[00:00] Since tags in Ignition typically represent data coming from real world devices and databases, there can be real world problems that interrupt that flow of data. To account for this, all Ignition tags have an associated quality value, which tells us how much we can trust the value on the tag. A tag with a quality value other than good is generally untrustworthy, since it means that something in the data flow has gone wrong. There are many reasons for bad quality on a tag, including network disconnections, overloaded devices, and tag configuration issues. To demonstrate, I'll use a couple of tags here in my Tag Browser. Everything on these tags seems to be going just fine, and values are coming through as expected. If I expand one of my tags here, we see that the quality of my tag is good. Let's change this to reflect one of those potential problems that can arise. I'm gonna break the network connection to my device, which will cause these tags to stop receiving new values.

[01:06] Having severed the connection, we can see some important changes in our tag within the Tag Browser. The value of the tag has stopped updating, as we would expect, and the text color has turned red. If we hover over that value, a tooltip can give us more information about the problem. The quality value on our tag has also been set to bad. There are many possible quality values you might encounter in the Tag Browser, depending on what's causing the quality issue. For more information on specific tag quality values, please see the links to the Ignition User Manual below this video. There are also other visual indicators that this tag has bad quality. Earlier, I set up this Perspective view with an LED display and a cylindrical tank. These components are tied to the first couple of tags on my device. Since our connection is broken right now, you can see that these components both have overlays indicating that an associated tag has bad quality.

[02:03] Although we're currently viewing this in the designer, any open Vision clients or Perspective sessions would similarly indicate that there's a problem with the tag. So now if I reinitialize my connection to the device, we can see that the values are starting to come through again. The quality on our tag has changed back to good, and our components no longer have a red overlay. With these tools, Ignition users can gauge the health and accuracy of what's displayed at a glance and glean important information to help resolve any tag quality issues promptly.