RSTechED 2009

DM02 – FactoryTalk Transaction Manager Basics

Presenter: Christopher Di Biase

Rockwell Software
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DM02 — FactoryTalk Transaction Manager Basics

Contents

About this lab .............................................................................................................................................. 4

Tools & prerequisites .................................................................................................................................... 4

Review the Database .................................................................................................................................. 5

Tour of the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager GUI ................................................................................. 8

Creating a Configuration using the Checklist........................................................................................ 10

Steps 1 & 2: Housekeeping items............................................................................................................... 11

Step 3: Where in the Control System is my data? ..................................................................................... 15

Step 4: Point to the Database .................................................................................................................... 22

Step 5: Putting it All Together with Time Based Transactions................................................................... 32

Running the First Transaction, a Milestone! .......................................................................................... 39

The event based Transactions ................................................................................................................ 43

That’s All Folks.......................................................................................................................................... 51

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About this lab

This is the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager Basics lab, and will focus on the primary purpose of
FactoryTalk Transaction Manager in this lab, which is to do fast, secure and robust data logging. We will
be monitoring a conveyor system that has some boxes moving down the line and we need to log data in
both a time based and event driven way. The same example will be used for the FactoryTalk Transaction
Manager Advanced lab.

This lab uses a simple conveyor line to illustrate some FactoryTalk Transaction Manager functions, we
have a RSLogix Emulate 5000 program running and a FactoryTalk View SE application which helps you
visualize a bit of what is happening in the controller.

Note that most of the steps have the text on top and the image just below it. The image routinely shows
you how to perform the action described in the text.

Tools & prerequisites

Software programs required
• Windows Server 2003 R2
• SQL Server 2005
• FactoryTalk Transaction Manager v9.0 (CPR9)
• FactoryTalk View Site Edition v5.0 (CPR9)
• RSLinx Enterprise v5.17 (CPR9 SR1)
• RSLinx Classic v2.54 (CPR9 SR1)
• RSLogix5000 v17.0
• RSLogix Emulate 5000 v17.0
Hardware devices required
• Computer with VMWare Workstation 6.5
Files required
• The “FT Transaction Manager” VMware Image
• FactoryTalk View SE Project (simple screen and a few tags)
• SQL Database scripts (tables already created for this lab)
• Ladder Logic

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Review the Database

This first step is to familiarize yourself with the tables inside the database. FactoryTalk Transaction
Manager can log into just about any table you create. In this lab we will use 2 tables inside a SQL Server
2005 database. So let’s review the 2 tables:

1. Start SQL Server Management Studio. From the Start menu, select Programs > Microsoft SQL
Server 2005> SQL Server Management Studio.

2. You have to log in to the SQL Server, but this has been pre-configured for you using Windows
Authentication, so simply click Connect.

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3. Within SQL Server Management Studio, use the Object Explorer to browse to the tables of the
FactoryTalk Transaction Manager database as shown below:

4. Expand the dbo.my_box table and the columns folder as shown below:

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 Review the columns. Box_Id will hold a unique identifier of a box, most likely this is something
scanned from a barcode. The other fields have height, width, depth and weight information. The
last information you see that we will track is SCAN_MACHINE_NAME and date/time info, this
tells us when and where we acquired this data from.

5. The next table we are going to look at is the conveyor table. Collapse the dbo.my_box table and
expand the dbo.my_conveyor table as shown below:

Looking at the conveyor table you can see that we have conveyor_id to identify the asset and the
other information about how the conveyor has been performing.

6. Minimize SQL Server Management Studio.

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Tour of the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager GUI

In this section we’ll take a quick look at some of the capabilities of the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager
Graphical User Interface (GUI).

1. Start the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager User Interface by selecting Start > Programs >
Rockwell Software > FactoryTalk Transaction Manager > FactoryTalk Transaction Manager

2. The first thing to notice is the System View graphic in the right-hand pane and your computer
name listed in the left-hand pane. This is a FactoryTalk Transaction Manager Configuration
Server that you see listed and the one on your computer was automatically registered for this
computer. If you wanted to perform remote monitoring or editing of FactoryTalk Transaction
Manager configurations, you can register a remote FactoryTalk Transaction Manager
configuration server (right click anywhere in the left-hand pane and select the Add Configuration
Server option).

