In addition to the standard handshake, you can also use an individual handshake procedure. In this procedure you can freely select the trigger conditions. Several conditions are available for this purpose (see the following pages).
If you create more than one condition, you can select whether all conditions must be fulfilled to start the trigger or whether one condition is sufficient.
| 1 | Conditions | In this area you create the conditions to start the trigger |
| 2 | Actions | In the middle, you define the actions to be carried out in the trigger. |
| 3 | Error handling | In addition, you can create actions that will be executed should one of the actions in the middle area fail. |
| 1 | Condition-Logic | If more than one condition is created, you can select whether all conditions must be fulfilled at the same time (AND logic) or whether the trigger is already started when one condition is fulfilled (OR logic). |
| 2 | Interlock | You can use locking to prevent a trigger from being triggered too frequently. After each execution (whether successful or not), the trigger is no longer monitored for the specified time. |
| 3 | Conditions | In this area all already configured conditions are displayed. In this example, two variables are monitored for changes. |
| 4 | Add Condition | With this button you can add more conditions. |
Compare variable value #
| Description | This condition reads the value of a variable and compares it with the specified value. |
| Required licence | You do not need a special feature for this condition. However, depending on your licence, only certain variables are available for checking. For example, you needed the PLC feature to be able to check PLC variables in this condition. |
| 1 | Trigger Variable | Click this button to select a variable for comparison. |
| 2 | Comparison operator | Here you can set how the variable value is to be compared with the comparison value. The following comparison operators are available: == != > >= < <= |
| 3 | Comparative value | Enter here the value with which the value of the variable is to be compared. |
| 4 | Debounce | With the debouncing you can set for how long the condition must be fulfilled continuously before the trigger is started. This allows you to prevent the trigger from being executed too early/too often in the event of small fluctuations in the variable value. When the trigger has been executed, debouncing starts again from the beginning, even if the condition was fulfilled for the entire time the trigger was executed. |
| 5 | Hysteresis | The hysteresis allows you to define an enable condition that must be met after the trigger is executed before normal monitoring of the condition resumes. For example, if you are monitoring a temperature and you want the trigger to be executed when the temperature exceeds 80 degrees, you can set an enable condition. Without this condition, the trigger would keep executing as long as the temperature is above 80 degrees. To prevent this, you can define a release condition that the temperature must first fall below 70 degrees again before the trigger can be executed again. |
Change of a variable value #
| Description | This condition reads the value of a variable and as soon as the value changes, the condition is fulfilled. |
| Required licence | You do not need a special feature for this condition. However, depending on your license, only certain variables are available for checking. For example, you needed the PLC feature to be able to check PLC variables in this condition. |
| 1 | Trigger Variable | Click this button to select a variable for review. |
Please note:
Query interval: Please note that variables can only be checked in an interval of 10-50 milliseconds, depending on the hardware and the network. Changes that are only active for a few milliseconds cannot always be captured.
Check PLC status #
| Description | This condition checks the state of the PLC (stop) and whether the connection has been interrupted. |
| Required licence | PLC Feature |
| 1 | PLC | Select the PLC to be monitored. |
| 2 | Stop | If you activate the stop monitoring, the condition is fulfilled as soon as the PLC is in the stop state. |
| 3 | Connection | If you select connection monitoring, the condition is fulfilled as soon as there is no longer a connection to the PLC, e.g. timeout. |
If you activate the stop and connection monitoring, the condition is fulfilled as soon as one of the two occurs.
New file in a folder #
| Description | This condition monitors a directory and triggers as soon as a new file has been placed in this folder. |
| Required licence | No feature is required. |
| 1 | Folder | Select the folder for monitoring here. The file name can also be supplemented by variables (Use variables). |
| 2 | New Excel file | Monitor the directory of the selected Excel file |
Please note:
Excel: Newest file in folder. To be able to use the newest file in the folder, you must create an Excel file and set the file selection there to “Newest file in folder”.
Time interval #
| Description | With this condition, the trigger is released at a set interval. |
| Required licence | No feature is required. |
| Interval | Determine the length of your interval here. You can choose between seconds, minutes, hours and days. The smallest possible interval is 1 second. |
| Start date and time | Set the time here from which your set interval is to be executed. |
Keyboard Shortcut #
| Description | The trigger is fired when a defined key (key combination) on the keyboard is pressed. |
| Required licence | No feature is required. |
| Shortcut | Click in the Textbox and then press the desired key combination. This will then be used to start the trigger. |
Please note:
Desktop application must be running. For a keystroke to be captured, a user must be logged in and the DataSuite desktop application must be started. The application does not have to be visible, but can also run in the tray menu. This also applies if DataSuite is running as a Windows service.
New record in a table #
| Description | With this condition, the trigger is fired as soon as a new record has been inserted in a table of a database. |
| Required licence | Database Feature |
| Requirements | To be able to monitor a table for a new record, the table must have a numeric primary key that is automatically set by the database. |
| Database | Select the database you want to monitor. |
| Table | Select the table you want to monitor. |
| Interval | In order to determine a new data record, the database is regularly queried. By specifying an interval, you can limit the number of database queries. |
PLC time deviation #
| Description | With this condition, the trigger is activated as soon as the time deviation between PLC and PC time exceeds the specified tolerance. |
| Required licence | TimeMaster Feature |
| Requirements | Monitoring the time only works for controllers of type S7-300 and S7-400. For other models, access to this information has been restricted by Siemens. |
