Frequently asked questions
What is a space?
A space is the physical location or area that is served by a piece of equipment. The Spaces tree in the Navigation panel lists the spaces that are configured for your site. For more information about how to create spaces, refer to the Metasys SCT Help (LIT-12011964).
What is equipment?
Equipment is the broad term used to describe the equipment that makes your building run. Equipment includes boilers, chillers, air handling units, lights, meters, security systems, and anything else that is used to maintain your building's environment. Equipment can serve spaces and other equipment.
How do I view my pieces of equipment?
You can view equipment by selecting a space from the Spaces tree. After you select a space, the Space dashboard shows information for the equipment serving the space in various widgets.
You can view all equipment configured to a site in the Building Network tree. The Building Network tree lists equipment and objects, as displayed in the All Items tree in the Site Management Portal (SMP).
You can configure the items and values that are shown for a piece of equipment. Contact your system administrator to change these points in the System Configuration Tool (SCT). For more information, refer to the Metasys SCT Help (LIT-12011964).
How do I see more information about a piece of equipment?
Tap or click the name of the piece of equipment in any widget to navigate to the Equipment dashboard for that piece of equipment. Alternatively, tap or click the piece of equipment listed in the Building Network tree.
What if multiple pieces of equipment serve the same space?
If multiple pieces of equipment directly serve the selected space (for example, if multiple VAV boxes serve a room), click the piece of equipment to the left or right, and the next piece of equipment appears. Another piece of equipment is available to view when a portion of the equipment pane appears to either the left or right of the current piece of equipment that you are viewing. You can tap or click MORE to view the points for the piece of equipment.
What is a dashboard?
A dashboard organizes and presents the Metasys information in a modular way. The Metasys UI contains the following four types of dashboards:
- Space Dashboard contains the Graphics, Equipment Serving Space, Potential Problem Areas, Equipment Summary, Trend, and Schedule widgets.
- Building Network Dashboard contains the Detail, Equipment Relationships, Trend, Summary View, and Involvement widgets.
- Equipment Dashboard contains the Graphics, Equipment Activity, Trend, Equipment Relationships, Equipment Data, and Schedule widgets.
- Cyber Health Dashboard contains the Security Analysis, System Status, and User Activity widgets.
Dashboards are customizable using the Dashboards Manager. For more information, see Dashboards Manager.
What is a widget?
A widget is a container that groups related information together in the Metasys UI. Widgets are organized and presented on the dashboards and can be maximized to see a larger view of the information. The Metasys UI contains the following widgets:
- Graphics: Use this widget to view Metasys UI graphics, Graphics+ graphics, and Standard graphics associated with a space or equipment. Graphics provide a visual representation of the monitored systems that enable you to quickly check the status of spaces or equipment and recognize unusual system conditions. Graphics can be designed to allow you to navigate through buildings, floors, and other areas, as well as viewing floor plans and viewing building systems.
- Equipment Serving Space: Use this widget to view all the equipment that directly serves a space together with any equipment upstream. For example, in the Equipment Serving Space widget, you can easily see information about a Variable Air Volume (VAV) controller, its associated Air Handler Unit (AHU), and the chiller that serves the AHU.
- Potential Problem Areas: Use this widget to quickly see a list of any points in the equipment that are not operating appropriately. You can also use this widget to investigate and manage faults that occur on your site.
- Equipment Summary: Use this widget to compare all similar equipment that directly serves the space and all downstream spaces. For example, you can easily sort points to see the warmest or coldest room in the space. You can then navigate to the specific space or piece of equipment for quick troubleshooting.
- Trend: Use this widget to view a chart of historical equipment data for up to four points at the same time.
- Equipment Activity: Use this widget to view alarm activity and user changes (audits) made within the last year for a selected piece of equipment. You can acknowledge and discard alarms and user changes (audits) from this widget.
- Equipment Relationships: Use this widget to see all relationships a piece of equipment has with other equipment, spaces, and network field controllers. You can easily navigate to other equipment or spaces to help troubleshoot issues.
- Equipment Data: Use this widget to view all points in a selected piece of equipment to help you understand whether it is behaving normally.
- Schedule: Use this widget to view schedules associated with a space or a piece of equipment. The Schedule widget provides a summary of each schedule affecting the associated spaces or equipment. The Schedule widget also provides a simple way to confirm effective schedules and modify schedule configuration for a specific date in the future. Finally, the Schedule widget allows you to adjust weekly schedules or add exceptions to many schedules in one operation, so you can respond quickly to required schedule changes.
- Detail: Use this widget to see, and edit or modify the details about the object you are currently viewing.
- Summary View: Use this widget to see a summary of the object you are currently viewing. This includes a list of the objects linked to the object you are currently viewing, their status, the type of object, the items name, their value, a description of the item, and if there is an alarm.
- Involvement: The Involvement widget provides a visual representation of how objects are related and impacting one another in the Metasys system.
- Calendar: The Calendar widget is a graphical representation of the Calendar object. You can view and edit a calendar object with this widget.
What is a viewer?
A viewer is a container similar to a pop-up window. The Metasys UI contains the Custom Trend Viewer that allows you to view historical trend data for up to four points on several pieces of equipment at the same time. You can view up to a year of historical trend data. The Metasys UI also contains the Alarm Manager viewer on desktop and tablet platforms. The Alarm Manager viewer allows you to view all alarms in your Metasys system. The Alarm Manager viewer is an alternative to the Alarm Manager stand-alone, accessed through the separate URL.