Page Elements

• Purpose – Free text to describe the purpose of this alarm trigger. Mandatory field. Something must be entered here.
• Reason – Optional field on display. If the system has reasons (Alarm Types) setup, these will be available in this drop-down list. If not this list will be empty, leave this field blank if Alarm Type (Reasons) are not being used. This field may be totally switched off and invisible in some deployments.
• Point Name – The point name and full path are displayed here, a new/different point may be selected by clicking the change point button and selecting a new point from the list.
• Priority – This field is the importance field, highest importance is lower number, 1 is more important that 2. This is used in notifications where in a batch only the highest priority alarm will be emails/sent via SMS.
• Auto Sleep – Enter the amount of time (in minutes) that this alarm trigger should sleep (be inactive) after raising an alarm. Leave blank if no sleep is needed.
• Operation – A drop-down list with the breach conditions for this alarm trigger >, <, >=, <= or =.
• Value – The numeric value (will always display to 2 decimal places) to use in combination with the operation above to trigger an alarm.
• Attributes – Optionally as well as triggering an alarm at a set value (e.g., when data >= 5.65) an attribute (property) condition can be put here. For Example, Property VALVE_STATE = “open” so the alarm will only trigger when the point value >= 5.65 and the property VALVE_STATE of the point has the value “open” attributed to the point.
  • Any property available on the point will be available for selection in the Select Attribute drip down list and any text value can be entered in the box beside it.
  • This is usually only of use in systems where properties are set dynamically over time by data collectors.
• Created By – Read only field showing the login name of the person who created the alarm trigger.
• Only User Can Edit – When creating an alarm, the user might not want anyone else editing it. Set this in this checkbox to allow only the creator to edit the alarm. Other users can open and view the details of the alarm but not edit them.

• Enabled – Ticked on by default when creating an alarm but can be edited here to disable/turn off an alarm trigger.
  • The section details above must be completed and saved in the database (click save) before it is possible to add subscriber contacts and fill out other details in the subscriber section.

_{Reason Configuration}

The reason drop-down is populated from the wa_reason table in the database.

By default, the reason drop-down displays a blank reason, so the user has to select a reason from the list. It is possible to set a different default reason for a particular point, by assigning the point the attribute Alarm Reason and giving it the value of the ident of the reason you want from the wa_reason table.

Additionally, it is possible to prevent the user from changing the reason drop-down, by setting it to be read-only. This is done via the Administration>Web Config page. Set the element “Alarm Trigger Reason is Read Only” to True and the reason field will be read-only. It will still be set to whatever the default reason is, but it will not be able to be changed.

Subscribing Contacts to an Alarm

When the main details of an alarm trigger are saved to the database it becomes possible to subscribe contacts to the alarm. These are people/contacts who will receive notifications via email/S when an alarm is generated. Any number of contacts may be subscribed to an alarm trigger.

Click the add button to bring up the contacts selection screen and multi select the contacts to subscribe to this alarm.

Click Add selected to add these contacts or close to remove the popup.

Contacts subscribed to this alarm are shown in the subscribers list. Subscriptions can be removed by highlighting the contact and clicking the “remove Selected” button below the list.

Contacts will bring in as a default their defined contact hours to this alarm subscription. Refer to section 3.2 of this guide on managing contact hours for full description of the editing features of hours data entry.

Clicking on a contact will show the hours they have assigned for receiving notifications about this alarm.

A contact can have their hours altered for this particular alarm instance here without affecting their default hours defined on the Manage Contacts Screen. Highlight the contact in the Subscribers list and edit the hours in grid as per on the contacts screen.

When finished click on the “Save Subscription Contact Hours” button below the editing grid (or the save button which will save the whole Alarm Trigger page including any changes made to this contacts hours)

To reset the contact hours to the default for the highlighted contact click “Restore Defaults” – The current default contact hours for this contact subscriber will be re-allocated. A warning will be given

Click on OK to perform this action and save these changes immediately.

Deleting an Alarm Trigger

Alarm triggers can be deleted by clicking the delete button. A warning/confirmation message will be shown

Confirming the operation will delete the Alarm Trigger, close the screen returning to the Alarm Trigger List view.

Closing, and Unsaved Changes

The screen can be closed at any time by clicking the Close button. If there are any unsaved edits that have been done on the screen a warning will be displayed. The format of this warning box may vary across browsers (not something that can be controlled by this software)

OK button will save the changes and close. Cancel will discard the changes and close the screen without saving.