data loaders and adapters to establish a data flow between Predix Essentials and EAM systems, Field Service Management systems, and other assets. The APM Connect context file defines the communication path between the IIOT and Predix Essentials.

A new and improved Data Ingestion Framework referred to as Data Loaders V2 is introduced, which supports the Unified Asset Ingestion Data Loader that is available for limited use. All other Data Loader functions will continue to work as they did previously.

About Time Zone Data

Predix Essentials stores the dates and times of transactions in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) format. This enables the data to flow through the system in a single time zone format. APM Connect supports the time zones defined in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/embedded/gg154758(v=winembedded.80).

To provide information with the time stamp relevant to your operations, the system converts UTC to your time zone by using the time zone information configured in your user definition.

Important: If you change the time zone information configured in your user definition, all the records will reflect the new time zone.

The following sections contain the time zone considerations relevant to specific systems.

Maximo

Predix Essentials stores the time stamp associated with the data extracted from Maximo in UTC and displays the time stamp based on your configured time zone.

SAP

SAP provides a set of baseline time zone codes, which contain most of the standard time zones across the world. SAP also provides the ability for administrators to define their own custom time zone, as needed. Before you use a customized time zone, you must configure the timezone_control table in APM Connect to include the customized time zone.

SAP defines two types of time zones:

  • System: This time zone is based on SAP Application Server Operating System and is derived from the context file. You cannot modify this type of time zone.
  • User: This time zone is based on the user who created the SAP record. You can modify and store this type of time zone in the SAP user interface.

Predix Essentials stores the time stamp associated with the data extracted from SAP in UTC and displays the time stamp based on the time zone configured for the user who created the SAP record.

Note: If the data extracted from SAP contains only the date, then Predix Essentials will assign the time 00:00:00 and adjust the assigned time with the SAP system or user time zone. This may lead to a date mismatch when you choose to display the data in Predix Essentials. To prevent this, Predix Essentials stores the assigned reference time stamp as a string within the data, which is hidden by default. If you need this information, you can configure Predix Essentials to display the data.

ServiceMax

Predix Essentials stores the time stamp associated with the data extracted from ServiceMax in UTC and displays the time stamp based on your configured time zone.

Support for Multiple Source Systems

Whether in a cloud environment or an on-premise installation, APM Connect enables you to connect multiple source systems to a single Predix Essentials system.

There are occasions when you need to connect multiple source systems to a single Predix Essentials system. For example, when your company acquires another company, rather than immediately attempting to merge two systems together, you need to keep the systems running separately but want to implement strategies centrally. The two systems might be the same type or of different types. You can configure APM Connect to handle either scenario.

The steps to configure these scenarios is similar to configuring a single system; you repeat the steps that define the EAM system records and, after creating the intermediate repository for the first system, run a job that adds the other systems to the intermediate repository with any required extraction filters.

Multiple Source Systems of the Same Type

This scenario is most useful when you all systems you need to support are the same type. The context file configuration for each source system will look the same for the target Predix Essentials and APM Connect system for all the source systems. The unique parts of the context file are those that describe the particulars of the source system, for example, the system ID and filters used.

Multiple Source Systems of Different Types

Use this scenario if you need to support multiple disparate systems, for example, an SAP and a Maximo system. In this case, you will need to configure context files for each different type of source system, each pointing to the same target Predix Essentials and APM Connect system. This does not preclude having multiple systems of a specific type (for example, one SAP, one ServiceMax, and two Maximo).

Considerations

There are some things to consider when connecting multiple source systems to a single Predix Essentials with APM Connect:

  • You must make sure that each source system has a unique system ID.
  • The logs will contain the messages from all of the source systems. Each message will identify the source system using the system ID.
  • Some source system types have unique requirements that must be performed for each source system. For example, you must run the Static Data job for all SAP systems.
  • Each source system in a cloud environment will need an intermediate repository, even though they are communicating with a single tenant.
  • Do not schedule running the same adapter job types (for example, functional location extractions) simultaneously from different source systems.

Support for Multiple Culture Settings from a Single Source System

APM Connect enables you to send data to Predix Essentials from a single source system that supports plants using different language or extraction requirements.

Important: This feature is not supported for Technical Characteristics, Work Management, Asset Criticality Analysis, Asset Strategy Management, or Asset Strategy Implementation.

Globalization has increased the need to improve management of assets in different culture settings. Your solution may involve including these new plants in a single source system that communicates with Predix Essentials but requires the data to be presented to the user in their native language. You can accomplish this by configuring APM Connect so that the plants that require specific languages or extractions appear to be different source systems, one for each language or extraction requirement. This capability provides a better user experience for all users of Predix Essentials regardless of their location.

A key advantage of this support is that you can combine your source systems and then configure APM Connect to extract the data correctly.

Considerations

  • The user defined in the source system that communicates with Predix Essentials must use the same decimal notation.
  • You must have unique system IDs and the correct language parameter value or extraction requirements for each plant.
  • You must configure filters to make sure that the data is routed correctly to the specific location.