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3. FactoryTalk Transaction Manager’s main container is a Configuration. A configuration contains
pointers to all the tags, pointers to all the database connections and the rules in which the
FactoryTalk Transaction Manager “transactions” fire. Transactions belong to a configuration and
they are the bindings of what parts of the control system will send data to what parts of the
database. Think of each transaction in FactoryTalk Transaction Manager as a rule that basically
says “this goes there and this is how often”. Only one configuration can run in FactoryTalk
Transaction Manager at any given time on a given computer, and each configuration can have
many transactions, and each transaction routinely has many data points.

4. Across the top you’ll see the toolbar that initiates several actions we’ll perform in this lab. The
first icon is the “new configuration” button, and of course the VCR like Play and Stop buttons
which start the actual data logging.

It is important to know that the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager user interface is not the part of
FactoryTalk Transaction Manager that actually does the logging, rather the behind the scenes
FactoryTalk Transaction Manager Windows Services do the data transfers. The FactoryTalk
Transaction Manager user interface helps describe the transactions into configuration files, which
then the services read and perform the logging.

5. The last several buttons on the toolbar are different “views” for the FactoryTalk Transaction
Manager user interface, currently you see the System Graphic that depicts how FactoryTalk
Transaction Manager works. The other views we will be using later are the transaction definition
view and transaction monitor views.

6. FactoryTalk Security is integrated into FactoryTalk Transaction Manager, so the act of

configuring, viewing and running FactoryTalk Transaction Manager configurations can be
secured. FactoryTalk Transaction Manager will respect the ‘single sign on’ that FactoryTalk and
FactoryTalk Security allows, reducing how often a user will have to log into the multiple products
they will often use at the same time.

7. Finally, FactoryTalk Transaction Manager has the ability to add and modify data points and
transactions while FactoryTalk Transaction Manager’s services are actively logging data, a
feature known as Online Edits. Several toolbar buttons give you control over accepting or
canceling the edits made while online.

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Creating a Configuration using the Checklist

Our first thing to do is to create the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager configuration itself. (Actually,
launching the RSLogix Emulate 5000 Chassis Monitor from the desktop shortcut. Doubleclick on
it to launch it.)

Launch the RSLogix Emulate 5000 Chassis Monitor to simulate data collection.

1. With the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager user interface, you select Configuration > New or the
“new” button (left-most icon on the toolbar);

The checklist then pops up to help guide you through the sequential steps necessary to create a
FactoryTalk Transaction Manager configuration.

2. Enter “conveyor_config” into the Configuration Name field. This is just a logical name to
encompass what we’ll do with the configuration.

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 3. The configuration checklist is designed to help you remember what order is the best for creating
configurations and to provide some feedback as to how the process is going. You’ll notice the
empty checkboxes next to each step that later will be filled in as yellow checks if you are mostly
done and green checks if you are completely done.

Steps 1 & 2: Housekeeping items

Steps one and two are about creating the location where the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager files are
stored, stating what types of data you want to interact with and then what accounts you’ll use for the
FactoryTalk Transaction Manager services. These steps will only be done once for the most part, and the
real interactive part of FactoryTalk Transaction Manager that will go through changes as you develop
your FactoryTalk Transaction Manager projects will be steps 3 thru 5.

1. Click on step 1 on the checklist.

2. In the dialog that comes up, we define the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager configuration. The
name is copied from the first screen and we’ll type in a path of C:\DM02 and check the Enable
Online Edits box. You’ll see this only allows us to talk to FactoryTalk Live Data control
systems, but that includes the ability to talk to Allen-Bradley equipment as well as being able to
talk to OPC servers for 3rd party systems (As long as that 3rd party OPC Server is configured
within your FactoryTalk Application). On the Enterprise Connector side, we’ll choose ODBC
since we’ll go to a local SQL Server database.

