Subjects

Subjects are the main assets you want to monitor. This can be a machine, office or production line. For example, a room in building, construction site or electrical substation. Subjects can either be shown in a list or on a map. You can filter on subject, properties and status to create any cross section of subjects you would like to see. For example, you want to see machines of a certain type within a specific region in problem status. The color of the map marker indicates the status of the subject to give you an instant view on the health of the subjects.

Using subjects

The status of your subject is of great importance to know if you should take action. The subject dashboard gives you all the ins and outs at a glance. The properties (1) show the details of the subject. The subject dashboard layout is configurable and it works the same as your general dashboard. Click the pencil (2) to start editing your dashboard and you are able to:

Resize and order panels to adjust the panel sizes and drag them where you want.
Layout configuration per screen size to keep your dashboard to the point no matter the screen size.
Adding panels to divide your dashboard into more manageable chunks of visual information.
Widgets to display different types of data. All widgets automatically use the context of the subject you are looking at.

Adjusting the subject settings can easily be done via the settings (3) on the top-right corner of the page.

If desired, you can enter Kiosk mode (4) to remove any distractions and enter a full screen mode.

If your subject has a parent and/or children based on its subject composition, you can use the breadcrumb (5) to navigate up towards its parent, or down towards its children. When clicking on the arrow, you will see a list of all of the children of this specific subject.

Keep in mind that removing panels from the subject dashboard is only a visual change. For example, removing a metric from your subject is done at the managing subject types part of the web app.

Managing subject types

Subject types can be seen as a template or blueprint for a subject. This makes it easy to add and adjust subjects of the same type.

Creating subject types

Creating a subject type is done by providing a name for the type and adding a default set of properties and metrics. Go to the subject type overview page when you want to add a new type:

After clicking on the green plus button to create a new subject type, you can provide a name for the subject type, as well as identify one or more parent types based on existing subject types. Simply start typing in the parent type field, and select or hit enter to configure one or multiple subject types as parent types. Defining a a parent type is optional, thus you can also leave this field empty.

General settings

The general settings of a subject type consists of the name, parent type(s), primary location and is the place to remove the subject type.

Parent types

Selecting one or multiple parent types is the way to configure your subject composition (entity model). Defining parent types determines what possible parent subject can be selected when creating or editing subjects. This then has the following following effects throughout the platform:

On the subject overview, the tree view can be used to expand and collapse parents, and the list view will display all subjects along with additional information about its subject composition.
Maps will only show the top-level subjects. You need to explicitly filter on other subject types to see specific children on the map.
On the main dashboards and Explorer you are able to constrain your subjects, events and measurements on ancestor subjects.
On the event overview you will see all events. You can filter on subject type or subject to see specific events.
On the subject dashboards, it is possible to show descendant subjects in the widgets.
On the subject dashboards you can use a breadcrumb to navigate down to children, and up to a subject’s parent.

Subject composition allows you to add additional context to your subjects. This is done by defining your parent types and thus creating a composition.

Below you will find an example of a building on the right side, and on the left side how you would define your subject types in Blockbax.

Subject type definition:

graph TD A[

Building

] --> B[

Floor

Parent type: Building] --> D[

Room

Parent type: Floor] --> F[

CO2 Sensor

Parent type: Room]

Example:

graph TD A[Building] --> B(Floor 1) A[Building] --> C(Floor 2) B --> D[Room 1A] B --> E[Room 1B] D --> F[CO2 Sensor 1A] E --> G[CO2 Sensor 1B] C --> H[Room 2A] C --> I[Room 2B] H --> J[CO2 Sensor 2A] I --> K[CO2 Sensor 2B]

Primary location

The primary location determines the location that is used to display a subject on the map. To be able to set a primary location, you first need to add a location property or an ingested location metric to the subject type.

Option	Description
No primary location	Subjects of this type are not shown on the map
Use location property	The subject location on the map is fixed based on the selected location property
Use location metric	The subject location on the map is based on the latest received location measurement of the select metric

Below you see a subject type which has a property and a metric of data type location. The property is chosen as the primary location.

Configure properties

The next task is to decide whether you want to assign properties to the subject type. Properties are optional and meant to provide extra information (metadata) about the subject and they can also be used as filters. For example, when you want to compare certain series with a specific property.

Attribute	Description
Name	Open the dropdown and select the property you want assign. Nothing to choose from? You have to create properties in the project settings.
Subject must define a value	Check the checkbox when a value of for this property is required for every subject you add.
Hide from subject dashboard	Check the checkbox the property should not be shown in the subject dashboard.

Configure metrics

Last but not least, it’s time to determine which metrics you want to add to the subject type. We created the metrics documentation to explain the three different types and their capabilities.

Managing subjects

The platform provides several actions on subjects. Down here you can find the most common actions explained.

Subject overview

The subject overview displays all subjects in the project, accompanied by some key statistics. You can configure what information is shown by customizing the columns. By default it will show you a subject’s name, status, latest event and latest measurement date. In addition to the default columns, you can add columns for properties to show the values that are assigned to subjects.

Columns can be enabled or disabled by using the toggle switch, and re-ordered by using the drag handle in front of it. The column that comes first determines the default sort order of the grid.

There are two views that you can use on the subject overview, a tree view and a list view.

Tree view

The tree view allows you to expand and collapse subjects that have any children defined on the basis of subject composition.

List view

The list view displays all subjects, with additional information based on subject composition in the name column. Underneath the name of your subject, you will also see information regarding it’s composition.

Creating subjects

Creating a subject means adding a subject of a specific type to your project. First of all, you have to navigate to the subject overview:

Next is to add a subject and at least fill in the required fields.

Attribute	Description
Type	The subject type you want to create a subject for. Nothing to choose from? You have to scroll up to see how to create a subject type.
Name	Give your subject a descriptive name so you can easily recognize and find it.
External ID	Provide the ID the subject has in your own systems. In this way you can easily map subjects to the entities they relate to in your own systems. This external ID is also used to construct the default ingestion IDs you have to provide when sending measurements for ingested metrics.
Parent subject	Based on parent type(s) defined in the subject type, you are able to select a parent for the given subject. Please note that selecting a parent is optional.
Properties	Define values for the properties that are assigned to this subject’s type. Look-up the properties docs to see how to add properties to subject types
Metrics	Use the default ingestion IDs or provide your custom one for your ingested metrics. By default ingestion IDs are derived from the subjects’ external IDs and metrics’ external IDs (e.g. `subjectExternalId$metricExternalId`). You can also override these with custom ones. You have to provide an ingestion IDs when sending measurements via the API.

Here you can see a Blockbaxer creating a subject:

Editing and deleting subjects

Deleting subjects is like drinking beer on a Friday night: it’s an easy exercise but the consequences can be huge. Why? Deleting a subject will also remove the associated metrics with their measurements and events. This means you can delete a lot of data by a simply deleting a subject, so be careful. Anyway, this is where you can edit and delete:

Documentation