In the last article, I went over how you can create complex formulas to manipulate the data received on the Ellenex Platform. In this article, I will explain how you can simultaneously apply the same logic to multiple devices. I will also discuss how the Ellenex Platform makes it easy to manage multiple devices using RBAC (Role-Baseed Access Control) and subscriptions to tackle IoT device management problems for individual customers with a few devices or an industry with a large fleet of devices managed by multiple teams.
What do we mean by IoT Device Management?
IoT Device Management on the Ellenex Platform refers to the overseeing of connected devices within an IoT ecosystem. It involves various processes like provisioning, configuration, updates, and diagnostics. Our devices are pre-provisioned and configured appropriately to Ellenex Platform. All you have to do is, add it to the correct subscription using the transfer code and device serial number / EUI shared with you.
Let's review some of the key features that make device management effortless:
1. Ellenex Platform Subscriptions:
We organise users and devices into a subscription. You can treat every subscription like a team, an account, or an organisational unit. Every subscription has roles and policies so every team can easily organise/allocate permissions to its users. One user can own multiple subscriptions to manage and monitor all their teams.
2. Advanced Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):
While RBAC is not new in Software Development, we went the extra mile to ensure it can be configured at a very granular level.
Subscription owners can allow or deny access to endpoints that access different features using policies in the admin portal. A user can have multiple roles on multiple subscriptions and each role can have multiple policies.
You can attach a policy for a role so all users with the role can access the devices for maintenance or other activities and remove the policy once done.
This process is also available for API tokens so you can generate a token with just read access on-device data for reporting tools and have write or update access when using a more complicated business logic.
3. Role Impersonations:
To make it easier for administrators managing multiple subscriptions to view the devices, access their graphs, or check if the role they set is working as intended, we implemented a feature to optionally impersonate roles on a subscription to validate access levels or to see the statuses of devices in that specific subscription.
4. Custom Device Templates / Device Models:
To apply a custom formula or conversion to a bulk number of devices in a subscription, we introduced the feature to define the template and use it while adding or editing current or future devices. This will apply the formula to a lot of devices without adding the formula every time.
You can also use this feature to add sensors from other manufacturers on Ellenex Platform. I will explain this feature further in a future post.
5. Data Export to Other Advanced Reporting Tools:
To simplify ingesting and reporting in other advanced systems like PowerBI for our industrial customers, we have implemented a Query Language system to query and get data from one device or multiple devices simultaneously and perform intermediate aggregations before feeding into any ETL tool.
While I understand that the features mentioned in this blog post are more advanced, we believe IoT devices meant to simplify business processes must work in a set-and-forget model.
For example, If you want to monitor a remote water tank, you just want to know when the water level is too low or too high.
What if I told you that you could deploy an Ellenex water level sensor and just get an SMS or Email whenever the tank level is too low or too high? There is no need to access the platform daily to check the values or set access levels or complex formulas. Just set an alert for the levels you need and the platform handles the rest.
Look at other posts from my colleagues about Water Level Monitoring to understand how easy the entire process can be in contrast to the advanced features discussed here.