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3. Click Apply (you may see a warning message for a record being inserted, you can dismiss this
and check the box to not see those alerts anymore), and then click the Close button.

4. You’ll see as in the picture below that you now have completed step one and you have a green
check to indicate that you have completed this step successfully (gold stars seemed a bit too
trite). Let’s click on step 2 to complete our housekeeping efforts.

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5. This screen defines what accounts will be used to run the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager
Services. Remembering that FactoryTalk Transaction Manager Professional can run across
multiple computers if necessary, you can also change what computer each service runs on. We
won’t be doing that and we only need to supply the password on this screen, so type in rockwell
for your password and click Apply (again, you may see a warning message for a record being
updated, you can dismiss this and check the box to not see those alerts anymore).

While on this screen, we have to set the password for the other service, that will run the ODBC
connector.

6. Pull down the Connector Service list box to reveal the other services, in this case, all we have is
the ODBC connector, so select that.

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7. Once that is selected, you need to put in a name of the connector, the other fields (username,
password, computer) are all filled in by default as the same as the one you just did. Type in
ODBC for the connector name, click Apply then Close.

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Step 3: Where in the Control System is my data?
Now you have steps 1 and 2 completed, adding data points is the next step. We need to go select the
tags we want to be part of this configuration.

1. Click on Step 3 of the checklist.

2. First you must select a FactoryTalk Application, in our case we’ll use the my_demo Application
and click OK.

You will then be viewing the FactoryTalk data point screen, which shows you the embedded
FactoryTalk browser on the top, and then after you navigate to a tag on the top of the screen, you
can either double-click on it or click the Add Selected Tag(s) button to tell FactoryTalk
Transaction Manager that it can use that tag in a transaction. The tag shows at the bottom of the
screen and you can set properties about the tag concerning the rate at which the tag is scanned
and also how substitution policies are enforced. We’ve already added an RSView SE HMI server
at the root of the my_demo Application. In addition to that we’ve created an area called “area51”
which inside it contains an RSLinx Enterprise data server.

3. Clicking on the plus sign next to area51 expands the tree and you see the shortcuts inside of
RSLinx Enterprise, in this case there is only one, the RSEmulate5000 shortcut. We need to
expand RSEmulate5000 and you see inside the shortcut, to available items such as the built in
Diagnostics items and the Online folder. Expanding all the way down and selecting the Online
folder we can see structures that have controller scope as well as the program names listed.

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4. All of the tags we need are inside the Program:conveyor1 folder, so if we select that level in the
tree, and expand it we can see the strings and structures in the left hand pane and tags inside the
right hand pane.

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5. One of the groups of points we need is everything in the current_box array, it contains
information about the box that is currently going down the assembly line and was just scanned.
So if we select the current_box on the left-hand side, on the right side you’ll see the individual
array elements. You need to select elements 0 thru 4, you can either click and hold down and
“multi-select” in all the points or you can select the first one and shift-click the last one or ctrl-click
them all. Once you have them selected as you see below, you can click on the Add Selected
Tag(s) button.

Once the tags show up on the bottom of the screen, they are considered FactoryTalk Transaction
Manager data points and they have several properties such as scan rate and substitution that can
help tune a FactoryTalk Transaction Manager configuration.

6. In addition to those 5 tags, we also want to select conveyor_speed from the Program:conveyor1
folder as shown below:

Click on the Add Selected Tag(s) button after selecting it.

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7. Next, browse to the machine_name folder and the machine_name tag as shown below:

Click on the Add Selected Tag(s) button after selecting it.

8. We also need to add machine_divert_count tag from the Program:conveyor1 folder, select it
then click on the Add Selected Tag(s) button

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9. We are going to get a little fancy with our tag that has the controller time in it, we’ll use as an
array and use the length feature in FactoryTalk Transaction Manager to grab the data all at once.
Let’s browse out in the left hand pane to the SystemClock tag under Program:Conveyor1 (that
uses a UDT that has inside it several arrays, whew), and down inside it to Current, and we’ll
select the very first element (Current[0]) instead of every single one. Then click the Add
Selected Tag(s).

