Frequently asked questions¶

You can use our Insights Hub Start for Free offering.

There are three ways that you can log in to Insights Hub the first time:

1. Use the Link from your Insights Hub Welcome E-mail.

2. If you know the URL of your Environment, you can type it directly in your Browser.

3. You can also go to Insights Hub product page and click on account in the navigation on the top right of the page (this method is only available to users with a standard IDP webkey). You can log in with Webkey and see all Environments listed which you have access to. Chose one.

The "username" and "password" will depend on the identity provider (IDP) you use. There are several options for Identity Provider (IDP) access. Our Standard IDP provider is "Webkey" Other option is to get access with other federateded IDP authorized providers such as Mendix ID or Siemens ID. If your environment (tenant) Admin has chosen custom IDP, for example your own organization credentials, then you can log in with your own familiar login window. This will be provided by your own IDP Provider.

You can check our Community for Support or customers may contact our Support Center. Additional information and videos are also available here: Documentation 

Normally you create a Webkey during the Insights Hub Strat for Free Registration Process. In the Commercial Insights Hub deployments, the Welcome E-Mail guides you through the WebKey creation process. If you already own a Webkey account because you are using it for other Siemens Software, you can use your existing webkey to access Insights Hub.

Insights Hub public versions are available on Azure, AWS and Alibaba. We also offer a private version which is cloud dedicated (VPC) and privately administered (LPC).

Summary of the differences between LPC and VPC:

Insights Hub Private Cloud (LPC) The customer has their own data center & their own infrastructure services and will need to install RedHat OpenShift or Rancher on top.

Insights Hub Cloud dedicated (VPC) The customer deploys it on an already existing HyperScaler Account like AWS or Asure.

Yes, You also can deploy Insights Hub in your own Azure and AWS account (hyper scaler) (Insights Hub Cloud dedicated (VPC )) or even on your own Datacenter with our Insights Hub for Private Cloud (LPC).

Currently the public Version of Insights Hub runs on: AWS, Azure, Alibaba.

Depending on your use case, there are many of out of the box solutions and Apps available (Apps and Solutions)

Admin of the environment is chosen by your organization. Please reach out within your organization for knowing who owns this role.

Yes you can choose Insights Hub Cloud dedicated (VPC) or Insights Hub Private Cloud (LPC) to ensure data policies meet the requirements of the respective country. Additionally you have to make sure that the infrastructure provider offers the required services.

If both options would not work for you, please contact our sales team they will work together with you to find a solution.

This depends on the public version in different locations:

Azure: Netherlands
AWS: Germany
Alibalba: China

If you choose to host your application in our Cloud Foundry, use the following buildpacks: Java, Node.js, .Net Core, Python, PHP, Go, Ruby, staticfile,binary and Mendix. If you host the app in another infratructure, you are free to choose the programing language.

Yes you can use your own IDE. 

You can host your applications either on our Cloud Foundry application runtime or your own infrastructure.

Please refer to the app development workflow which can be found here:

You can manage your applications with Developer Cockpit and Operator Cockpit and CloudFoundry CLI (comand line interface).

Yes, development and integration of plugins into Insights Hub Monitor is supported.

No, applications run only in your Production Environment and is only provisioned to your customers through the DevOps functionality.

Yes, take a look at Github, where you can check out some example code and other things.

Yes, Insights Hub and Industrial IoT Web Components offer exactly that.

Yes, the Mendix academy offers several Learning Paths where this is explained in detail.

Yes, can use non-Siemens hardware and software that supports standard communication protocols and develop your own connectivity solutions. (Using MQTT, MindConnect API, MindConnect LIB and so on)

Beside these possibilities, many Siemens hardware devices and software already can be connected easily.

Yes, you can develop your own gateway. Use MindConnect Lib SDK with C Programming (see) or the MindConnect API with any programming language of your choice. You can use SDK of your choice and connect using MindConnect MQTT. Or you use the connectivity solution Mindconnect Software Agent (MCSA).

Yes you can use your exisitng hardware and software using the MindConnect LIB SDK (see) to create a gateway.

