three-iot-central-retail-articles

Author: itechedit

articles/iot-central/retail/tutorial-iot-central-smart-inventory-management.md

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 ---
-title: Tutorial - Azure IoT Smart inventory management | Microsoft Docs
+title: Tutorial - Azure IoT smart inventory management | Microsoft Docs
 description: This tutorial shows you how to deploy and use a smart inventory-management application template for IoT Central.
 author: dominicbetts
 ms.author: dobett
@@ -11,75 +11,85 @@ ms.date: 06/13/2022
 
 # Tutorial: Deploy a smart inventory-management application template
 
-Inventory is the stock of goods that a retailer holds. Smart inventory management is critical to ensure that the right product is in the right place at the right time. A retailer must balance the costs of storing too much inventory against the costs of not having sufficient items in stock to meet demand.
+Inventory is the stock of goods that a retail business holds. As a retailer, you must balance the costs of storing too much inventory against the costs of having insufficient inventory to meet customer demand. It's critical that you deploy smart inventory-management practices to ensure that the right products are in stock and in the right place at the right time.
 
-IoT data that's generated from radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, beacons, and cameras provides opportunities to improve inventory-management processes. You can combine telemetry gathered from IoT sensors and devices with other data sources such as weather and traffic information in cloud-based business intelligence systems.
+In this tutorial, you'll learn how to:
+
+> [!div class="checklist"]
+> * Create a smart inventory-management application 
+> * Walk through the application
 
 The benefits of smart inventory management include:
 
-- Reducing the risk of items being out of stock and ensuring the desired customer service level.
-- In-depth analysis and insights into inventory accuracy in near real time.
-- Tools to help decide on the right amount of inventory to hold to meet customer orders.
+- You reduce the risk of items being out of stock and ensure that you're reaching the desired customer service level.
+- You get in-depth analysis and insights into inventory accuracy in near real time.
+- You apply the right tools to help decide on the right amount of inventory to hold to meet customer orders.
+
+IoT data that you generate from radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, beacons, and cameras gives you opportunities to improve inventory-management processes. You can combine telemetry that you've gathered from IoT sensors and devices with other data sources, such as weather and traffic information in cloud-based business intelligence systems.
+
+The application template that you'll create focuses on device connectivity, and it helps you configure and manage the RFID and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) reader devices.
 
-This application template focuses on device connectivity, and the configuration and management of RFID and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) reader devices.
+# Smart inventory-management architecture
 
 :::image type="content" source="media/tutorial-iot-central-smart-inventory-management/smart-inventory-management-architecture.png" alt-text="Diagram that shows the smart inventory-management application architecture." border="false":::
 
-### RFID tags (1)
+The preceding architecture diagram illustrates the smart inventory-management application workflow:
 
-RFID tags transmit data about an item through radio waves. RFID tags typically don't have a battery unless specified. Tags receive energy from the radio waves generated by the reader and transmit a signal back toward the RFID reader.
+* (**1**) RFID tags
 
-### BLE tags (1)
+   RFID tags transmit data about an item through radio waves. RFID tags ordinarily don't have a battery, unless specified. Tags receive energy from radio waves that are generated by the reader and then transmit a signal back to the RFID reader.
 
-Energy beacon broadcasts packets of data at regular intervals. Beacon data is detected by BLE readers or installed services on smartphones and then transmitting that to the cloud.
+* (**1**) BLE tags
 
-### RFID and BLE readers (1)
+   An energy beacon broadcasts packets of data at regular intervals. Beacon data is detected by BLE readers or installed services on smartphones and then transmitted to the cloud.
 
-RFID reader converts the radio waves to a more usable form of data. Information collected from the tags is then stored in local edge server or sent to cloud using JSON-RPC 2.0 over MQTT.
-BLE reader also known as Access Points (AP) are similar to RFID reader. It's used to detect nearby Bluetooth signals and relay its message to local Azure IoT Edge or cloud using JSON-RPC 2.0 over MQTT.
-Many readers are capable of reading RFID and beacon signals, and providing additional sensor capability related to temperature, humidity, accelerometer, and gyroscope.
+* (**1**) RFID and BLE readers
 
-### Azure IoT Edge gateway (2)
+   An RFID reader converts the radio waves to a more usable form of data. Information that's collected from the tags is then stored on a local edge server or sent to the cloud via JSON-RPC 2.0 over Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT).
 
-Azure IoT Edge server provides a place to preprocess that data locally before sending it on to the cloud. We can also deploy cloud workloads artificial intelligence, Azure and third-party services, business logic using standard containers.
+   BLE readers, also known as Access Points (AP), are similar to RFID readers. They're used to detect nearby Bluetooth signals and relay them to a local Azure IoT Edge instance or the cloud via JSON-RPC 2.0 over MQTT.
 