10. Next go down to the lower half of the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager screen and edit the item
string for that tag (double click in the field or select the field and hit F2) and add a ,L6 at the end
(adding the comma, the letter L and the number 6), which tells FactoryTalk Transaction Manager
that starting at the first point, grab 6 contiguous memory locations.

11. We also need to tell the rest of FactoryTalk Transaction Manager this is going to be 6 items inside
there, so we need to edit the element field and change it to 6 as seen below.

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12. The final change we need for the timestamp is to tell FactoryTalk Transaction Manager that unlike
a packed array of your average old integers, this structure is mapped out like a PLC5 time and
date structure to make converting to Logix systems easier (and because we already had the
datatype in FactoryTalk Transaction Manager). So we need to select the PLC Timestamp data
type from the data type pull down list.

13. The last data point we need to add is the inspection flag, which says when a box is being
inspected. This is important because we only want to get the data from the control system when
a scan is done, assuring us we have accurate data, so this inspection tag will be a trigger for a
transaction we create later, this will be our event driven transaction. Selecting
Program:Conveyor1 on the left hand pane, we then can select inspection tag on the right hand
pane. Then click the Add Selected Tag(s).

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14. Once the point is on the bottom part of the screen, we need to modify the properties of the data
point so we can use it as a trigger. Selecting the row we have for the inspection data point, we
then pull down the Mode property and select Unsched (stands for unscheduled) as seen below.
The mode of the data point determines how the data point is collected and what it can be used
for. Most FactoryTalk Transaction Manager data points are used as scheduled, meaning on a
predefined scan FactoryTalk Transaction Manager is collecting the data. Unscheduled means
that FactoryTalk Transaction Manager also has the tag on scan, but when the data is received by
FactoryTalk Transaction Manager, it can be used as a triggering event for a transaction to fire.
This is used for things like our fake conveyor system which pretends some vision system is
scanning the boxes at that moment. Limit switches or changes in process variables are also
events customers use as triggering events. Device Scheduled is similar to scheduled but ask the
data server (mostly OPC servers) to skip their cache and read directly again from the end device.
While this guarantees “fresh” data, it is often more costly in the time it takes to acquire that fresh
data.

15. Now we can hit Apply on the screen and Close to leave the data point screen.

So after all these steps, we have browsed and configured the necessary data points we will later
log through transactions.

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Step 4: Point to the Database
Now that we have completed step 3, we can go into step 4 to setup our database information. Our lab
requires logging to two tables and so we need to basically tell FactoryTalk Transaction Manager about
those two tables. The ODBC Data Object definition screen allows us to reference database objects such
as tables and stored procedures.

1. Click on Step 4 of the checklist.

2. The data object screen pops up, let’s type in box_table for the name.

3. We have to build a connection to the database first, so we need a connection to an ODBC

System DSN (data source name). We get there by clicking on the browse button (the ellipsis or
three periods button) which are next to the database connection pull down list.

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4. Then we are in the connection screen, click the browse button (the 3 periods again) next to the
System DSN:

5. Now we are at the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator, and it is extremely important to
select the System DSN tab on this screen. Click on Add… (if you see a DSN already there
called FTTM_DB, you can skip ahead to step 12, or you can follow through the next 7 steps to
understand how to configure a DSN)

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6. Scroll down and select SQL Native Client from the list and click Finish.

7. For the name, we’ll put in “FTTM_DB” and pull down the server list and select (local) as shown
below:.

Then click on Next>

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8. On the following screen, select With SQL Server Authentication using login ID… radio button,
the below put in the username and password for the SQL Server account, we’ll use username of
“sa” and password of “rockwell” and click Next.

9. From the next screen, we need to check the Change the Default Database option and select the
FTTM database. Click Next.

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10. On the following screen we can just click Finish (nothing to change here).

11. The following screen we can test the connection and then select OK. If your test fails, raise your
hand for help at this point.

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12. At this point we have completed the creation of the system DSN, you now return to the ODBC
Data Source Administrator, you have the “FTTM_DB” DSN created and ready to use. Click OK to
dismiss the window.

