[00:00] Hi there and welcome. This time we will take you through a brief introduction to Tags, sharing an overview of what they are and how they perform. Tags are variables that allow information to be exchanged between data providers and consumers and they make up the foundations of a powerful data model within a node. Tags are objects that have three main attributes: value, timestamp and quality. A tag source can be any data acquisition module, derived tags module or scripting instance.

[01:01] Generally speaking, a tag’s value can come from a PLC or a similar device located somewhere on our network; from an OPC UA server, MQTT broker, SQL database or alternatively, it can be the result of a scripting expression, just to name a few… Quality codes are tag attributes composed by an indicator (Good, Bad, Error or Uncertain) and an integer that represents the tag value’s level of confidence. Quality will be considered Good if its value is equal to or higher than 192. Otherwise, it should not be considered as a confident value. Once created or imported in WebUI, tags can also be displayed in WebVision, be exchanged with other devices or third-party applications through any of the Data Delivery Modules, and can be used to calculate aggregated values and expressions or even run pieces of code.

[02:00] According to the origin and privacy of the tags, there are two different types available: Local tags, which belong to the node itself and can only be modified in this node, and secondly, Remote tags, which originate from an external node that exchanges all part of its data model through a link. Now you have a basic understanding of tags and how they work. Check out the following videos to learn more about them and use them in your model.