Embed Content from an External Source • Transpara

You can embed content from an external source in Visual KPI, such as a weather map, HMI or process graphic, live video feed, manual data entry form and just about anything else that has a URL. These objects can be placed on your Visual KPI dashboards and can also live as first-class objects within the system.

The external content you embed in Visual KPI can have attributes, geolocation, live in groups or at any level of the hierarchy, just like any other KPI or Visual KPI object.

When you embed content in Visual KPI, you’ll find it organized under the charts menu, Chart Type: Embedded Content.

Click on any embedded content and it opens so you can view it in a panel window like you would a chart.

What can you embed in Visual KPI?

Just about anything that has a URL.

Let’s you say you have software that allows your operators to turn pumps on and off via an online software interface. You can display the interface in Visual KPI, and your managers can view any KPIs and control the machines via a Visual KPI site.

You could display messages or a form on your Visual KPI site and only display it under conditions you define.

You can display a live weather map, a geo map that shows moving assets, a YouTube video, an email form. Anything that has a URL, whether it lives on your server or another, can be embedded in Visual KPI.

Configure & embed content in Visual KPI Designer

Embed content in Visual KPI by adding a chart type and defining the attributes like you would any other chart type.

Give your embedded content a name and description.
Add it to a group.
Insert the URL.
Optional: define attributes.

You can define additional attributes such as start and end time (if the destination URL can accept this), or get the URL from an interface. Parameters still allow you to deliver the content based on the formulas you build.

Note: some sites have turned off the ability to be embedded in an iframe (e.g. google.com). You may see multiple URLs available for some applications, including one to view in your browser and one that is part of an embed code. Here are two examples from YouTube using the same video:

The URL to watch the video in a browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6hoekPqpC4&t=2s
The code provided for embedding the video: <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/m6hoekPqpC4” frameborder=”0″ allow=”autoplay; encrypted-media” allowfullscreen></iframe>

In Visual KPI, you want to use the URL from the second example, but without all of the code around it. Visual KPI handles all of the iframe code itself.

Embed custom URL with context parameters

In addition to embedding a standard URL in a Visual KPI dashboard, you can also embed custom URLs and pass parameters into the URL, if the target page is making use of those parameters.

When your embedded content comes from a custom source, you can put some things in the URL that give you some context around the data. For example, you can use START and END times to show only the content within a certain time range that you want users to see on your dashboard. Of course, this must be compatible with your external source so that it knows what to do with a START and END time.