Functional Tips & Tricks

If you’ve attended one of our VILT TrendMiner trainings, you’ve probably seen a popular workaround: creating a daily aggregation tag that looks discrete (a clean stepwise plot) and updates once per day at midnight. You may have also seen Natasha’s post where she discusses how to build the stepped daily tag.This is a simple but powerful technique when you want a tag that reports something like: Daily average Daily total Daily max/min Daily standard deviation Any other 24-hour aggregation you want to visualize as a “daily value” In training, we typically build this so the tag updates at midnight. But recently a user asked a great follow-up: can we build a similar t

 Collaboration is at the heart of successful industrial analytics. Over the past year, TrendMiner has transformed how teams share and manage their work, evolving from simple read-only sharing to a comprehensive collaboration suite. This article walks you through these improvements and shows you how to leverage them for more effective teamwork. The Journey: From Simple to Sophisticated Before 2025.R2: Read-Only SharingInitially, TrendMiner allowed users to share individual work items with read-only access. While this enabled knowledge sharing, it had limitations: recipients could view analyses but couldn't contribute or modify them, making true collaboration difficult for teams working across shifts or locations.2025.R2: Write PermissionsThe August 2025 release marked a significant milestone by introducing Write Permissions. Users could now grant colleagues write access to work items, enabling multiple tea

This Functional Tips & Tricks post was inspired by a Community question from Yves - the question can be found here. Creating a Time Proxy Tag with Custom Calculations In TrendMiner, scatter plots and regression tools require numeric X- and Y-axes. While most process tags (temperature, pressure, flow, etc.) are already numeric, time itself is not. This creates a challenge when you want to perform a linear regression of a tag versus time.To solve this, we create a time proxy tag: a numeric tag that increases as time progresses over a defined window. Once this tag exists, it can be used on the X-axis of a scatter plot against any process tag on the Y-axis, enabling linear regression and trend analysis. Why a Time Tag Is Required TrendMiner’s sca

TrendMiner’s new webhook implementation allows users to alert an external system such as SAP, Microsoft Teams and potentially other platforms when certain events happen (i.e. when a TrendMiner monitor is triggered).Beyond sending custom messages, webhooks can also initiate automated workflows or processes in external systems, such as creating work orders, submitting maintenance requests, or triggering other actions.The example below shows how a TrendMiner monitor can detect the start of a new batch and automatically post notifications to a Microsoft Teams group, both at batch start and upon batch completion.If you are interested in learning more and are interested in this new webhook integration available in 2025.R3 or newer, reach out to your CSM and/or Account Manager.Step 1: Define a Context Item Type (for example, Epoxy Resin Batch).

When you add a link in the DashHub text tile, by default it will open up in a new tab. If we were to look into the actual html content that is saved in the tile when we create a link via the editor, it will look something like this:<p><a href="https://cs.trendminer.net/dashhub/#/dashboard/599f8acf-690e-4034-8811-d596ac826d25?mode=presentation" target="_blank">test</a></p>This represents a link with the text 'test', which links to another dashboard. The target="_blank" means it will open up in a new tab.If we want the link to open up in the same tab, this target would need to be replaced "_self", or be left out entirely. Unfortunately, the text tile editor does not allow us choose the target, or edit the html directly.A trick I learned from a user recently though, is that a URL copied from certain other places, will have the target omitted, thus opening in the same tab. This i

Design conditions often look great on paper but once a process is running in real life, the true optimal conditions can be very different. This gap makes it harder to understand the process and to make confident, data-driven decisions based on controlled variables.To truly understand a process—and improve it—we need to analyse data under normal operating conditions.Whether you’re working with:an active batch (batch process), or a running system (continuous process),you can start by searching the relevant operating periods and then adding calculations on top of that search. By selecting the operator average for each tag, we establish a strong baseline: the most common, real-world values of our variables. 💡 This is where Event Analytics shines.With event analytics, you can:

If you are using TrendMiner APIs to access context items (for example to pull them into PowerBI), it makes sense to set up a client user for this purpose. In fact, it is recommended to use a distinct client for every TrendMiner automation you set up. These clients can be configured by a system administrator in ConfigHub.  After setting up authentication via your new client id + secret, you may notice that you cannot access some context items. This is because they are attached to assets to which the client does not have any

