Azure IoT Central - Can I define custom views for my Plug and Play device?

Question

I have a Plug and Play model: Link to model for my Azure Sphere device/application that defines . . .

• Telemetry items
• Property items (device twins)
• Commands (direct methods)

My application implements the PnP requirements. When my device connects to IoT Central a new Device Template is automatically created. Additionally, there are some basic views generated for my device.

My question is . . .

Is there a way for me to define custom views for my device that will be automatically generated when my Plug and Play Device Template is generated?

Thanks,

Brian

Answer 1

Hello @Willess, Brian , We have received a response from the IoT Central team on your query, as quoted below.

Custom views are currently not supported in IoTC as part of PnP.

While we understand the basic requirements, would be good to get more use case scenario(s) from your side.

Please comment in the below section regarding your feedback/suggestion, so that we convey the same to the Product team.

Answer 2

First off, thank you for taking my question to the IoTC team,

If you think about what PnP buys you, it's seamless onboarding of PnP devices. Currently, this includes defining the basic information needed to process data to/from a PnP device, Telemetry, Properties and commands.

One of the things that using IoTC buys you is a rich user experience, in my opinion. The current IoTC experience using my PnP model is pretty good. Users can use my PnP device/software and quickly on-board devices. The default Device template has a few very basic default "Views."
The default views are not optimized for my PnP solution. How could they be, you would have to implement some kind of Vulcan Mind Meld where the application could reach into the developers mind to extract how they intended the data/properties/commands to be visualized.

The experience I want my PnP customer to have takes the default views and allows me the PnP developer to define default views tailored to my PnP solution that are automatically created when the first PnP device connects. I realize that this would be specific to IoTC and would likely not apply to other future cloud platforms that support PnP.

Adding PnP developer defined views would take the IoTC experience one step further and would allow new IoTC users to have the best experience possible.