Projects and Devices

Vendor Requirements

Every project and vendor integration may have unique requirements for DeviceLink. Once you are familiar with the information described in this topic, select the corresponding topic from the Vendor Configuration section to walk through the Project creation process.

Projects

Projects in Copia are the programs and data that exist within the PLCs and other automation devices. They are typically modified by a Vendor IDE or some generic editor. When you configure a Project in DeviceLink, you will provide information about the project itself, its devices (i.e. PLC), and also configure a Job and assign an Agent to perform the job.

Once configured, Projects can be accessed via the Projects tab on the Site page. Each Project is represented as a card and contains some high-level information, and the buttons at the right allow editing Project details and additional project-related operations.

To edit an existing Project, open the Project actions menu and select "Edit Project"

Project details such as the description, linked agent, file list, path, linked device(s), and other vendor-specific fields, are edited in the right sidebar. Changes in this sidebar are automatically saved as soon as the field is deselected. A successful save is indicated by a toast in the bottom left of the page.

An example of a Project with successfully saved configuration changes (see toast on bottom left)

Watching Projects

When you choose to Watch a project, you will receive notifications about that project, if you have Notifications enabled. You'll notice that each project displays the Watch button (an eyeball icon) in the top right corner of the project card. If this is dark teal, this means that you are watching that project and therefore receiving Notifications about its backup activity.

If you do not want to receive notifications for a given Project, simply click on the Watch button on the Project card to unwatch the Project.

Watch all Projects

To watch all projects for a given site, navigate to the Site Settings to enable/disable this feature.

Devices

Devices in Copia represent the actual automation device (i.e. PLC, switch, robot, etc) that contains the project data. Since DeviceLink is going to connect to these devices, it is important to provide device information that allows the system to connect. Devices are linked to a Project.

Once configured, Devices can be accessed via the Device Tab on the Site page. The Device Card provides high-level details about the Device, and the buttons at the right allow editing and additional device related operations.