Send User Info To PLC

I am currently using FactoryTalk View Studio and RSLogix5000 for a college PLC project and am wondering if there is a way to send information from FactoryTalk to the PLC telling it what user is logged into the PanelView.

I have a push button I would only like to work if certain user groups are logged in and am stumped as to how I can make this work.

Thanks

Kyle

You can easily set up security on Factory Talk View to hide the pushbutton unless a certain user or group is logged in.

Sorry, I should have been a little more specific. I do know how to use the visibility to only display buttons on PanelView for certain user groups, however the push button I am trying to restrict is on a physical control panel. Basically, the button starts an automatic process, and you have to be logged in to start the process.

I was hoping there was a way to tell the PLC what user is logged into the system and update a bit based on it, and make it a condition for the process to start.

One method that I have seen is to look at a password/numeric input that was entered, and compare it to a valid number to allow your process to start in the PLC

You can run a macro when a user logs in or out. That might be a good place to start looking. It's been a while since I used that functionality, so I can't remember if you can assign a unique macro for each user, or if you can only assign one macro to run when any user logs in or out. If you can assign unique macro's - easy. You can write a different code to the PLC for each user, and you'll know straight away who's logged in. If not, you're going to have to get a bit more creative. Perhaps on login you can use a macro to write the username to a PLC tag. Or perhaps you can use the macro to conditionally set a bit based on user access - e.g. if CurrentUserHasCode(a) then set a bit in the PLC, otherwise do nothing. And then a macro to reset that bit when the user logs out.

It's been a while since I played around in that area, but you might be able to make something work that way.

I do something similar on Factory Talk SE, when a user puts a valve or piece of equipment into manual i write the username to the PLC tag.

Using a button:

You could do something similar when the user opens the page or use on the button to set temporary start bit, then check the username & set the actual start bit if ok?

We do it similar to ASF.

First set up a macro for each user level. In our case we have "default" plus two other levels with greater access. Each macro can set a PLC tag e.g. {[PLC]user} is 0, for default then 1, 2 etc. for higher level access.

Secondly in Runtime Security add user Ids which run login and logout macros. All logouts run the "default" macro and each login runs the relevant user level macro.