The Alarm Page

Every VTScada application has an Alarm Page, where you can view alarms, events and Alarm Manager transactions. What operators can do with that page depends on the security privileges granted to their account.

In addition to the standard Alarm Page, many developers create a customized Alarm List on various pages. These lists can have some or all of the features of the one found on the Alarm Page and may be filtered to match the other contents of the page.

If you have applied Global Tag & Area Filtering, you will see only alarms that pass the filter. A warning is provided, as shown. Alternatively, you can configure the list to ignore Global Tag and Area Filters.

Key Terms:

Alarm:

A notification that an operating condition has exceeded a design limitation. An operator must take action to acknowledge the alarm and to fix the problem. The priority of the alarm indicates the urgency of action.

Event:

A record that something has occurred. No acknowledgment or action is required. An event is recorded for every time that you sign in, sign out, and send a control action to equipment using the SCADA system. Other events may have been created for your application.

Transaction:

Any entry in the alarm or event database. Includes configuration and state changes as well as alarms and events. A single alarm may have many transactions as it activates, is acknowledged, then returns to normal as correct operating conditions are restored.

Applications can be configured so that when an alarm occurs, a page showing the matching tag will open automatically. In effect, the Go To Page feature of the alarm list can be made to happen automatically after short delay.

Open the alarm page

Open the Alarm page by clicking the alarm icon at the top of the screen, or through the menu system. A right-click on any menu link will open the page as a secondary or pop-up window. Other navigation tools can be configured.

 

You can choose to view alarms from all databases, or from only one at a time.

Alarm lists can be configured. Yours may not match this image.

The list can be filtered and sorted as needed. Alarms may be acknowledged using the buttons in the Alarm Actions section of the ribbon, but in most cases, it will be easier to use the button provided within the list for each alarm. A right-click on any alarm opens a context menu of controls. In particular, you may find the Plot and the Go To Page entries to be especially useful.

Ack All
Ack	Acknowledge the selected alarm. You must first select an alarm from the display before attempting to acknowledge it.
Shelve
Note	Opens the Alarms notebook, allowing the operator to create a note that will be permanently attached to the selected alarm transaction.
Plot	Opens the Historical Data Viewer, showing the recent trend graph of the tag's value.
Go to page	If the tag causing the alarm is drawn on a page, that will be opened. If it is drawn on several pages, you will be given a choice. If not drawn on a page, an automatically-created one will be shown.

Alarm Reports

The list is the report. Sort and filter as needed to display the alarm record that you want to include in your report. Then either print or copy the list to the Windows clipboard for use elsewhere.

Copy the list:

The right-click menu will not show the option, "Copy", but this tool is available. Use the keyboard combination, Ctrl+C to copy the entire contents of the displayed list, then paste that information into a spreadsheet.

All lists are limited to 1000 records, as configured using the property, AlarmPageHistoryRecordLimit.
If there are more records, a Load More button will be available. You can load successive groups of alarms up to the maximum of 100,000 (set by AlarmPageHistoryHardLimit).