MultiSpeak Support

The MultiSpeak® communication protocol defines a web services-based standard for exchange of data between SCADA and various services required by electric utilities, such as outage management.

VTScada uses a subset of the MultiSpeak specification to support selected methods required by the Milsoft™ DisSPatch™ outage management system. It does not support all devices using the MultiSpeak protocol.

Enable MultiSpeak in your Application:

All of the following configuration actions must be completed in order for VTScada to communicate with your Milsoft DisSPatch device:

  • Ensure that you have a VTScada license that includes the Remote Data Access option.
    The About dialog in the VAM will tell you whether this is enabled by your license key.
  • Secure Your Application and ensure that at least one account has the Remote Data Access privilege.
  • Because MultiSpeak is a web service, you must Configure a VTScada Thin Client Server and Configure a Realm.
  • [Optional but strongly recommended] Install a TLS/SSL Certificate for your server(s).
  • Add the names of your Internet Realms to the application property MultiSpeakRealmNames.
  • Add the URL to which you intend to connect, to the application property MultiSpeakSubscriptionURL.
  • Configure other MultiSpeak Interface Properties as necessary.
  • Select the Publish option in each I/O and Calculations tag that will communicate with the remote device.

For most tags, only the value is available directly. Driver tags contain seven variables in addition to the value. (Communication Driver Log-Enabled Variables) Other variables and properties can be monitored by creating an expression in an I/O and Calculations tag to mirror that variable, then publishing the calculation tag. For an example, refer to: Monitor the Alarm Status

Assuming that all of the above have been configured correctly and that there is a working connection between your VTScada server and the DisSPatch device, communication should now be enabled.

If notifications sent by VTScada have their responses successfully received from Milsoft but no outages / normalization events are reported, make sure that the Company name set in Milsoft matches the MultiSpeakMHCompanyAttribute if set or the default value "Trihedral Engineering Ltd." otherwise .

Troubleshooting:

In the case where your application runs on multiple workstations, VTScada will ensure that only the primary server maintains the notification queue. In spite of this there may be instances where the following can occur:

  • A notification may be received multiple time by the Outage Management System.
  • Some notifications may be lost.

If this occurs, the configuration must specify MultiSpeakMaxMessagePoints to be exactly 1 (so that the queue length is 1) and MultiSpeakNotificationDelay to be as short as possible. This configuration will guarantee that every change in an I/O will immediately be sent to the outage management system.

Related Properties

MultiSpeakLegacyIOPublish - Set TRUE to enable MultiSpeak publishing for Legacy I/O tags

MultiSpeakMaxMessagePoints - Maximum number of ScadaPoints (tag values) to include in one message.

MultiSpeakMaxPointIDLength - Maximum number of characters for a MultiSpeak PointID.

MultiSpeakMessageRetries - Number of times a MultiSpeak notification should try again after timing out.

MultiSpeakMessageTimeout - Time for MultiSpeak notification messages to wait for a response.

MultiSpeakMHCompanyAttribute - Outgoing MultiSpeakMsgHeader Company attribute value.

MultiSpeakNotificationDelay - Time in seconds to wait before sending a notification message.

MultiSpeakPingURLProbingPeriod - Sets the frequency of checks to verify that a MultiSpeak endpoint remains available during long periods of inactivity.

MultiSpeakRealmNames - List of realm names that can accept incoming MultiSpeak messages.

MultiSpeakSubscriptionMethods - CSV list of methods for MultiSpeak notification messages.

MultiSpeakSubscriptionPassword - Password to use for MultiSpeak notification messages.

MultiSpeakSubscriptionURL - Destination for MultiSpeak notification messages.

MultiSpeakSubscriptionUsername - Username to use for MultiSpeak notification messages.

MultiSpeakTraceFileSize - Maximum size of the file trace for the MultiSpeak service in MB.

MultiSpeakTraceLevel - Diagnostic trace level for the MultiSpeak service.

MultiSpeakTraceMemorySize - Maximum size of the in-memory trace for the MultiSpeak service.