Defining Properties

Properties are numeric values representing a data value at a specified timestamp.

For example, fuel economy and fuel level are the data points related to a car thing.  The properties (data points) collected are displayed in the thing view as graphs (value over timestamp).  Each individual graph represents one property of the thing.  

Properties can be integers or floating point, signed or unsigned, and negative or positive.

A thing can automatically define a property that was not previously defined in the associated thing definition if the Auto def properties field is selected in the thing definition.

Properties can be viewed in graph and table format.

You can add a property when you create a new thing definition or when you edit an existing thing definition.

You can override the presentation values with the values defined under the Properties tab.  For more information, see Defining the Presentation of Properties.

  1. On the Developer page, click Thing definitions.
  2. On the Thing Definitions page, click the Edit icon of the thing definition you want to modify.
  3. On the thing definition editing page, select the Standard tab, and then select the Properties tab.
    Defining Properties
  4. Select Property Definition and then type or select the values for the new property.

    Field

    Description

    Key

    A unique identifier for the property that is globally unique within the organization. The valid characters for a key are letters, numbers, "_" (underscore), and "-" (hyphen). For more information, see Field Formats and Limitations.

    Name

    The name of the property definition that is displayed on Management Portal pages.

    Unit

    The unit of measure, for example, time in milliseconds.

    Prefix

    An optional prefix that is displayed before the property on the thing details page in the Management Portal.

    Suffix

    An optional suffix that is displayed after the property on the thing details page in the Management Portal.

    Calculate aggregates

    Set Calculate aggregates to true to get the data aggregated. The seven types of aggregates (Average, Weighted Average, Non-zero time weighted average, Sum, Max, Min, and Count) are calculated. For more information on property aggregation, see thing_def.create and property.aggregate. This value must be true to display the data according to the aggregation formulas when you view the property data and select Hour or Day from the Series menu.

    View security tags

    Enter any number of tags to the attribute that controls whether a user or application can view the property. The user or application must have a role that has the same view security tag associated with it in order to view a property with a view security tag associated with it.

    Update security tags

    Enter any number of tags to the attribute that controls whether a user or application can update the property. The user or application must have a role that has the same update security tag associated with it in order to update a property with an update security tag associated with it.

    Scale

    Scales the input property value to a required factor. Scaling simplifies the values to numerical values. For example, $(value)*1.8+32 converts the values from Celsius to Fahrenheit.

    Deduplicate

    Select this option to ignore the duplicate property values (a newly published property value with the same timestamp as an existing property value).

    Override presentation display

    Select this option to override the values in the presentation of the property. For more information, see Defining the Presentation of Properties.

  5. Repeat step 4 as needed to define additional properties.
  6. When you finish, click Add.

To delete a previously added property, click Delete property definition in the New property definition section to delete the currently displayed property.