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Locus Energy avatar
Written by Locus Energy
Updated over 6 years ago

In-depth documentation describing the setup and usage of the Locus Energy Salesforce Connector.  Setting Up Credentials  Synchronization Schedule  Site and Component Objects Locus Sites Locus Site Components  Data Objects  Alerts Site Monthly Performance Before Setup  Best Practices  Included Reports  Included Dashboard

How to Set Up the Locus Salesforce Connector

  1. Download the package from the AppExchange https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000DqDA1UAN

  2. Navigate to the Locus Energy Settings page.

  1. Input your LocusNOC and SolarNOC credentials as supplied to you by your Account Manager.

  2. The Start Year is the first year that you would like to begin syncing data. This cannot be customized on a site-by-site basis and the start month will always be January.

 

Synchronization Schedule

Depending on your company’s needs, you can change the frequency with which your sites’ data gets synchronized to the Locus Energy Salesforce Connector.

Each time synchronization occurs, the entire time span from January 1 of your start year until the most recent timestamp is executed, so past data is subject to overwriting if any edits are made to it.

IMPORTANT: The first time that you sync data, if you wish to bring in alerts dating back to the Start Year,  you must click the “Full Alerts Refresh” button (see Settings image above, top right) after clicking “Start Sync”. Otherwise, the only synced alerts will be dated from the time of the sync to the future.

Alerts

  • Alert data can be synchronized at 15 minute, 30 minute, hourly, and daily time intervals. However, the timestamps displayed detail when the alert occurred, not when the synchronization occurred.

Site Monthly Performance

  • ‘Site Monthly Performance’ can be run at either a daily or a weekly interval. The timestamps will always be the first of the month, but will represent the entire month.

Site and Component Objects
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Locus Sites

  • The ‘Locus Sites’ page shows the recently viewed sites by default. You can create a new view to show different categories of Locus Sites, by using the “New View” editor.

  • ‘Locus Site Records’ displays details about the specific site, as well as the ‘Locus Site Component’ and ‘Site Monthly Performance’ related records.

Locus Site Components

  • Similar to ‘Locus Sites’, ‘Locus Site Components’ shows recently viewed components and can be customized by creating new views. Alerts for each component are displayed as a related record.

  • Note: Alerts are related to the component, not the site.

Data Objects
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AlertsThe ‘Alerts’ tab shows all alerts, both open and closed, by default, but new views can be created, identical to the ‘Site’ and ‘Site Component’ tabs.

  • Similar to how LocusNOC and SolarNOC treats alerts, they are never deleted by the app. The only fields that change are ‘Status’ and ‘End’, which will update to ‘Closed’ and populate a timestamp, respectively,  when the alert is resolved.

 

Site Monthly Performance (SMP)

 SMP is a snapshot of some of the most important data types for a site, and is related to the site-level object.

  • Only monthly granularity is available for all of the data fields and is denoted by a first of the month timestamp (e.g. 1/1/2017), which represents data for the entire month.

  • EER_avg - Expected Energy Ratio

  • EER Performance - Customizable formula field separating sites into performance groups based on their EER numbers (groups are: <0.5, 0.5-0.8, 0.8-1.2, 1.2>).

  • GEER_avg - GHI-adjusted Expected Energy Ratio

  • GEER Performance - Customizable formula field separating sites into performance groups based on their GEER numbers (groups are: <0.5, 0.5-0.8, 0.8-1.2, 1.2>).

  • Whp_sum - Energy adjusted for startup date

  • Wh_e_sum - Expected energy for TMY expectations

  • GHIhp_m_sum - GHI from Virtual Irradiance, adjusted for startup date.

  • GHIh_t_sum - Expected Insolation Global Horizontal, from TMY data.

 Data Receipt Done

  • This is a boolean value that determines whether the data has been received for a given month, NOT if the data for that month is complete.The logic that determines this field relies on whether or not the next month’s data has been received. For example, if the app has July data, then June must have been received EVEN IF the site was offline for all or part of June.

 Data Completeness

  • This field checks three cases to see if the data is as complete as it can be.“Data Receipt Not Done” is displayed if the above-mentioned “Data Receipt Done” check is not true.“Missing EER Metrics” is displayed if the value received for EER is null.“Missing GEER Metrics” is displayed if the value received for GEER is null.

