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Facility Groups

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  rev. 2011-04-27        

Facility Groups are subsets of facilities related in some way.  These groups can be functional categories (e.g., fire stations, salt silos, office buildings, etc.), management departments, or cost centers.  Facility Groups are used to group buildings for viewing, reporting, dashboards and assignment of user privileges.  They also form the navigation nodes on the Portfolio Tree, so they should be planned carefully to reflect the structure of your organization.

 

                                    Add, remove, or define Facility Groups by selecting the Portfolio Node under the Portfolio Tree, then clicking the Facility Groups button.

If you are dealing with a small portfolio, say 10 buildings or less, sorting and filtering groups of buildings is not an important concern.  But with a large portfolio the information becomes unmanageable unless you have robust features for working with smaller groups.

Facility group membership is completely flexible, meaning that a facility can be assigned to more than one group.  This is useful for very large building portfolios where facilities are organized in more than one way, perhaps by geographical location as well as by function.

A unique ID code must be assigned to each facility group.  No other information is absolutely needed, but it is recommended that you fill in the name and description fields for clarity.

 

                                                             Facility Groups are a convenient shortcut for the following functionality:

Narrowing the facility list in the Navigation Tree - Click on the desired group node under the Portfolio Tree, then switch to the Facility Tree.  The facility list will be limited to the chosen group.
Group-based dashboards, reports, and exports - Group node selection dictates the context (data scope) for the actions available and content displayed in the Work Area.
Assigning a new user - Restrict the context of a new user to a single group.

Defining Facility Groups

Navigate to the Portfolio Node in the Portfolio Tree, select a Portfolio and click the Facility Groups button. Enter details, and select Save Facility Group before pressing Done.

Facility Groups are Dynamic

Facility Group membership can be changed (facilities added or removed) at any time by a user with the necessary permissions.  When this is done, associated functionality changes immediately.  Users with roles based on facility groups will gain or lose access to buildings.  Facility list restrictions will change in the Facility Tree.  Reports, dashboards, and exports based on group node selection will also change.

 

                                              ManagingEnergy dashboards and reports for Facility Groups are normally displayed quickly, even for large groups within large portfolios over extended reporting periods, and even where weather normalization, billing period normalization, or interval data processing is required.  This is accomplished through a tremendous amount of background processing that prepares group-based information for display when required.

If you change group membership, the background information is not immediately available and must be recreated.  If you request a dashboard or report shortly after changing or defining a group, you may find the response very slow.  Response will be much faster 24 hours later.

Facility Groups can be used in a similar way to Alternate Identifiers, but internally they work quite differently.  Facility Groups provide extended navigation and output functionality that Alternate Identifiers do not.  If you just need to match facilities to other existing applications, without adding nodes to the navigation tree, Alternate Identifiers are a better choice.

 

Related Topics

Alternate Identifiers

 



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