Introduction

POD Message Control can be utilized to dispatch POD Notifications from a Production Process to active Production Operator Dashboards (PODs).

These messages may originate from POD Action Buttons, Shop Floor Equipment or Automation, Automatic Triggers, or any other triggers. They serve diverse purposes such as displaying alerts or warnings to Workers, providing feedback, offering instructions, or outputting error messages.

Using POD Notifications, Shop Floor Equipment can provide real-time feedback to Workers, enhancing communication and operational efficiency, for example.

In this blog post, I will guide you through the implementation of POD Notifications for a simple “Hello World!” scenario.

Implement

To implement a straightforward “Hello World!” scenario, begin by creating a Cloud Process within a Production Process Design in the Design Production Processes app. Add Start, POD Message, and End controls as outlined below:

For dynamic notification dispatch to different PODs, define “Input Parameters” by clicking on the Start Control. In this example, I created input parameters such as inPlant, inResource, and inWorkCenter, which can be mapped later on when establishing a POD Connection.

Move to the “POD Connection” tab, where, in the “Conditions to Select POD” section, you can set filters such as POD Type, Plant, Resource, and Work Center to determine which running POD(s) will receive notification messages.

Here, it’s very important to keep in mind that you can map Constant / Static values as follows:

Or dynamic values based on the Input Parameters previously created as follows:

After establishing the POD Connection, configure the POD Message control. Define a Name, specify whether the POD Message will “Require Confirmation,” and provide the Message payload.

The “Require Confirmation” flag influences how the POD Message appears on the POD for Workers. If unchecked, a simple Toast Message is shown. If checked, a popup message appears, requiring the Worker to press “OK” before continuing.

For the Message payload itself, it’s important to keep in mind that, besides a Constant / Static string, you can also click “Insert” to use Local Process Variables or Input Parameters as follows:

The Message payload can include constant/static strings, local process variables or input parameters.

In addition, you can also use “Insert” to add the Output of other services to your message payload.

For this exercise, I added the inResource Input Parameter to the message payload.

Before completing the process, ensure to enable “Publish to Service Registry” in the Additional Options (“…”) of your Cloud Process.

This enables your Production Process to be triggered via Service Registry from various sources including POD Action Buttons, Automatic Triggers or any other external sources, for example.

Save and Deploy your Production Process.

As the last implementation step, open POD Designer and enable POD Notifications for your desired POD(s) by clicking on “Configure Notifications” button at the top right corner and enabling POD Notifications from Production Processes.

Save and publish your POD(s).

Run

To run the process, open your configured POD and make sure that Notifications are properly enabled and POD is connected by checking the POD Status Indicator icon on the top right corner.

A green icon “Notifications enabled (Connected)” should appear in the top right corner of your POD.

Now, trigger the Production Process either manually from Design Production Process app for testing purposes or perhaps from an Action Button in POD, an Automatic Trigger or any external source, as real world scenario examples.

* Ensure all required Input Parameters are passed during the trigger.

Depending on the “Require Confirmation” flag, the message will either show up as a Toast Message.

Or a popup that requires confirmation.

* Note that in both cases above, the POD Message contains the Resource ID which was configured in the Message payload for the POD Message Control, and which was dynamically passed as an Input Parameter of the Production Process itself.

If “Require Confirmation” flag is checked, the Production Process will stay hanging in “Running (waiting)” status until you click on “OK” button as a confirmation. Such Production Process hanging status can be seen in Monitor Production Processes app as follows:

Conclusion

POD Message Control can be utilized to dispatch POD Notifications from a Production Process to active Production Operator Dashboards (PODs).

These messages may originate from POD Action Buttons, Shop Floor Equipment or Automation, Automatic Triggers, or any other triggers. They serve diverse purposes such as displaying alerts or warnings to Workers, providing feedback, offering instructions, or outputting error messages.

Using POD Notifications, Shop Floor Equipment can provide real-time feedback to Workers, enhancing communication and operational efficiency, for example.

In this blog post, you learned about the implementation of POD Notifications for a simple “Hello World!” scenario.

Do you like this post? Please let me know in the comments section what you think. Any feedback is highly appreciated.

Or, if you have any questions, please check SAP Community Q&A Area, or comment down below.

Thanks,

Manoel Costa