APROL operator system

Menu items are provided with meaningful tooltips to display detailed information about the respective programs.

Multiscreening with a keyboard/mouse makes it possible to connect several screens to one operator station. Depending on the graphics card, 1, 2, 3, 4 or even 8 screens can be used with a single operator station.

DisplayCenter acts as the central application for process control. In the process graphic, the operator can see all current process states and intervene interactively depending on the defined permissions.

The most recently used process graphics can be called up quickly using the forward and back buttons (similar to a web browser). It is also possible to select the last 11 activated process graphics directly via menu entries.

The graphic tree presents all configured process graphics with their corresponding names and descriptions. These images can be selected directly from here.

In Engineering, Tooltips can be stored for each device. They are shown to the operator when moving the mouse over the corresponding object. The Tooltips can even contain images and process values.

DisplayCenter provides the AprolVncViewer and VncViewer visualization elements for embedding in a process graphic.

HMI applications can be embedded in a process graphic using the VncViewer visualization element.

The faceplate view (measuring points / online parameters) and control module view (online parameter groups) are available to clearly display and easily edit online parameters.

Controller of discontinuous batch processes via ParameterCenter

The access rights in the process-based HMI application are defined via the operator rights. These rights can be freely defined in the project.

As many operators and groups as needed can be created in the system.

Uniform representation for access/operator administration in the engineering and runtime environments makes managing user rights fast and intuitive.

Interface for exporting/importing operator rights in secure binary format simplifies configuration.

When creating image macros in libraries, they are configured in such a way that they can be used to directly intervene in the process. In the image macro, this object is then a block output. An operator right is assigned to this block output.

Operator rights are inherited through libraries in the project. In addition, there are the rights of the graphic blocks that may have been overwritten in the hyper macros, as well as the rights defined in the project.

The access rights in the process-based HMI application are defined via the operator rights. These rights can be freely defined in the project.

As many operators and groups as needed can be created in the system.

Uniform representation for access/operator administration in the engineering and runtime environments makes managing user rights fast and intuitive.

Interface for exporting/importing operator rights in secure binary format simplifies configuration.

When creating image macros in libraries, they are configured in such a way that they can be used to directly intervene in the process. In the image macro, this object is then a block output. An operator right is assigned to this block output.

Operator rights are inherited through libraries in the project. In addition, there are the rights of the graphic blocks that may have been overwritten in the hyper macros, as well as the rights defined in the project.

All operator activities are seamlessly recorded in a tamper-proof database, the so-called audit trail.

Depending on the operator activities, detailed information such as security login (operator logs in or out), interactive process execution, external process execution (web interface), process visualization (image opened, faceplate operated), system control actions (start, end, initialization of various applications), controller management (start, end, service/diagnostics mode), alarm suppression (lock, release), parameter history (download of parameter sets, modification of parameters) and the modification of protocol data (entry of replacement values) are seamlessly recorded in a database.

All essential data is recorded as a complete description of the action. This can include: time and date of changes, operator login, device, project ID, APROL system, server and operator terminal, controller action, old and new values, alarm and alarm group, event/function, comment/reason for change, image description and graphic block, web access and changed process variables, parameter set, ParameterCenter mode, reason for change, category and name of changed protocol data.

Each entry in the audit trail has the following detailed information:

Date and time = When
Action performed = What (incl. old/new value)
Name of the operator = Who
Location of the current comprehensive audit trail with filter functions can be queried very conveniently = Where

Filters can be used to create the desired view of the audit trail data. The data can be easily exported as an HTML file. Stored data cannot be changed or deleted and is therefore considered largely tamper-proof, which fulfills a central FDA requirement according to 21 CFR Part 11.

Audit trail is always started automatically, so no configuration is necessary or misconfiguration is possible. This means that the audit trail data is always available.

Authorization to access the data recorded by the audit trail is defined in the engineering environment via the APROL authorization system (2-component authorization consisting of user login + password).

All data can be imported into applications (HTML, CSV format), printed out or saved as a PDF document without additional programs (in MS Office, Open Office, etc.).

APROL releases are generally provided in German (de) and English (en). This also applies to the APROL system documentation.

Other languages listed below are available with varying degrees of translation. The APROL system software modules for the engineering environment are not available for the most part, since a translation is mainly only required for operating and monitoring (operator station).

Partially implemented languages or prepared environments:
• Chinese (zh_CN) • Traditional Chinese (zh_TW) • Danish (da) • Finnish (fi) • French (fr) • Italian (it) • Japanese (ja) • Korean (ko_KR) • Lithuanian (lt) • Dutch (nl) • Norwegian (no) • Polish (pl) • Portuguese (pt) • Romanian (ro) • Russian (ru) • Swedish (sv) • Slovakian (sk) • Spanish (es) • Czech (cs) • Turkish (tr) • Hungarian (hu)

All alphabets and character sets used worldwide can be displayed in APROL thanks to its UNICODE capability (UTF-8). To use multiple languages in parallel, e.g. in the HMI application, the corresponding information and texts can be stored separately for each language in the engineering environment.

APROL supports language switching for the HMI applications in all supported target languages. The texts in the process graphics are displayed at runtime in the set target language.

The alarm texts can be translated into another language. During runtime, the alarm texts can be displayed on the operator station in the DisplayCenter and in the alarm report in the translated language.

The texts used in the libraries on the input pins, faceplates, static tooltips, etc. are summarized in a compendium so double translations are not required.

The TranslationManager provides convenient translation of HMI texts in list form. Efficient translation performance is ensured by specifying a status when displaying original and translation texts as well as support through translation suggestions based on a loadable compendium.

The host computers receive the translation texts automatically via the usual download mechanism.