TIA Portal Dashboard

A desktop app that lets you read and edit your TIA Portal V20 project through a built-in browser window — no extra software or cloud connection needed. It connects to TIA Portal while it’s running on your PC and opens a native Windows window at startup.

Who is this for? Anyone working with Siemens S7 PLCs who wants a faster way to browse blocks, view/edit SCL code, inspect tag tables, and manage their project — without clicking through TIA Portal menus. It also exposes all tools to Claude AI via MCP so you can describe changes in plain English and have Claude implement them.

New to TIA Portal Openness? See What is TIA Portal Openness? for a plain-English explanation of the API this project is built on.

Ready to use? See the User Manual for a full walkthrough of both operating modes.

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Two modes

Both modes talk to the same REST server and the same TIA Portal connection.

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What it can do

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Requirements

Before you start, make sure you have:

• Windows 10 or 11 (TIA Portal only runs on Windows)
• Siemens TIA Portal V20 installed and licensed
• Your account added to the Siemens TIA Openness Windows group (see setup step 3)
• Microsoft Edge installed (comes with Windows 10/11 — needed for the built-in browser window)
• .NET Framework 4.8 — already included in Windows 10/11, nothing to install
• .NET SDK 8 or later — needed to build the project (download here)

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Setup

1. Clone the repository

Open PowerShell and run:

git clone https://github.com/hadefuwa/tia-portal-mcp.git
cd tia-portal-mcp

2. Build the project

dotnet build src/TiaOpennessMcpServer/TiaOpennessMcpServer.csproj -c Release

The output goes to:

src/TiaOpennessMcpServer/bin/Release/net48/TiaPortalDashboard.exe

3. Add yourself to the TIA Openness security group

TIA Portal requires your Windows account to be in a specific security group before any external tool can connect to it. You only need to do this once.

1. Open Computer Management (right-click Start → Computer Management)
2. Go to Local Users and Groups → Groups
3. Double-click Siemens TIA Openness
4. Click Add and enter your Windows username
5. Click OK, then sign out and back in for it to take effect

Without this step the dashboard will show a security error when you try to connect.

4. Run the dashboard

1. Open your project in TIA Portal V20
2. Double-click TiaPortalDashboard.exe
3. A native desktop window opens with the dashboard inside it
4. Click Connect to TIA Portal — the dashboard reads your open project

TIA Portal will show an access approval dialog — click Yes to all to approve. This dialog appears every time a new instance of the exe connects, not just the first time. Each app restart will require one approval click.

The window minimises to the system tray rather than closing. Right-click the tray icon to exit completely.

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How to use it

See the User Manual for a full walkthrough of both the User Control and Agent Control tabs, with a reference for every tool.

Quick start — User Control (manual)

Once connected, your PLC devices appear in the left sidebar. Click a device to expand it. Click Blocks to list all blocks; click any block name to read it. Use Run Tool in the sidebar to access all tools with a form interface.

Quick start — Agent Control (Claude)

1. Switch to the Agent Control tab in the dashboard.
2. Copy the MCP config snippet shown there and paste it into Claude Desktop’s developer config.
3. Restart Claude Desktop.
4. In a new conversation, ask Claude to do something: “List the blocks on PLC_1”, “Create an FB called SpeedControl with a ramp function”, “Rename all tags in the IO_Mapping table — prefix with HMI_”.

Claude calls the tools automatically and shows you every step.

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Connecting Claude Code (stdio MCP)

Claude Code, Cursor, and VS Code Copilot use stdio transport — they spawn the exe directly and communicate over stdin/stdout. No dashboard window is needed.

Step 1 — Build the exe

dotnet build src/TiaOpennessMcpServer/TiaOpennessMcpServer.csproj -c Release

Step 2 — Add to ~/.claude/.mcp.json

Create (or edit) C:\Users\\.claude\.mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tia-portal": {
      "command": "C:\\path\\to\\tia-portal-mcp\\src\\TiaOpennessMcpServer\\bin\\Release\\net48\\TiaPortalDashboard.exe",
      "args": ["--mcp-stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Use ~/.claude/.mcp.json, not ~/.claude/settings.json. The settings file has no mcpServers field and will silently ignore it.

