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Watchtower at a glance

This page introduces the handful of things you meet when you use Watchtower, and how your work in the portal reaches your Edges and your operators.

What you work with

Term What it is
Edge A Privitty gateway at your site. It reads values from your plant devices and sends them to Watchtower. You add, approve, configure and monitor Edges in the portal.
Asset One plant device an Edge reads from, such as a PLC. An asset uses one protocol and has a name and connection settings.
Tag One value that an asset reports, such as a tank level. The portal shows the latest value and a chart of the last hour.
Site and group Your plant layout. A site is a location and contains groups. Every Edge belongs to one group. Roles and settings can apply to a whole site or group.
Template A reusable, versioned configuration. You define assets and tags once and assign the template to a group or an Edge.
Operator A person who uses the Privitty App to reach an Edge. An operator does not need a portal account.
Grant A time-boxed permission for one operator's App to reach one Edge. It sets what the operator can do: Device commands, Remote access, or both.

How your work flows

flowchart LR
    portal["Portal"]
    edge["Edge"]
    values["Tag values<br/>and alarms"]
    grant["Grant"]
    app["Operator in the<br/>Privitty App"]

    portal -->|"template and settings"| edge
    edge -->|"live values"| values
    values -->|"view and alarm email"| portal
    portal -->|"create"| grant
    grant -->|"time-boxed access"| app
    app -->|"commands and tunnels"| edge
  1. In the portal, you create a site, add an Edge and assign a template.
  2. The Edge applies the configuration and starts reporting tag values. You see them in the portal and receive alarms when a value crosses a threshold.
  3. When an operator needs to reach an Edge, you create a grant. The operator uses the Privitty App to run device commands or open a remote-access tunnel until the grant ends.

Two meanings of operator

The portal also has a role named operator for portal users. A field operator who uses the App does not need that role. See Roles and permissions.

Next steps