We’re excited to announce that one of the most requested dashboard features is finally here: Gauge Tiles are now available in TrendMiner’s 2025.R3 release.Gauge tiles provide a simple, intuitive way to monitor KPIs and process values at a glance. Whether you're tracking a critical parameter in your unit or creating a clean, executive-level overview, gauge tiles make it easier to visualize where your values stand. Gauge tile display modes:Gauge tiles come with four built-in display styles to fit different dashboard layouts and preferences: Angular Speedometer Linear Horizontal Linear Vertical You’ll see all four showcased in the screenshot included below. Dashboard with angular (conc and

 Scatter Plots have long been one of TrendMiner’s most powerful tools to visualize relationships between process parameters. In recent releases, this functionality has been significantly enhanced — making it easier than ever to uncover correlations, compare time periods, and analyze performance in detail.Let’s take a closer look at what’s new and how you can apply these features in practice using a heat exchanger example. 1. From Trends to Scatter PlotsWhen analyzing process data  in TrendHub, you can easily switch the visualization type under “Select chart type” — directly below the focus chart. From there, you can change the default Stacked trend view to Trend or Scatter.In the Multi scatter view, all visible tags from your active tag list are plotted against each other. Each combination generates a scatter plot, accompanied by histograms and a regression line (initially linear), includ

 Daily production tracking isn't just a routine: it's the backbone of efficiency, quality, and transparency in manufacturing. But are you making the most of TrendMiner’s powerful features? Whether you are a TrendMiner veteran or just starting out, a few small habits can make a big difference in how you track performance and communicate across shifts. Start Your Day with a Clear ViewImagine starting your workday or shift with a dashboard that shows you exactly what you need: no more hunting for numbers or flipping between screens. TrendMiner dashboards let you visualize your most important metrics (throughput, yield, downtime, quality, and more) at a glance.Use tiles to compare production in the last few days, monitor targets vs. actuals, and spot trends before they become issues. Set up a

Have you ever struggled to find the right tag while using TrendMiner?When the historian’s tag names are full of digits and cryptic codes, it can be tough to know which sensor or process you’re actually looking at. That confusion can slow down your analysis and make it harder to trust your findings. That’s where the Digital Twin Manager comes in. 🧠 With this tool, application administrators can build an asset framework — a clear, folder-like structure that organises every piece of process equipment in a logical, user-friendly way.Here’s how it helps: 🗂️ Organise your assets by creating nodes (folders) for each equipment. 🏷️ Add and rename tags to use meaningful names and descriptions. 🔍 Simplify searches — instead of typing complex codes, just browse the framework to find what you need.

Did you know you could add certain content from outside of TrendMiner to your dashboards? The external content tile allows you to add additional information to your dashboards that doesn’t necessary originate from your process data. Many often include training videos, images, and Visio block flow diagrams, stored on SharePoint pages, to give better context to those interpreting dashboards shared across teams or shown on control room displays.​@EdwardB recently shared some interesting sources that allow embedding weather related widgets to DashHub. For this, you can try these twosources: https://widget.airnow.gov/ and 

In this article we'll dive into a worklow to create a multivariate parallel coordinates plot that can be filtered by time and calculations. In this specific image, we're looking at the hourly averages of measurements (Power, in and outgoing: flow, temperature, pressure) of a Sales Gas Compressor unit Workflow 1. Import time-tags as DISCRETE (I'm attaching the .csv file for Europe - Brussels, let us know if you need another timezone in the comments!). This action only needs to be done once. Once imported, the tags will be available for all users. 2. Pick the desired Context period on the bottom of the focus chart in TrendHub 3. Add the relevant tags to your process and the imported [t]HOUR, [t]DAY, [t]MONTH and [t]YEAR tags

 BackgroundTrendMiner provides a set of Time/Date Tags by default with installation. These tags deliver time and date information directly from the system – independent of any process data – and are available for all time zones: TM_hour_* – Hour of the day TM_day-* – Day of the month TM_month_* – Month TM_year_* – Year Time/Date Tags in TrendMinerTime/Date Tags for all time zones in TrendMinerThey allow for precise configuration of searches