13. Now we can select the same FTTM_DB as the System DSN and the connection name is filled in
for you. We just need to put in our username password which is user sa password rockwell.

Click Test, (ask for help if it fails), OK, Apply, then Close.

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14. Now we need to use that connection to find our tables we need. We have two tables and we’ll
make two data objects out of them. When we get back to the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager
Data Object Definition screen, we can pull down from the table list the dbo.my_box table.

15. Once we have our table selected you see the available columns from the database on the left
side of the lower part of the screen, the right side is for the columns we want FactoryTalk
Transaction Manager to use. We need to select all the columns (click down and multi-select or
select the top column and shift-click the last column) and then using the arrow button ( >> ) in the
middle of the screen, send the columns to the right as ones we choose to use.

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16. Once we have these moved over your screen will look like the following screen, click Apply to
save the data object.

17. We’ll click on Close to dismiss the data object definition screen, and it returns us to the check list
with step four now having a green checkbox. We’ll click on Step 4 again to re-enter the data
object screen, we want to create a connection to one more table.

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18. When we enter into the data object screen again, we’ll type in my_conveyor for the name of the
data object, and in the middle of the screen, select the FTTM_DB Database connection. Then
we pull from the table pull down list the table dbo.my_conveyor. Again you see the available
columns on the left side of the lower half of the screen.

19. In this case, we’ll select all the columns on the left and move them to the right using the arrow
buttons ( >> ) as seen below.

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20. However, we don’t need to use the fault_count column. This would be an example of how
flexible FactoryTalk Transaction Manager is, you can use just about any table available, and even
then you don’t need to send data to all the columns if it is not necessary. The fault_count
column shows on the right hand side as part of the data object, we’ll select it on the right and use
the deselect arrow button (<<) to not include it in our definition.

The resulting screen looks like the following:

21. We are then done with our data object, click on Apply to save and Close to exit the screen.
We have now completed all the data points necessary and all the data objects necessary, all that is
left is to marry them together, and our acting “Justice of the Peace” is a transaction that will bind the
two together.

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Step 5: Putting it All Together with Time Based Transactions
In this step we’ll add our time based transaction that runs on a predetermined interval. Remember this is
the step where all the work in the previous steps comes to bare, putting data points to the data objects.

1. We are back at the checklist, itching to get a green check for step five, so click on Step 5 to enter
into the transaction screen.

2. Entering the transaction screen, we need to give our transaction a name, so type in
conveyor_trans for our transaction name.

3. We then want to pull down the list of data objects and pick my_conveyor, as shown below:

You then see the bottom of the screen show you the columns we selected previously to use with
the data object.

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4. Next you need to double click anywhere in the bound value column (or right click any item and
choose Filter & Select Data points)

5. You are presented with the screen you see below, where the transactions definition screen pops
up on your left and the available data points show up on your right.

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6. From there you can drag-and-drop data points on the column they need to be “bound” to. For
instance, select the conveyor_speed data point (right-hand pane) by clicking and holding down
the mouse button, then drag the mouse over to the speed row (left-hand pane) and let go of the
mouse button (you’ll see the shadow shown below of the data point as you drag it across). This
greatly speeds up transaction definition and makes the process much easier.

7. Do the same for the datapoint machine_divert_count and drag-and-drop it over to the
diverted_count row.

8. We can also bind expressions to columns or nothing at all, for instance we don’t have an average
data point so we will leave the avg_speed column without any bindings, and since that column
can be null (allowed to be empty or null value) in the database, this will not be an issue. We will
bind expressions for the conveyor_id and hardcode the value 1 (one) to go to the database. If we
right click on the row on the screen for conveyor_id, select the Bind Expression… option.

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9. The expression editor comes up, this one is easy, enter in 1 to the Expression String text box,
then click OK.

10. We’ll do something similar but more complicated for the date. We’ll again right click on the row
with the_date and select Bind Expression… .

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11. This time however we’ll click the TransTimestamp() button, which adds the expression string.
“Local” means to use the current computer time verses using the UTC (Coordinated Universal
Time) time. Click OK to close the Expression Editor.

