Tag Archives: Secure

Seattle Public Utilities Joins FlowWorks

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FlowWorks is proud to announce a new partnership with Seattle Public Utilities and ADS Environmental Services to provide the city’s new flow-monitoring services. As part of the new combined sewer overflow (CSO) program, we will work closely with the city and ADS to oversee flow monitoring and data management.

SPU chose FlowWorks because of our proven ability to gather data into one place so CSO events can be analyzed quickly, understood and communicated to all users. Operating in near-real time, SPU’s new FlowWorks service easily loads two years of 5-minute data from the server in under 6 seconds. Already the city is enjoying better collaboration, faster problem solving and quicker response times.

Other highlights our service brings to the new partnership include:

• Secure, internet-based platform
• Used for gathering, analyzing and managing water, sewer, rainfall and other remote data Hardware neutral
• Accepts data from any flow meter or manufacturer’s data system, as well as SCADA, Historic and manual data
• Includes powerful graphing engine, storage for all forms of meta data, event alarms and analysis capabilities for I&I and rainfall IDF

ADS develops and provides technology-based flow measurement products and services for the water, wastewater and hydroelectric industries. The firm is a veteran of working with SPU and has provided excellent flow servicing, engineering, and a high degree of data integrity to the utility for the past five years. When the contract came up for re-bid, SPU leadership recognized the need to add a robust data-delivery and work order management system to the program—FlowWorks was a natural choice. Already the team of FlowWorks and ADS has proven to be exactly what SPU was looking for and together we help to build on past success with SPU.

FlowWorks continually proves to be the platform of choice for municipalities, utilities and industrial clients seeking to manage, analyze and understand large quantities of remote data quickly, and securely communicate the results to a broad audience.

For more information, please visit our website at www.flowworks.com or to learn more about ADS visit www.adsenv.com.

Using FlowWorks with SCADA

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Making an Operator’s Life Simple

SCADA control room

Did you know that you can connect your existing SCADA system to FlowWorks? Why would you want to do this? The first reaction that many people have is “we already have a SCADA system, why would we want to use FlowWorks?” Because FlowWorks is not just for dataloggers, and it does a lot more than just store and plot data. Think of some of the things you could be doing with your SCADA data if you used FlowWorks to do it…

If you are in the municipal business, odds are that you have a SCADA system. You probably also have some dataloggers and maybe some sewer flow meters. Wouldn’t it be nice to put all of that data into one place? Do you want to easily plot flow data from your treatment plant SCADA with rainfall data collected by your dataloggers? How about adding some laboratory measurement results along side? If you use FlowWorks, you can do this.

Plus, if you want, the data flow can go BACKWARDS from FlowWorks to your SCADA! What if you use FlowWorks to collect rainfall from some rain gauge dataloggers, but your SCADA also collects rainfall data? The two can give data to each other, so you and your users see the complete dataset! Core staff who use SCADA see valuable information, using the interface that they are used to. At the same time, data from SCADA (which is often difficult to distribute to users outside of the SCADA system) is made available to a larger set of users. No more having to deal with different data formats because some of your data came from the SCADA, some came datalogger brand X and yet other info came from Brand Y.

Setup Personal Alarms

Use the FlowWorks alarming system to setup notifications for other purposes that aren’t mission critical SCADA alarms…maybe you need to know when flows at a treatment plant reach a certain point so you can take a sample…or it’s time to photograph potential flooding at a drainage location…or maybe you want to know the next time a chlorine analyzer shows a low value so that you can go and take a sample to verify it. These are all things that you can do but might not have SCADA alarms setup for…with FlowWorks you can create your OWN notifications without requiring your SCADA staff to setup these alarms for you.

Your OWN Notifications

Yes, that’s what I said – this is a big deal. In FlowWorks, each user can customize their alarms and notifications, independent of anyone else. This can help you do your job more efficiently, the way you want to do it, and without extra corporate overhead that is so often required.

Custom Reporting

Use the reporting functions to produce tables for your reports…total water consumption, water quality reporting, rainfall summaries and statistics, pump run times, chemical injection summaries…if your SCADA system has been measuring it there is something that FlowWorks can do to make it more useful to you. Why record it if you can’t use it for anything?

SCADA Data Security and FlowWorks

FlowWorks provides data viewing and analysis tools only. There are no control functions that would be in a typical SCADA setup. This means that when you are viewing data sent to FlowWorks from your SCADA system, it is a mirrored COPY of the data rather than the original data itself. In this way the finite control details of your system are protected from the user, leaving your system and network ultimately secure.

Do you have information that you want to distribute to a larger group of users, but due to security concerns over your SCADA system you can’t do it? If your SCADA system is connected to FlowWorks then you get the best of both worlds…your SCADA system stays locked behind your corporate security, but the data that you want to distribute to others is made available. FlowWorks CANNOT be used to alter data or access your SCADA system and controls in any way.

