The 8 Most Surprising Things People Did Not Know About the eLynx SCADA Application
Learn how to unlock the full potential of eLynx's SCADA system with these often unnoticed features.
We have been building a better oil and gas SCADA and analytics system for the last 20 years by understanding and solving problems for hundreds of customers. These include oil and gas customers in every region of the United States, who range in size from big to small and everything in between.
What sets us apart is our ability to rapidly innovate our offering to improve how various oil and gas companies use SCADA data to increase production and save costs. The result is that eLynx has an incredible number of features and capabilities. When prospects or customers ask, “Can eLynx do this or that?” the answer is almost always “yes.”
Because eLynx is so versatile, we’ve found that customers are often not immediately aware of some of the most useful and exciting aspects of eLynx. What follows is a compilation of the eLynx features that customers often get most excited about and begin using after they learn about them.
If you ever wonder if eLynx can do something, it probably already does. And if it doesn’t, it probably won’t be long before it will be able to.
Everyone knows what it takes to “gauge” a tank and measure tank levels in the field. For many in oil and gas, it's inconvenient because it is a manual process. With eLynx’s proprietary algorithm you no longer need to send a field technician to measure tank levels. eLynx provides accurate automated haul estimates based on changes in tank levels and automatically records the changes on your gauge sheet to simplify and streamline your production accounting operations.
Spreadsheets are only intuitive for a small segment of users. That’s why we’ve developed Tank Visuals into our application in order to provide the majority of our users with the ability to quickly view and understand their tank levels. This makes problem spotting and decision making quicker and easier. This lets users spend more time making data-driven decisions and less time processing information.
Store any type of data on any type of device — whether it’s connected to comms or not. eLynx is more than just a SCADA monitoring solution. For instance, if you have temperature sensors at remote sites that require someone to manually process data, our SCADA software allows you to add those readings and analyze the data in the context of all the other information in our system. eLynx is a complete and comprehensive data management solution that makes sure you are making the best decision because we make it easy to collect and make use of all your data to make decisions. The ability to capture, store, export, monitor and control data at any time and anyplace means no useful information ever gets missed or unused. Devices do not have to be connected to store information. The stored data can be seamlessly integrated into your other systems — whether you want to leverage it in your production accounting system or your favorite dashboard or analysis tool.
Unlock the insights in your data using our native connectors to tools like Spotfire and Tableau. We made it easy to get data from our SCADA programs into any other tool or system. We want real-time data to be as simple to use as possible, no matter how your team wants to use it. We build 3rd party integrations that allow you to leverage the capabilities of other useful tools. Our API integrations make it so that you don’t have to build your own custom integrations.
Some of the most common workflows in oil and gas involve identifying down wells or wells at risk. Many times, the conditions that engineers and operators use to define “down” or “at risk” are specific to their operation. That is, they know the behaviors and conditions that indicate when a well is at risk of going down. In order to deliver actionable and timely information, we’ve created a feature called Dynamic Grouping which allows our users to specify their own set of SCADA controls and conditions for devices and use them to classify the health of their wells. This helps them more quickly and easily distinguish their biggest problems and opportunities based on their expert, local knowledge of how their wells behave. These groups focus the attention of crews on what matters most for the bottom line.
Every operator, production engineer, or well technician has a specific way they prefer to see the data. This is why we’ve created the ability for users to easily create their own views. While the eLynx application comes with pre-configured views, we know users will always want to organize their views for what matters most to them. We’ve also provided users with the functionality to create their own views that they can keep private or share with others in their organization.
In nearly every organization we work with, users and stakeholders need specific information delivered on a regular cadence. For this reason, we offer users the ability to customize the information, the recipients, and the delivery schedule. You can create as many custom reports, lists, and schedules as you want. This eliminates the need to remember to run a specific report or to email an update in a hectic work environment and ensures that the right information reaches the right parties at the right time.
We know it’s not uncommon for someone outside of your organization to record haul measurements and send them to be recorded. We’ve eliminated the need for unnecessary work and communication by allowing customers to provision user accounts for users outside of their organization. In order to provide the necessary security, we’ve allowed our customers to be able to completely control the access permissions for these accounts. For instance, you can give a hauler access to a single tank in order to record the values they hauled, and they will not have access to anything else within your account. This enables the most efficient processes and workflows amongst internal and external teams and allows your team to focus on solving problems rather than managing records and data communications.
We are constantly striving to build the best product experience for our end users. The only way we can do that is by getting as much feedback as possible. Many of the things we just described were ideas that came from talking to our customers. We’d love to hear what you find useful and what problems you are trying to solve — no matter what SCADA system you use. Give us a call or get in touch today to learn more.