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Download the Solution Example here: AlarmsAreas.dbsln

Name: Logical Alarm Areas

Software Version: 10.0.6

Keywords: Alarms. Area. Alarm management.

Summary

The sample shows how to set up Logical Alarm Areas and how to use them to filter Alarms. It aims to demonstrate how your solutions can be enhanced with additional features in the alarming system to fit your needs. We will run through those features on this page. Going to Alarms/Areas, you'll find the Alarms Areas configuration interface.

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Summary

This solution example shows the many uses of AlarmAreas. Among other things, it is possible to enable, disable, acknowledge, count and filter alarms based on the Area they are associated with, making it easier to manage large projects.

Technical Information

To create an AlarmArea, go to Alarms → Areas. It is possible to create SubAreas by clicking on an existing AlarmArea and creating a new one inside of it. Afterwards, go to Alarms → Items, right-click the column titles and enable the Area column, then edit it to specify which Area each AlarmItem belongs to.
Each AlarmArea has its own alarm counts, as well as methods to acknowledge and disable all Alarms connected to it. These fields can be associated with buttons to manage Alarms. You can check these possibilities out by double-clicking this example’s components in Draw mode and looking at their Dynamics and text fields.
Additionally, Areas can be used to filter AlarmItems, making the visualization of AlarmViewers simpler and more organized. On Displays → Draw → Modules, select an AlarmAreas component and place it on the desired display. Set the SelectedArea field to a text tag and then apply it to the AlarmAreas through the display’s CodeBehind, like this:

public async void ApplyFilterButtonDown(object sender, System.Windows.Input.MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
	 if(String.IsNullOrEmpty(@Tag.SelectedArea))
	 	 @Tag.AlarmFilter = "";
	 else
	 	 @Tag.AlarmFilter = @Alarm.Area[@Tag.SelectedArea].GetFilter();
}

This code accesses the Area selected by the user through the AlarmAreas component. Then, method GetFilter returns text filtering the selected Area and all of its SubAreas. This filter is passed to text tag AlarmFilter, which is applied to the AlarmViewer by double-clicking on it in Draw mode and setting its Filter field to {Tag.AlarmFilter}

Technical Information

In the Alarms Areas configuration interface, users can define logical areas to group Alarms, enhancing organization and alarm management.

In the Alarms Items configuration interface, there is the AuxValue column, which allows for displaying additional tag info alongside the one triggering the alarm in the alarm message.

Within the Alarm Namespace, various attributes facilitate interaction with these defined areas. The users can manage areas through attributes such as categories, descriptions, IDs, and names. Check out how to access the Alarm Area attributes in the Alarm namespace in the image below:

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Also, it includes counts for the total number of Alarms within an area (including or excluding child areas) and the number of unacknowledged Alarms. It also offers functionalities to acknowledge all Alarms within an area, with or without including child areas, and to turn Alarms on or off for specific areas.

The solution example shows how to display these areas in a tree view during runtime using the AlarmAreas graphical component, allowing users to see and select different alarm areas. 
This feature enables the monitoring of Alarms in real time, showing active and unacknowledged Alarms within selected areas. Users can acknowledge Alarms directly from this view, and they can turn off Alarms for specific areas, preventing them from appearing in the interface. However, the system continues to process and store them as usual.

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Reference Information

Check out the Alarms Areas documentation to leverage this feature's potential.

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