In the meantime, you and other FlowWorks users within your organization enjoy simple, unlimited access to the information you need, from anywhere with an internet connection. Even if the only thing you use your SCADA system for is to graph data, I guarantee you that FlowWorks will do a better job than your SCADA graphing engine.

My Network

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Watch this video for an introduction to My Network.

Introduction to My Network

This is what FlowWorks first looks like when you log in to the system. You are presented with a map showing all of your station locations known as ‘My Network’. There is also a list of stations on the left hand side of the screen.

My Network tool

You can move around the map by holding down the left mouse button and dragging. You can zoom in and out by either using the zoom buttons on the left hand corner of the screen or if you have a roller mouse hover over the area you want to zoom and roll up to zoom in and roll down to zoom out.

Zoom options

Zoomed in terrain view

You can change the background from the default ‘‘Terrain’ model to:

  • a street map ‘Map’,

Map view

  • ‘Satelite’

Satellite view

  • ‘Hybrid’

Hybrid view

You can change the size of the icons by using the links at the top. The default is medium ‘Med’ but you can make them smaller ‘Sm’ or larger ‘Lrg’.

Station icon size

The color of the station indicates the status. Active stations are green, stations that call in to FlowWorks but are late calling are shown in yellow, sites that don’t call in to FlowWorks but have data manually download and transferred in to FlowWorks are shown in blue, and inactive stations are shown in grey.

Map icon size

You can use the filter box in the top right corner of the screen to select which stations are shown on the map. For example if you want to only see rainfall satiation, selecting filter by type and selecting rainfall will only show stations that have rainfall gauges attached to them.

Filter options

Or if you want to only see inactive stations select by status and choose inactive and you will be shown which sites are inactive. To show them all again select filter all and all of the stations will be shown on the map again.

Filter by status

As an aside, if you have sites without geographic locations or if the site locations are unknown, they appear in a box below the map. You can move through the site in the box by using the navigation bar and if you click on one of the stations, the info for the site appears in a box below the screen.

Non-map-located sites

You can also access tools links for these sites at the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Tools links

To look at a station in more detail either click on it or click on the station name on the left hand list. When you click on a station you are presented with a summary box telling you what kind of station it is, what the collection method is and when the most recent data arrived. More info is provided on the bottom of the screen including location, how often the station is suppose to call, when the station first became active, and the list of the available measurements within the station.

If you get confused about the types of stations, you can click on the legend on the bottom left corner of the screen. The letters on any given station show what type of station it is, ‘W’ for water, ‘S’ for sewer etc.

My Network legend

There are several ways to access the analysis options within FlowWorks. For example if you click on a station, the summary table open showing the available tools that you can use. Likewise the links to the tools are also displayed next to the detailed description box at the bottom of the screen. For this station we can use the graphing system, we can also export data, use the summary reports.

Accessing station tools

If you select a rainfall station, the tools also include the rainfall analysis functions within FlowWorks.

You can also navigate through FlowWorks using my network bar located at the top of the screen. Clicking on the graphing page brings up the graphing system.

Graphing tools

The reporting tab allows the user to access the summary reports, rainfall statistics, image view and customized HMI display screens if you had these set up.

Reporting tools

The analysis tab allows you to access the rainfall IDF analysis system and I&I estimator, the management tabs allows the user to access export data and metadata or online forms data.

Analysis tools

Troubleshooting ActiveX

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The FlowWorks Graphing engine requires the one-time download and installation of a digitally signed and secure ActiveX control. This safe and secure plugin runs in your browser only when using the Flowworks graphing engine. It is the same technology that powers websites like Microsoft Update, and allows for the installation of common internet technologies like Java and Flash.

ActiveX controls only function using the Internet Explorer browser. IE is installed on most Windows computers by default. If you’re using a browser other than IE, such as Firefox, Opera, Safari, or Chrome, the Graphing Engine will not be available to you, though the rest of the site will still function. However, we do recommend using Internet Explorer 7 or newer for maximum compatibility.

If you’re using Internet Explorer 7 or newer and are having trouble getting the ActiveX control to install properly, here are some steps you can take to resolve the issue:

Check Security Settings

  1. In Internet Explorer, go to ‘Tools\Internet Options’
  2. Select the ‘Security’ tab
  3. Click ‘Custom Level…’
  4. Scroll down to ‘ActiveX controls and plug-ins’
  5. Find the ‘Download signed ActiveX controls’ section and select ‘Prompt’
  6. Find the ‘Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins’ and select ‘Enable’
  7. Click the Ok button. Click the Ok button on the ‘Internet Options’ window.

If some or all of the above steps are not available to you or fail to fix the problem, you may need the assistance of your local IT administrator to allow the install of the ActiveX control.

If you’re still having problems, please email Technical Support from the Contact page for assistance.