Viewing System Alarm Messages

Select the Alarm desktop. Alarm events are displayed according to the criteria selected in the Sorted by field.

Note: Alarm messages are archived and can be retrieved at all times.

You can double-click the log area (middle of the window) to add a comment. The Add a comment window opens and enables you to enter text data. Once you have finished and clicked the OK button to close the window, the alarm event will be preceded by a + sign, indicating that an annotation has been added to the alarm event.

Note: Acknowledgements and flags will not be identified by a “ + ” sign.

You may change/define the sorting order (Sorted by drop-down list):

Trigger destination: Alarms are sorted by their order of arrival. This the default sequence. The window scrolls to the end each time a new alarm is displayed.
State: Alarms are sorted according to their status (acknowledged, to be acknowledged or flagged). When you use this option, you interrupt the normal scrolling of events. Select “sequence” to go back to the default display.
Date and time: Alarms are sorted according to the date and time of their arrival.
Event: The Event messages column is sorted in alphabetical order, grouping identical events. For example, all Input in alarm events are grouped.
Priority: Events are sorted by priority (as defined in Options > Event color and Priority).

You may right-click anywhere in the window to enable the Properties window from which you can enable alarm status buttons:

Red: To be acknowledged or suspended. If suspended, the suspension delay is displayed. When the delay expires, the operator is required to acknowledge again. If the delay is not expired but the operator wishes to acknowledge a suspended alarm, he/she has to click on the delay. The delay will be reset to zero.
Green: Acknowledged.
Yellow: Flagged.
Black: Deleted. To view alarms that have been manually deleted, select the View deleted logs from the Properties .
Blue: Manual log.

Select the Manual / Automatic buttons to toggle the acknowledgement method (automatic or manual). Only operators who are assigned this feature in the Operator Definition menu can use this option. For more information, see Operators Definition.

Note: The Manual / Automatic acknowledgement option is only available through the Alarms Desktop. When the operator logs out, it will return to “manual” by default.

Right click an alarm message to perform additional tasks on alarm events:

Acknowledge: When selected, a green point is inserted beside an alarm event to indicate that the event was acknowledged.
Re-visit: When selected, the system flags the selected event. A yellow indicator is inserted beside flagged events.
Clear re-visit: Remove the flag for the selected event.
Add comment: Allows operators to enter comments concerning the selected event. The added comments are displayed in the bottom part of the alarm window. A blue + sign beside an alarm event indicates that a comment was added to the alarm event (visible when buttons are enabled: right-click an alarm event > Properties > Show buttons).
Print event and comment: When selected, the system prints the alarm event and the associated comment.
Delete event: When selected, the selected alarm event is marked for deletion (the indicator becomes “black” to indicate that the event has been marked for deletion). To view the events marked for deletion, before you actually purge them, right click anywhere in the window and select Properties then select View deleted logs.