❓What Are Custom Calculations?Custom Calculations in TrendMiner empower advanced users to define new tags using Python scripts, enabling analytics and data transformations beyond what’s available through standard formulas or aggregations. This feature is powerful for creating custom KPIs or logic that’s specific to your plant or workflow. 🗂️ Repo Structure OverviewThe TrendMinerCS/custom-calculations repo is your go-to resource for getting started with Custom Calculations. It includes: A Jupyter notebook with a detailed explanation of the workings of custom calculations and the TrendMiner sdk. A detailed README outlining the possibilities with examples and screenshot. Example Python scripts for common calculation scenarios. Templates

Have you ever had a situation were you would like to see how your measurement is doing and how close is it of its allowed Upper and Lower limits?  Have you ever tried to create a dashboard where you can easily see the status of your equipment and in which zone is it performing?Up until now, in TrendMiner we could create a monitor that tells/notify us whenever a limit is surpassed or reached. Additionally, in a dashboard we could create a monitor tile that will change when this monitor has been triggered. But this only allows 2 status: On/Off, Good/Bad, etc. If we want to have more statuses, we were already limited by the use of only one tile. Monitor tile configured with 2 states. An easy workaround is usually to create a

 Background:In many use cases, it’s not just the type of event that matters — its duration can be just as important. While TrendMiner allows you to define a minimum duration when performing a search, sometimes you want to look only for events that fall within a specific time window, for example between 2 and 5 hours.Here's how to do that using two simple approaches. ✅ Option A: Refine Search Results by Duration RangeUse this approach to narrow down results after you’ve run your main search.Steps: Run your event search based on the relevant value or digital criteria. In the search panel, click "Event Analytics". Set the minimum duration to 2 hours and the maximum duration

In TrendMiner, time tags play a crucial role in process analysis. They allow users to define and segment data based on specific hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, and years, enabling precise time-based calculations. Many key performance indicators (KPIs) rely on time-based reporting, such as: Daily production totals Hourly average flowrates Monthly energy usage Quarterly business metrics Example of HOUR time tags in TrendMiner.​​​​TrendMiner time tags for the US Central time zone.Why Time Tags Matter in TrendMi

I just saw a question pop up in the community asking whether TrendMiner has built-in steam equations. While they are not built-in, here’s a way to start using steam equations in TrendMiner...A while back, I implemented the numeric steam table equations found on https://iapws.org/relguide/IF97-Rev.html into TrendMiner Formula Tags. I am posting those here in the hopes it can help some other users too.The attached zip file contains txt files for formulas that can be copy-pasted into a Tag Builder formula for steam table calculations.Formula units are currently in Celsius and bar, so you might need to adjust accordingly. Text search and replace should work to change the input units, for example 'P' -> '(P*1000)' to use tags that are in mbar. To change the output unit you can simply multiply the formula by a constant value.

 IntroductionDaily production is a key performance indicator (KPI) in continuous processes, helping process experts track efficiency and performance. However, in many cases, daily production is not readily available as a default variable in data historians. A recent question in the TrendMiner Community addressed this challenge: How to calculate a daily average of a signal with a single result per day?. This article explains four different approaches to calculating daily production in TrendMiner, depending on the user’s needs. 1️⃣ Continuous Rolling Last 24 Hours Production 📌 BackgroundThis method ensures that at any given time, the production of the last 24 hours is always available as a continuously updating value. Thi

Applying Transformations to Your Tag Data in TrendHub In process data analysis, relationships between variables are often assumed to be linear. However, real-world process relationships can be more complex and often are. For example, the relationship between pressure drop and flowrate is only linear under laminar flow conditions. In turbulent flow, which is more common in industrial processes, the relationship follows a quadratic function, as described by the Darcy-Weisbach equation.Because of these complexities, it is crucial to apply transformations to your data to properly analyze and interpret process relationships. TrendMiner's formula tag builder provides a way to achieve this.Example: Analyzing Pressure Drop Across a Flow PumpIn this example, we analyze the pressure drop across a pump using two tags: