In VTS, application pages display data transferred between your application and the physical equipment that makes up your system. These on-screen representations run in real-time, meaning that when a change occurs in the equipment, it is automatically and instantly reported by VTS to your screen.
Each equipment process in your system is represented by a special software component called a "tag". Tags identify, and define each equipment process, and report data about the equipment process (such as mode, status, level, pressure, etc.) to your computer screen using graphic representations. Tags can be drawn on a page as different graphic objects that enable you to view data and determine the status of equipment at a glance by changing color, displaying values, and/or change appearance.
VTS uses different special symbols in place of or along with reported equipment process values to indicate that your attention is required. In the event that a tag is unable to report its proper value, it will instead display an asterisk (*) or will display a black color indicator, signaling to you that there might be an equipment failure or lost communication between the equipment and the computer. If you or another operator feels that the value being reported on your screen by an equipment process is in doubt, you may choose to mark it as questionable data, which places a question mark beside the value of the tag. The question mark symbol signals to you that you should validate the reported value of the equipment process.
You can interact with the objects representing equipment processes on the pages of your application via a shortcut menu. To access an object's shortcut menu, simply right-click it. The shortcut menu displays different options depending the object you've selected. Some of the commonly available shortcut menu options are: "Help", "Questionable Data", "Manual Data", "Disable Alarm" or "Alarm Disable", "Alarm Setpoints", "Deadband", and "Properties".
The sections that follow describe the appearance and operation of the standard Historical Data Viewer page, the Alarm page, and the Reports page that are available in your VTS application.