Command line options

Tool profiles. The server exposes 38 tools, and 38 tool definitions is a lot of context to spend before the model has done anything. Pick the smallest surface that covers your session:

Out-of-profile tools are refused at dispatch as well as hidden from tools/list, so a model that guesses a name still can’t call it.

A fully-specified entry looks like this:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tia-portal": {
      "command": "C:\\path\\to\\TiaPortalDashboard.exe",
      "args": ["--mcp-stdio", "--profile", "standard", "--project", "C:\\Projects\\MyPlant.ap20"]
    }
  }
}

If --project fails, the server still starts and the reason is written to stderr — stdout carries JSON-RPC frames and nothing else.

Step 3 — Start TIA Portal and connect

Before asking Claude Code to use the tools, make sure TIA Portal is open and you’ve run a connect call once (either via the dashboard or via the MCP connect_to_tia_portal tool). Claude Code will spawn a new headless instance of the exe; TIA Portal will show its approval dialog — click Yes to all.

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Connecting Claude Desktop (MCP setup)

The dashboard exposes all tools over MCP (Model Context Protocol) on http://localhost:5000/mcp. Claude Desktop connects to it as a Custom Connector — not via the config file.

Step 1 — Add the connector in Claude Desktop UI

1. Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector
2. Enter the URL: http://localhost:5000/mcp
3. Save and restart Claude Desktop

Do not use the config file for this. Claude Desktop’s claude_desktop_config.json only supports stdio transport (local executables). HTTP MCP servers must be added through the Connectors UI. If you add "type": "http" to the config file, Claude Desktop will not recognise it and the tools will not appear.

Step 2 — Verify tools appear

Start a new conversation in Claude Desktop. Click the tools/hammer icon — you should see all 38 TIA Portal tools listed. If they don’t appear, see the MCP troubleshooting section below.

What the server reports

• URL: http://localhost:5000/mcp
• Protocol version: MCP 2025-03-26 (with automatic fallback to 2024-11-05 for older clients)
• Transport: Streamable HTTP (POST to /mcp)

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Troubleshooting

App / TIA Portal

“Security error — not a member of Siemens TIA Openness group” Complete setup step 3. Make sure you signed out and back in after being added to the group.

“No running TIA Portal process found” TIA Portal must be open with a project loaded before you click Connect.

TIA Portal approval dialog keeps appearing on every restart This is expected behaviour — TIA Portal Openness shows the “Allow external access” dialog on every new process connection, not just the first time. Each time you restart the dashboard or the stdio exe a new connection is made and a new approval is required. Keep an eye on the TIA Portal taskbar button; the dialog sometimes appears behind other windows.

“Inconsistent blocks and PLC data types (UDT) cannot be exported” Your project has UDT changes that haven’t been compiled. In TIA Portal, press Ctrl+B to compile everything, then retry.

“Another project is already open” during clone This is handled automatically by the clone feature. If you see it in other operations, disconnect from TIA Portal and reconnect.

Build fails with “Siemens.Engineering.dll not found” The project expects TIA Portal V20 at the default path (C:\Program Files\Siemens\Automation\Portal V20). If yours is installed elsewhere, update the HintPath entries in the .csproj file.

The window doesn’t open / WebView2 error Make sure Microsoft Edge is installed and up to date. The built-in browser window uses the Edge WebView2 runtime, which ships with Edge on Windows 10/11.

MCP / Claude Desktop

Tools don’t appear in Claude Desktop after adding the connector

• Confirm the dashboard app is running (the MCP server only runs while the app is open).
• Make sure you added the connector via Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, not via the config file. HTTP connectors added to claude_desktop_config.json are silently ignored.
• Restart Claude Desktop after adding the connector — it only loads tools at startup.
• Open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:5000/mcp. You should get a 405 Method Not Allowed JSON response. If you get a connection error, the app is not running.

The connector shows “connected” but no tools appear This is usually a protocol version mismatch. The server implements MCP 2025-03-26. If you are using an older Claude Desktop build that sends 2024-11-05 in its initialize request, the server will negotiate down automatically. If tools still don’t appear, check the Live call log in the Agent Control tab to see if any initialize calls are arriving.

“type”: “http” in claude_desktop_config.json doesn’t work Claude Desktop’s config file (%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json) only supports stdio entries — local executables started by Claude Desktop. HTTP MCP servers are not supported via this file. Use the Connectors UI instead (Settings → Connectors).

