Niagara N4 (Tridium) is a widely used building automation framework. The platform connects to a Niagara N4 station through an MQTT broker: Niagara publishes readings to topics, the platform subscribes to those topics, and setpoint changes are published back. Most of the work below happens with whoever maintains the Niagara station, usually your integrator or facility manager. On our side, the platform acts as an MQTT client.

What your Niagara integrator needs to set up

1. An MQTT broker reachable from our cloud

Either the Niagara station hosts an MQTT broker itself, or your integrator sets up a dedicated broker such as Mosquitto, EMQX, or HiveMQ on the building network. The broker must be reachable over the public internet on a stable hostname. Open the chosen TCP port in the firewall and enable TLS where possible. We strongly recommend TLS in production.

2. MQTT credentials for the platform

Ask your integrator for a dedicated username and password for the platform, with permission to subscribe to read topics and publish to write topics. Do not reuse a personal account. A service account is easier to rotate later.

3. Niagara-to-MQTT mapping

Inside Niagara, every data point we want to read or write must be mapped to an MQTT topic. Conventions vary. Your integrator will know whether to use Tridium’s MQTT driver, a community driver, or a Workbench export. The result should be the same: each data point has a unique topic, the station publishes readings on a regular heartbeat, and it acts on writes published to the corresponding setpoint topic.

4. Topic export CSV

Once the mapping is in place, ask your integrator for a semicolon-separated CSV that lists every topic the platform should bind to. At minimum, it must contain:

1. ALIAS_NAME — the alias the platform will use to refer to this point.
2. TOPIC — the full MQTT topic path the station publishes to / listens on.
3. NODE_FUNCTION — "Read" if the platform consumes the topic, "Write" if the platform publishes setpoints to it.
4. (Optional) DATAPOINT_TYPE — short label for what the point measures, such as temperature, CO₂, or damper position. Useful for later filtering.

What you enter in the wizard

The new-site wizard has eight steps. Niagara inputs land in three of them; two further steps (Operational Analysis and Watchdog Setup) are currently IWMAC-only and are skipped for Niagara sites. Use this as a map:

1. Step 2 — Integrations & Discovery: choose Niagara N4 (MQTT). Add a credential containing the broker hostname and port, the username and password from your integrator, and a topic prefix if your station namespaces topics under one (e.g. site/buildingA/). Enable TLS on the credential when the broker is exposed to the public internet. Click Verify — the platform connects to the broker with the supplied credentials. A green tick means the broker is reachable and accepted the login.
2. Step 3 — Upload Documents: upload the topic export CSV alongside any HVAC documentation (P&IDs, schematics, equipment lists). The wizard processes each uploaded CSV using the provider's declared schema, so Niagara CSVs go through the same extraction pipeline as IWMAC ones — the difference is which schema config is in the database for that provider. If your Niagara extraction produces fewer components than expected, contact us — that is a registry-config gap on our side, not a wizard limitation. Step 6 lets you author or correct topic-to-component bindings by hand for any provider.
3. Step 4 — Review Detected Items: review what was detected and accept the configuration. The platform takes the topic mapping from the CSV and aligns it with the systems it identified.
4. Step 5 — Operational Analysis: skip. This step is currently wired for IWMAC only; for Niagara sites the wizard lets you skip it and uses generic defaults.
5. Step 6 — Visual Config Editor: review and refine the generated configuration; no new Niagara input.
6. Step 7 — Watchdog Setup: the wizard's watchdog setup configures IWMAC's safe-write infrastructure and is only meaningful when your site has an IWMAC credential. For Niagara-only sites, Step 7 auto-advances — click Next to continue to Step 8. Niagara's own write safety stays on the Niagara side; see the callout below.
7. Step 8 — Deploy & Test: Upload to CMS pushes the configuration; Deploy Secrets writes the broker credentials into the cluster so the running pod can connect; Deploy Site rolls out the per-site service. The endpoint test panel then lets you confirm that subscribed topics are receiving messages and (if you control setpoints) that publishes are accepted.

Stuck on something?

Niagara setups vary widely between integrators. If your integrator needs protocol-level details such as broker QoS, retain flags, or payload format, open the assistant and we will help you draft a reply.