Understanding Mango 5: Platform Manager, Site Connections, and the Menus

Mango by Radix IoT v5 is organized around three parts you meet from the first day: Platform Manager, which turns tagged points into fleet, site and device views; the gRPC publisher and gRPC data source, which carry a site’s values and events to a central Mango; and the Mango 5 menus, which group every configuration task under seven top-level headings. Each part is described below from the product itself, so the page names, tag keys and connection settings are stated as Mango shows them.

Use this as a conceptual map rather than a deployment design, and confirm your licensed module set against current product documentation for the exact release you run.

Prerequisites

Before using this architecture overview, you should understand:

• What a Mango data source and data point represent
• Why consistent point names and tags matter across sites
• The difference between local site operations and portfolio-level monitoring
• Which Mango 5 components are included in your licensed deployment

The Three Parts

Platform Manager

Platform Manager has four pages: General overview, Site overview, Device details, and Active alarms. (Sentence case, and the first one is General, not “Global”.) Configuration lives on a separate Configuration page with Global, Site and Device type levels, all restricted to superadmin.

Three data point tags route values into that hierarchy, and the tag keys are fixed:

Sites, device types and devices are records you create on the Configuration page first; the tags then point at them.

Keep two mechanisms distinct:

• KPIs resolve on a point name and a tag. A KPI names its primary point, and Platform Manager then looks for a point with that name carrying deviceType=SITE for a site KPI or deviceType=GLOBAL for a global one; a site KPI is additionally constrained to site matching that site’s XID. A correctly named point without the right tag will not appear.
• Device-type metering, set-point, additional-point and column templates identify points by exact, case-sensitive point name within the device’s tag context.

Platform Manager can present:

• Portfolio and site summaries
• Global and Site KPIs — a device type has no KPI tab
• Active alarms and trends
• Equipment status and operational context

Tags organize and select points; they do not grant permissions. A user’s roles and object-level permissions still determine which data they can read.

Site Connections: the gRPC Publisher and Data Source

A site Mango sends its data to a central Mango over gRPC. In the product the two halves are labelled gRPC publisher and gRPC data source, and they ship inside the Persistent TCP module alongside the older TCP publisher and data source, which are still present and labelled “(legacy)”. gRPC is a Use gRPC protocol setting rather than a separate module, and Mango’s own help describes the gRPC publisher as “an evolution of the legacy persistent TCP (PTCP) publisher” — not a removal of it.

The publisher is the client and connects out to a gRPC data source acting as server on the receiving Mango. It synchronizes its data points to the receiver, creating them there if they do not exist, then sends point values, point events and attribute updates.

Two mechanisms are worth getting right:

• The queue is on disk, not in memory. Unlike Mango’s other publishers, the gRPC publisher writes to a persistent on-disk queue, so queue sizes are normally set orders of magnitude higher — tens to hundreds of millions of entries — and the real constraint is disk space. The publisher exposes queue size, file size and ingress rate for monitoring.
• Authentication is a bearer token, not a client certificate. TLS provides encryption and is strongly recommended, but the publisher authenticates with an authorization key sent in the Authorization header as a Bearer credential. That key is either a Mango JWT generated on the user page or an OAuth 2.0 / OIDC token from your provider via a client-credentials grant. Using an OAuth token requires the receiving instance to be configured as a resource server.

Point permissions are synchronized under a configurable mode — not sent, sent, merged with overrides by OR, merged by AND, or replaced by overrides — and the data source has its own settings governing how they are stored on arrival.

Verify endpoints, the authorization key and its expiry, the permission-synchronization mode, queue state, and receiving data-source behavior on the exact deployed release.

The Mango 5 Menus

Mango 5 redesigned the interface so that work is grouped into top-level menus (the Mango 5 highlights call this workflow-based configuration). Those menus are, exactly as Mango labels them: Data integration, Analytics, Events, Event Management, Access management, Platform management, and Administration. Note the casing — only Event Management and the one-word names are capitalized; the rest are sentence case.

As a rule of thumb: data sources, publishers and bulk point editing are under Data integration; users and system permissions under Access management; pages, menus, UI settings and the dashboard designer under Platform management; and system settings and modules under Administration.

Steps: Follow the Data Path

Step 1: Configure the Site

Use the documented Mango configuration surfaces for data sources, points, users, analytics, dashboards, and events. Consistent names and tags matter here, because Platform Manager depends on them later.

Step 2: Collect Data at the Edge

Edge Mango connects to the local equipment through the configured data sources. Verify that expected points are enabled, updating, and logging according to the site’s requirements.

Step 3: Connect the Site

Configure the gRPC publisher and its receiving gRPC data source. Turn on Use gRPC protocol and Use Transport Layer Security (TLS), supply the authorization key, then confirm point values and events arrive at the receiver and test queue recovery across a controlled interruption.

Step 4: Organize Time-Series History

Time-series history comes from the database you configured, and where licensed the Mango NoSQL store, so plan retention and purging there. Validate whatever your release documents using points whose values and timestamps you already know.

Step 5: Configure Portfolio Operations

In Platform Manager, create the Site, Device type and Device records on the Configuration page, then tag points to match: site and deviceType take the XIDs of those records, while deviceID takes the device’s Device ID. Give site KPI points deviceType=SITE and global KPI points deviceType=GLOBAL, and configure device-type templates using exact point names.

Verification

Use known values rather than appearance alone:

1. Confirm each expected site appears on General overview, and that opening it reaches Site overview.
2. Compare displayed KPI values with the underlying Mango point values.
3. Open more than one site and verify that each configured site KPI resolves the intended tagged point.
4. Test a Device Type layout with multiple devices of the same type.
5. Compare two users with different roles to confirm permissions are applied independently of tags.
6. Check that trends and reports return the expected time range and point history.

Troubleshooting

A site or KPI is missing

• Confirm the site’s points use the expected tag keys and values.
• For site KPIs, confirm the selected point has deviceType=SITE.
• For device templates, confirm the configured exact point name exists for that device.
• Verify that KPI configuration was done at the right level: Global and Site only, since a device type has no KPI tab.
• Confirm the KPI’s point carries deviceType=SITE (or deviceType=GLOBAL). A point with the right name but the wrong tag resolves to nothing, with no error.

A KPI shows the wrong point

• Check the site, deviceType and deviceID tag values against the records they are meant to match.
• Check exact point-name mappings in the applicable device-type template.
• Compare the result with a known point value.

One user cannot see data another user can

• Compare role assignments.
• Check data point read permissions.
• Remember that tags select data but do not grant access.

Historical values are missing

• Verify that the source point is enabled and updating.
• Confirm that point logging is configured.
• Check the requested time range and the point’s available history.

A component or setting is unavailable

• Confirm the Mango version, installed modules, and licensing.
• Use documentation for that exact release.
• Contact Radix IoT Support when deployment-specific behavior remains unclear.