12. We need to schedule this transaction to run a little bit faster then the default 1 minute (or else this
lab will really take forever). We need to select the Trigger/Storage… button.

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13. Once on the Trigger and Storage Parameters screen, we need to change the Scan Rate to 10
seconds as shown below:

Then click OK to leave this screen and get back to the transaction definition screen.

14. Finally we need to enable the transaction, so we just need to select enable in the Transaction
Status part of the screen.

Behind the scenes, FactoryTalk Transaction Manager checks the validity of a transaction when it
enables it (making sure no basic rules of FactoryTalk Transaction Manager are broken).
Disabling transactions are an easy way to stop transactions from running but not deleting their
definition, in case you want to change them later or add things to them.

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15. Our final step, clicking on Apply to save the transaction changes, then Close.

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Running the First Transaction, a Milestone!

In this section, we’ll run that one lonely transaction, perform some simple monitoring and show you how
easy it is to check on what FactoryTalk Transaction Manager is doing.

1. We can leave the checklist, the training wheels are off! Click on Close at the bottom of the
checklist to get back to the main FactoryTalk Transaction Manager user interface.

2. If you have not already, change the “view” FactoryTalk Transaction Manager is using to the
Transaction Definition view and this will show you in the right hand pane the transaction we just
defined. The last four buttons on the toolbar are different views you can use, the one that looks
like a bridge is for Transaction Definition. You can do the same by selecting the menu item View
> Transaction Definition.

3. Now it is time to run the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager configuration. Clicking on the VCR
style Play button will start the configuration. Click YES to the “Are you sure?” question.

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You will see the following pop up, showing you the status of the starting services.

4. We’ll change the view again over to transaction monitor; it is the button on the toolbar with the
bridge with the magnifying glass over it (again available from the menu View > Transaction
Monitor). This allows us to see the status of a running configuration.

5. Watching the transaction monitor, you can click the column headings to force a refresh, but if we
take a few refreshes, you’ll see the columns updating as in the pictures below:

This image shows you that a transaction has passed but has not yet passed all the transactions
to the database and one is in the “cache”. To explain the cache is slightly advanced, but there is
a local cache of transactions that FactoryTalk Transaction Manager keeps on the hard drive of
the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager computer until certain conditions are met, by either number
of transactions or on a timed basis. This provides FactoryTalk Transaction Manager the fault
tolerance in case the database goes down; FactoryTalk Transaction Manager will queue up these
cache files until the database comes back up. It also helps for really large FactoryTalk
Transaction Manager systems, where you can tune this so more data goes to the database with
every transfer of data, otherwise FactoryTalk Transaction Manager sends tons of smaller
transfers.

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6. If you click a column heading or wait about 30 seconds, the screen will update and you’ll see the
transactions have passed into the database (the Database Passed column has positive values!).
If you have “failures” instead of “passes”, please wave your hand wildly in the air and ask for help
from the room monitors.

7. Now we are ready to go find where that data is located! SQL Server Management Console
should still be running in the background (if it is not, select Start > Programs > Microsoft SQL
Server 2005> SQL Server Management Studio). Within SQL Server Management Studio, Use
the Object Explorer to browse to the tables of the FactoryTalk Transaction Manager database as
shown below:

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8. Right-click the table dbo.my_conveyor and select Open Table as shown below:

Within SQL Server Management Studio, you should see the records that FactoryTalk Transaction
Manager inserted into the database table:

Congratulations! Not just for the fortitude for making it this far in reading through the lab but for now
being able to gather data about our conveyor, you’d be one RSBizWare report or Excel graph away
from being able to make better business decisions off of this data.

If you have some good data, swap back to FactoryTalk Transaction Manager and stop the
configuration (the big square that looks like a VCR stop button, right next to the play button)

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The event based Transactions

A powerful feature in FactoryTalk Transaction Manager is the ability to log data only when an event
occurs in the control system, we’ll illustrate that with a different type of transaction.