-### Device management with IoT Central
+   Many readers can read RFID and beacon signals and provide additional sensor capability that's related to temperature and humidity, via accelerometer and gyroscope.
 
-Azure IoT Central is a solution development platform that simplifies IoT device connectivity, configuration, and management. The platform significantly reduces the burden and costs of IoT device management, operations, and related developments. Customers and partners can build an end-to-end enterprise solution to achieve a digital feedback loop in inventory management.
+* (**2**) Azure IoT Edge gateway
 
-### Business insights and actions using data egress (3)
+   Azure IoT Edge server provides a place to preprocess the data locally before sending it on to the cloud. We can also deploy cloud workloads artificial intelligence, Azure and third-party services, and business logic by using standard containers.
 
-IoT Central platform provides rich extensibility options through Continuous Data Export (CDE) and APIs. Business insights based on telemetry data processing or raw telemetry are typically exported to a preferred line-of-business application. It can be achieved using webhook, service bus, event hub, or blob storage to build, train, and deploy machine learning models and further enrich insights.
+* Device management with IoT Central
 
-In this tutorial, you'll learn how to:
+   Azure IoT Central is a solution-development platform that simplifies IoT device connectivity, configuration, and management. The platform significantly reduces the burden and costs of IoT device management, operations, and related developments. Customers and partners can build an end-to-end enterprise solution to achieve a digital feedback loop in inventory management.
 
-> [!div class="checklist"]
-> * Create a smart inventory-management application 
-> * Walk through the application
+* (**3**) Business insights and actions using data egress
+
+   The IoT Central platform provides rich extensibility options through Continuous Data Export (CDE) and APIs. Business insights that are based on telemetry data processing or raw telemetry are typically exported to a preferred line-of-business application. 
+
+   You can use a webhook, service bus, event hub, or blob storage to build, train, and deploy machine learning models and further enrich insights.
 
 ## Prerequisites
 
 An active Azure subscription. If you don't have an Azure subscription, [create a free account](https://azure.microsoft.com/free/?WT.mc_id=A261C142F) before you begin.
 
 ## Create a smart inventory-management application
 
-Create the application using the following steps:
+Create the application by doing the following:
 
-1. Go to the [Azure IoT Central Build](https://aka.ms/iotcentral) site. Then sign in with a Microsoft personal, work, or school account. Select **Build** from the left-hand navigation bar and then select the **Retail** tab.
+1. Sign in to the [Azure IoT Central Build](https://aka.ms/iotcentral) site with a Microsoft personal, work, or school account. On the left pane, select **Build**, and then select the **Retail** tab.
 
 1. Select **Create app** under **smart inventory management**.
 
 To learn more, see [Create an IoT Central application](../core/howto-create-iot-central-application.md).
 
 ## Walk through the application
 
-The following sections describe the key features of the application:
+The following sections describe the key features of the application.
 
 ### Dashboard
 
-After you deploy the application, your default dashboard is a smart, operator-focused, inventory-management portal. Northwind Trader is a fictitious smart inventory provider that manages its warehouse with Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and its retail store with RFID. On this dashboard, you'll see two different gateways, each providing telemetry about inventory along with associated commands, jobs, and actions that you can perform.
+After you deploy the application, your default dashboard is a smart, operator-focused, inventory-management portal. Northwind Trader is a fictitious smart inventory provider that manages its warehouse with Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and its retail store with RFID. 
+
+On this dashboard are two different gateways, each providing telemetry about inventory, along with associated commands, jobs, and actions that you can perform.
 
-This dashboard is preconfigured to showcase the activity of the critical smart inventory-management device operations, and it's logically divided between two separate gateway device-management operations:
+This dashboard is preconfigured to display the activity of the critical smart inventory-management device. It's logically divided between two separate gateway device-management operations:
 
 * The warehouse is deployed with a fixed BLE gateway and BLE tags on pallets to track and trace inventory at a larger facility.
 
@@ -88,7 +98,7 @@ This dashboard is preconfigured to showcase the activity of the critical smart i
 * You can easily track the total number of gateways, active tags, and unknown tags.
 * You can perform device management operations, such as:
   * Update firmware
-  * Enable or disable sensor
+  * Enable or disable sensors
   * Update sensor threshold
   * Update telemetry intervals
   * Update device service contracts   
@@ -101,7 +111,7 @@ This dashboard is preconfigured to showcase the activity of the critical smart i
 
 Select the **Device templates** tab to display the gateway capability model. A capability model is structured around two separate interfaces:
 
-* **Gateway Telemetry and Property**: This interface represents all the telemetry that's related to sensors, location, device info, and device twin property capability, such as gateway thresholds and update intervals.
+* **Gateway Telemetry and Property**: This interface displays the telemetry that's related to sensors, location, device info, and device twin property capability, such as gateway thresholds and update intervals.
 
 * **Gateway Commands**: This interface organizes all the gateway command capabilities.