  • “All Data Received” is displayed if all three of the above cases are false.

 

Locus Callouts

  • The ‘Callouts’ tab is a log of all of the API calls that populate all of the data in the Salesforce Connector. There, you can see whether or not it was successful, when it ran, the duration in milliseconds, and what kind of call it was.

  • Clicking into the individual Callout Record provides the above data, as well as the Request Endpoint, which is the actual call that was made.

 

Best Practices

Data Storage

  • The Locus Connector brings in all of your company’s site, component, alert, and bulk data information. This can result in a high usage rate of your Salesforce Org’s data storage. As you create your Connector settings, be aware that the more sites in your LocusNOC and SolarNOC portfolio, the more data that the app will use. This is because the Site Monthly Performance objects will be called for each site. The best way to control data usage is to use the Start Date intelligently - we do not recommend syncing any more data than you actually need.

  • As a benchmark, each 1000 records represents just under 2 MB.

  • Records are:Single alerts (i.e. one System Disconnect on one Component)Single SitesSingle ComponentsSingle SMP records (i.e. each month’s worth of data on each site; each year for each site has 12 records).

  • If you find that you have pulled in too much data, delete that which you do not need with the Mass Delete Records tool, and update the Start Year in the ‘Connector Settings’.

  • Write AccessWe currently do not offer write access to the app. Any changes to sites or components need to be made in the SolarNOC portal, which will then be pulled into the Salesforce environment when the next sync occurs.

  • Connecting Locus Sites to Existing AccountsYou may want to link your Locus data to your existing Salesforce accounts. This will make it easy for anyone needing both account and data information to have it all in one location.In order to link Locus Sites to existing Salesforce Accounts, create a custom Lookup Relationship field on the Account object that is related to the Locus Site custom object. You can then use the Data Import Wizard to update your Accounts in bulk. This is what you can expect your Accounts to look like with the lookup field applied:

Likewise, this is what the Locus Site will show:

To update your accounts in bulk after creating the custom lookup field on Accounts, all you need is the Salesforce ID of the account, and either the Salesforce ID of the Locus Site, or the Site ID derived from LocusNOC and SolarNOC.

  • The easiest way to create a spreadsheet for the Data Import Wizard is the following:Run an Account  report from your Salesforce environment that includes the Account ID and Account Name.Run a Fleet Information Report from the SolarNOC Reporting Tool in order to get your fleet’s Site IDs.Depending on how your Salesforce Accounts and LocusNOC and SolarNOC Sites are named, create a csv of just the Salesforce Account ID and Site ID. In this example, our lookup field is named “Locus Lookup”, so this csv is telling the Locus Lookup field to take the value of a particular Locus Site ID.

 To import the data, select “Accounts and Contacts” as the kind of data you are importing. Then select to “Update existing records”. If your file is set up like the one above, choose to match both Contact and Account by Salesforce.com ID. Make sure to check the “Update existing Account information” box. It is your choice as to what Locus Site field you want to match against, but for the example above, we chose “Site ID (external ID)”. Once you have uploaded your csv and confirmed the mappings, your Accounts and Locus Sites should be linked.

Please note that more than one Account is allowed to be linked to a Locus Site, so if you do not intend to do that, we recommend double checking your csv for duplicates before uploading.

Included Reports

  • EER Last Month in 0.1 IncrementsThis report displays your entire fleet’s last month EER performance, displayed in buckets of 0.1 so that the distribution can be seen easily.

  • EER is AbsentThis report will return sites that either have no data for the month or do not have expectations uploaded.

  • GEER Last Month in 0.1 IncrementsThis is the same as the EER report, but with GEER.

  • GEER is AbsentThis report will return sites that are either outside of the US or do not have correct addresses input.

  • Alerts Opened in the Last Four Weeks, by Type

  • Open Alerts, by Type

  • Open Alerts, by Site

  • Open Alerts, by duration1 day to 1 month1 week to 1 monthMore than 1 month

  • Data CompletenessThis report shows SMP records in the last 12 months, grouped by month, that do not have all of the data fields present. 

Included Dashboard

  • The included “Locus Dashboard” is meant to be used as a template. It is comprised of many of the above reports, displayed in charts. They can be deleted or customized as needed and are simply there to provide some ideas for how best to use the data.

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