1. First we’ll make sure we are using the transaction definition view (make sure to select the “bridge”
icon or View > Transaction Definition in the main FactoryTalk Transaction Manager user
interface). From that screen, right clicking anywhere on the empty space you can select Define
Transaction from the resulting menu.

2. From the Transaction Definition screen, we’ll call the new transaction package_trans so type that
into the transaction name field. Also pull down the box_table for the data object.

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3. You’ll see the columns appear for the box_table data object, right click on the bottom of the
screen and select the Filter & Select Data points option.

4. We need to bind the data points in a very distinct method. Drag over the current_box_4 data
point to the box_id column as shown below:

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5. The rest of the columns to be bound should follow the picture below. Drag and drop the data
points over. Notice we get to use the controller’s timestamp from the super-groovy timestamp
data point we created quite a while ago. No extra parsing or manipulation is required for that
timestamp because it is preformatted.

6. This transaction will not fire on a scheduled event, but rather an unpredictable unscheduled
event. We have to set the trigger, click on the Trigger/Storage… button.

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7. The trigger will be the unscheduled data point conveyor1_inspection, meaning this will only fire
when the box is inspected. Select the On Unscheduled Event and select our only available
unscheduled trigger. Note: If the data point conveyor1_inspection is not listed in the pull down
list box, then you missed the unsched configuration way back in Step 3: Where in the Control
System is my data, sub step 15.

8. We only want to perform this action when the bit goes high, so we’ll leave it at the default value
On High Transition.

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9. We also don’t want a false fire (something that happens when FactoryTalk Transaction Manager
first initializes upon startup, every unscheduled event looks like it changes since FactoryTalk
Transaction Manager never had a value before), so we’ll select the Ignore the First
Unscheduled Event option.

10. We’ll click on OK to accept the changes on the Trigger screen, then we’ll enable the transaction.

11. Next we’ll click Apply and Close to accept those transaction changes and we are back at the
main FactoryTalk Transaction Manager screen.

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12. We have to make sure the controller is in run mode. Using the RSEmulate 5000 Chassis
Monitor, right click on the Emulator controller in slot 2 and select Run, and click Yes. below:

13. We’ll make one more change to FactoryTalk Transaction Manager before we start it, which is to
turn on debugging. This will assist us with troubleshooting in case anything goes wrong (just as a
precaution), and will be easier to determine just what happened. In the main FactoryTalk
Transaction Manager user interface, select the configuration name then right-click and select
Configuration Properties.

14. From there you can see all the Configuration level settings. Information about the cache files,
error log files (what we want to change in this step) and connectors. We want to select the Error
Log tab.

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15. On the Error Log tab, make sure Debug, Informational, Warning, Error and Fatal are all checked
(as seen in the picture below).

16. Click OK to accept your changes.

17. Now that the RSLogix Emulate 5000 program is running, our data will change and we can fire up
FactoryTalk Transaction Manager and watch how it behaves. Start FactoryTalk Transaction
Manager by back on the main FactoryTalk Transaction Manager user interface clicking on the
VCR style play button.

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18. Switch back to the transaction monitor view by selecting the button that looks like the bridge with
the magnifying glass.

19. You’ll notice after the configuration has been running for a little bit that the transaction counts
differ in the two transactions.

Why is that? Well one is scheduled to fire every 10 seconds regardless of what is going on with
the line, but the other only fires when a box is inspected (something that could be stopped if the
line was stopped, which could happen if you flip the conveyor_on tag in the controller).

20. Open up SQL Server Management Console as you did before, make sure the FTTM database is
selected, right-click the table dbo.my_box and select Open Table as shown below:

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 21. From there you’ll see something similar to the output below. You’ll notice the timestamps may be
different from your PC clock, but that is because we are using the controller’s time.

That’s All Folks

You’ve built two transactions that perform different tasks and can be applied a variety of ways in a real life
configuration. You’ve seen how the checklist walks you through setting up FactoryTalk Transaction
Manager, how easy it is to:

• browse to your tags

• browse to your database

• build transactions off of both of them

We’ve seen some simple database commands to view the data and how to view how FactoryTalk
Transaction Manager is doing when processing the transactions.

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