“Missing ‘Namespace’ identifier attribute” when creating a GlobalDB This error appears when the SimaticML XML has Namespace as an XML attribute on the element () instead of as a child element inside . The correct form is inside. This is handled correctly by the built-in create_block tool; you would only see this if crafting XML manually.

“Cannot import multilingual text with culture ‘en-US’” when creating a block The comment blocks in SimaticML XML include a tag that must match the project’s language. A project created in British English (en-GB) will reject en-US. The built-in block templates omit the comment section entirely to avoid this — if you are writing custom XML, use `` for the ObjectList instead of including a MultilingualText entry.

My code changes aren’t reflected after restarting the app The desktop shortcut (Start TIA Dashboard.bat) automatically checks whether any source file (.cs, .csproj, dashboard.html) is newer than the compiled exe and rebuilds before launching. If the build fails, the bat window will pause and show the error — fix it and run the shortcut again. To build manually:

dotnet build src/TiaOpennessMcpServer/TiaOpennessMcpServer.csproj --configuration Release

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How it works (technical summary)

The dashboard is a .NET Framework 4.8 WinForms application that:

1. Resolves Siemens.Engineering.dll from your TIA Portal installation at startup
2. Attaches to the running TIA Portal process using the TIA Portal Openness API
3. Runs all API calls through a dedicated STA (Single-Threaded Apartment) thread — required because TIA Openness is a COM-based library
4. Serves the dashboard UI over System.Net.HttpListener on port 5000
5. Displays the UI in a native WinForms window with an embedded WebView2 (Edge-based) browser control
6. The browser communicates with the backend via a simple JSON REST API

.NET Framework 4.8 is required — not .NET 5/6/7/8. The TIA Openness library depends on System.Runtime.Remoting, which was removed from modern .NET.

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Project structure

src/TiaOpennessMcpServer/
├── Program.cs                  # HTTP server, routing, app entry point
├── MainForm.cs                 # WinForms window + WebView2 + system tray
├── dashboard.html              # Single-page frontend
├── Services/
│   ├── TiaPortalService.cs     # Connect/disconnect, project clone, used products
│   ├── SoftwareService.cs      # Blocks — list, read, write SCL, write XML, compile, patch texts
│   ├── HardwareService.cs      # Device enumeration
│   ├── TagService.cs           # PLC tag tables
│   ├── HmiTagService.cs        # WinCC Unified HMI tag tables and tags
│   └── SclAnalyzerService.cs   # SCL static analysis
├── Models/                     # Data transfer objects
└── Utilities/
    ├── StaTaskScheduler.cs     # STA thread wrapper for COM calls
    ├── XmlHelper.cs            # Block XML parse/patch helpers
    └── NetFxPolyfills.cs       # C# 9/11 types missing from net48

REST API — HMI tag endpoints

{device} is the HMI device name as it appears in TIA Portal (typically HMI).

# List tag tables
curl http://localhost:5000/api/devices/HMI/hmi/tags

# Export every tag with its PLC connection
curl http://localhost:5000/api/devices/HMI/hmi/tags/all

# Tags in a specific table
curl http://localhost:5000/api/devices/HMI/hmi/tags/Default%20tag%20table

# Create tags (body is a JSON array)
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/devices/HMI/hmi/tags/Default%20tag%20table/create \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '[{"name":"DI_A_0","dataType":"Bool"},{"name":"DQ_A_0","dataType":"Bool"}]'

WinCC Unified: tags are created as Internal tags by default. Set bindPlc: true on a tag (with plcTag and connection) to link it: the API sets Connection first, then PlcTag, and the data type follows the PLC tag. If the link fails the tag stays Internal and is returned as created_unlinked with the TIA error. TIA does not validate the connection name, so check the result.

REST API — Block text patching

// PATCH body — all fields optional
{
  "blockTitle": "My FB",
  "blockComment": "Main conveyor control",
  "networks": [
    { "title": "Enable check", "comment": "Gate on safety OK" },
    { "title": null, "comment": "Speed ramp" }
  ]
}

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Further reading

• User Manual — full guide to both tabs, all tools, MCP setup, and troubleshooting
• What is TIA Portal Openness? — plain-English guide to the API
• Siemens TIA Portal Openness documentation — official Siemens overview and links
• TIA Portal Openness system manual (PDF) — full API reference

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Licence

MIT