Alarm Area Filtering

Alarm area filtering will show alarms that have been configured with one or more specified areas on a given workstation, and hide those associated with areas that are not included.

Why Use Alarm Area Filtering?

Alarm area filtering is typically used in applications where some users do not need to be aware of some alarms (e.g. in a large plant where alarms belonging to equipment in a certain plant section is beyond the responsibility of the operators in other sections).

As an alternative to Alarm Area Filtering, you might consider using Master & Subordinate Applications.

How Does Alarm Area Filtering Differ From Tag Area Filtering and Realm Filtering?

Alarm area filtering hides alarms associated with specific areas from a given workstation. The alarm tags is still visible to developers who have access to the Tag Browser and other application development tools.

Where is Alarm Area Filtering Configured?

Alarm area filtering is best achieved using workstation-specific application properties.

How do I Configure Alarm Area Filtering?

The following elements are involved in alarm area filtering:

  • A workstation.startup file named for the PC to which it should apply (e.g. MyPC.startup), and
  • The <Alarm_Manager> section and subsequent area declarations.

Workstation.Startup File

Create a workstation.startup file for each PC for which you wish to apply tag area filtering. To create a workstation.startup file:

  1. Create a text file that is named for the PC to which its settings should apply, and which has the .STARTUP extension (e.g. MyPC.startup).
  1. Save this text file to the WorkstationSettings folder of your application and use either the File Manifest or Import File Edits to make it part of the application's working set of files. (You may need to create the WorkstationSettings folder.)

A PC will only obey the workstation.startup file that carries its name.

After you have created your workstation.startup file, configure it for alarm area filtering as follows:

<Alarm_Manager> Section

The <Alarm_Manager> section is the Workstation.Startup section heading under which you may specify the alarm areas visible to the workstation.

Note the use of angle brackets rather than the more common square brackets for this section. These are required.

The following instructions will guide you through the process of successfully configuring the <Alarm_Manager> section.

  1. Create or open a WorkstationName.startup file, where WorkstationName is the name of the computer where filtering will apply.
  2. Save this file into the WorkstationSettings folder of your application.
    (Create that folder if it does not exist.)
  3. Within the file, add a section named <Alarm_Manager>.
  4. In this section, enter AlarmArea followed by an equals sign, followed by the name of the alarm area to display (as in the following example).

Alarm area filtering allows the asterisk wildcard character. For example, to view all alarms whose area ends with "1" you could enter *1 for the AlarmArea property. To view all alarms whose area begins with "a" you could enter a* for the AlarmArea property.

<Alarm_Manager>
; The alarm areas to show 
AlarmArea = North 
AlarmArea = South

After you have completed the configuration of your Workstation.Startup file(s), save the files, import file changes at the VAM, and then restart your application.