You can also use MindConnect Software Agent (MCSA) in your hardware to connect and send data (see). It is available for Windows and also as a dockerized version.

Within our How To section you will find tutorials for onboarding devices via our various connectivity options.

It is possible to connect a wide range of devices and machines.

To connect your machines there are a variatiy of hardware and software solutions avaiable (see).

Yes, you can use S7, OPC-UA and MQTT protocols for bi-directional communication by using our MindConnect elements such as MindConnect Nano and MindConnect IoT 2040. You can also use MindConnect MQTT for bidirectional communication using your hardware of choice.

All communication is secured with TLS v1.2.

MindConnect Software Agent, MindConnect Nano and MindConnect IoT 2040 can easily be used to connect a Siemens PLC. There are some PLCs such as S7-1500, -1200 that can be connected directly.

This highliy depends on the PLCs and can only be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Different kinds of data can be stored: Timeseries data in our Timeseries database, unstructured data in Integrated Data Lake, files in our file storage. Other data such as log files and events can also be stored.

There are different ingest possibilites for hardware to software solutions. Importing to different storage possibilites includes, for example, IoT Database or Integrated Data lake.

For more information see: How Tos or open source repositories on GitHub.For more information see: How Tos or open source repositories on GitHub.

You can quickly check if you are connected and data arrives. Here are the two most common ways to check your connection:

1) Within the system tool "Asset Manager", you can check the connection of every onboarded Agent/Device. For detailed information see this document.

2) You can also view incoming data using the Application Insights Hub Monitor.

Yes, using MindConnect Integration, data from both cloud and on-premise based systems in your setup can be transfered for further contexualization, visualization, and advanced analytics.

Yes with Semantic Data Interconnect (SDI) it is possible to correlate data in Integrated Data Lake and timeseries data from machines providing context to your data.

You can store any kind of data including structured, semi-structured and unstructured data in the Integrated Data Lake.

Yes you can share your S3 resources with our Integrated Data Lake.

Yes. Data from AWS/Azure storage services can be transfered for contexualization, visualization, and advanced analytics.

Yes. MindConnect Integration has a feature called recipes (configured integration flows) that can be reused for different instances of source and destination systems configured in a recipe.

Yes. MindConnect Integration can read files from your FTP server and then transfer them for contexualization, visualization, and advanced analytics.

Yes. MindConnect Integration allows scheduling of integration workflows.

Yes. MindConnect Integration allows detailed montoring of integration workflows giving details on their status.

Semantic Data Interconnect (SDI) is a framework that enables users to provide a context to IoT, OT and IT data by establishing semantic relationship between different sources.

A semantic layer is a an abstraction of the technical implementation layer. It provides citizen data practitioners with an easy way to understand the data without worrying about the technical complexity and implementation of the underlying data source. The semantic layer presents the underlying data model using familiar domain definitions (dimensions, measures, hierarchies) and easy-to-understand terms.

Yes. Semantic Data Interconnect (SDI) allows you to query contexualized data use the query response for further analysis.

Yes. Query responses from Semantic Data Interconnect are available over REST interface and also available as files in Integrated Data Lake.

Yes. Multiple Industrial IoT capabilities such as system integration, transformation, orchestration and contexualization provide users with intuative ways to design, execute and monitor data workflows e.g. Visual Flow Creator also offers a graphical workflow editor that uses drag and drop to connect a collection of preconfigured and local nodes to perform a range a functions.

Yes. With Insights Hub Monitor and Visual Flow Creator it is possible to define and save KPIs on timeseries data.

Yes, it is possible to use native tools from Amazon and Microsoft on top of Integrated Data Lake. Details are available in the documentation.

Currently, there is no possiblity of connecting on-premise data lakes with the Integrated Data Lake. However, it is possible to transfer data between both of them.

Integrated Data Lake supports upload of up to 5 GB on AWS tenants and up to 256 MB for Azure tenants.

Yes, you can import your time series data into the Integrated Data Lake using the Time Series import feature available on the Data Lake.