The Alarm Summary displays a row of values for each alarm, and uses columns to separate and categorize the values. The column headings indicate what the values in each column represent. The columns that are displayed on the Alarm Summary can be configured by a system administrator (see Alarm Summary Display Settings in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to Server Administration).
The default column headings for the Alarm Summary are:
- Time —The date and time at which the alarm was recorded. Alarms have both an ‘occurrence time’ and a ‘received time’. Whenever the Geo SCADA Expert server provides the time stamp, these times are one and the same. Whenever Geo SCADA Expert receives a time stamped alarm from an outstation, the Time column displays that record’s ‘occurrence time’ (the time stamp provided by the outstation or scanner).
Alarms that are generated at the master station (Geo SCADA Expert) are time stamped by the server. If an alarm occurs at the outstation, the time stamp of that alarm depends on the driver. With some drivers, the outstation time stamps the data and then passes that data to Geo SCADA Expert. With other drivers, the time stamp might be generated by the outstation or the server, depending how the data was reported. Outstations on some drivers do not support time stamping of data, and therefore the server time stamps that data when it receives it from the outstation.
The Time field's raw field name is RecordTime. Use the raw field name when querying Alarm Summary data. ('Time' is a reserved word in SQL and as such cannot be used by some third-party applications.)
- Severity (SeverityDesc)—Each alarm has a severity description that indicates the importance of the alarm. The default descriptions are Critical, High, Medium, and Low, where, for example, an alarm with a Low severity would not be as important as an alarm with a severity description of High or Critical. The default severity descriptions and levels may have been replaced by a custom range of severities on your system (see Alarm Severity in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to Alarms).
- Source—The name of the item with which the alarm is associated. The Source is not always the name of an item in the Geo SCADA Expert database. For items that are in the Geo SCADA Expert database, the FullName of the item is displayed.
- Message—A short text description of the system occurrence that caused the alarm to be generated. For example, if a change in point value causes the alarm state, the message indicates the new value and change in state. The Message is a string value.
- Area of Interest—This column is only available if the Area of Interest feature is enabled on your system. The column lists the Area of Interest with which the alarm is associated. The Alarm Summary is restricted so that it only includes alarms that have either no Area of Interest, or an Area of Interest to which the logged on user has access. For more information, see Restrict Alarm and Event Access to Specific Areas of Interest in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to Core Configuration.
- Active Time—This column displays the time that an alarm occurred and became active. If the alarms remains unacknowledged or disabled, but changes state, this is recorded as a new alarm in the alarm summary.
- Ack Time—This column displays the date and time that an alarm is acknowledged.
- Inactive Time—This column displays the date and time that an alarm becomes inactive. If the alarms remains unacknowledged or disabled, but changes state, the time at which it changes is recorded as the time it became inactive.
- Ack User (AckUserName)—This column displays the specific name of the user who last acknowledged the alarm.
- Ack Comment—This column displays any acknowledgment comment associated with the alarm.
Other columns that may be included in the Alarm Summary (depending on the setup) are:
- Aggregate Name—This column displays the name of the database aggregate with which the alarm is associated. The column contains an empty string if the alarm is not associated with an aggregate.
Aggregates often appear as tabs on configuration Forms - for example, the 'Control' aggregate appears as the 'Control' tab on the Forms of output points. For more information about aggregates, see Aggregates in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to the Database.
- Cached—This column displays whether the alarm is cached (True) or historic data (False). The Alarm Summary combines alarm data from the cache (which contains current data) with historic alarm summary data stored on the system.
- Condition Name—This column displays the alarm condition name that identifies the particular occurrence that has triggered the alarm, for example, a ‘Point State’ condition name indicates that a change in point state has caused an alarm to be raised (see Understand Alarm Conditions and Subconditions).
- Deleted—This column indicates whether the historic record associated with the alarm has been deleted. The historic records are not removed from the database when they are deleted; instead they are merely marked as deleted, which hides them from view when the default Alarms List filter is used. An alarm's historic record can be deleted, for example, by using the DeleteRecord or DeleteRecords automation methods in the CAlarmSummary database table (for more information about these methods, see the Database Schema).
- Disabled By (DisabledByDesc)—This column displays a description of the User Type that triggered the disable action. The User Type can be a User, Logic program, Schedule or a Method Call. If more than one User Type applies, the entry is displayed as a comma-separated list. A blank entry indicates that the alarm is not disabled.
Geo SCADA Expert supports a feature that controls whether the different User Types can disable or enable alarms independently of other User Types (see Define whether User Types can Disable Alarms Independently in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to Server Administration).
- Disabled By (DisabledByValue)—This column displays an integer value that identifies the User Type that disabled the alarm. The value is a bitmask made up of 8 bits:
- Bit 0: User
- Bit 1: Logic
- Bit 2: Schedule
- Bit 3: Method Call
- Bits 4-7: Reserved for future use (these bits are always set to zero).
So, for example, the column displays 1 when the alarm is disabled only by a User, 2 when the alarm is disabled only by Logic, 4 when the alarm is disabled only by a Schedule, and 8 when the alarm is disabled only by a Method Call. Likewise, the column displays different values if the alarm is disabled by multiple User Types; for example, 3 if the alarm is disabled by a User AND Logic, but not by Schedule or Method Call.
The column displays 0 if the alarm is not disabled.
Geo SCADA Expert supports a feature that controls whether the different User Types can disable or enable alarms independently of other User Types (see Define whether User Types can Disable Alarms Independently in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to Server Administration).
- Disabled End Time—This column displays the date and time that a disabled alarm will be automatically enabled. This only applies when the Geo SCADA Expert server is configured to use fixed or variable time durations for the Disable Alarms feature (see Define the Disable Alarms Settings).
- Disabled Time—This column displays the date and time that the associated alarm was disabled.
- File Id—Alarm Summary messages are stored in a series of files. Each file has a unique File Id. The File Id is a string value.
- File Offset—Alarm Summary messages are stored in a series of files, with each message being assigned a unique offset in each file. The File Offset is a whole number.
- Location—The column indicates the location of records, either online or from a mounted archive. This field only applies if you configure the Alarm Summary to archive data (see Define the Archive Time for Data in the Geo SCADA Expert Guide to Server Administration).
- Receipt Time—This column displays the time that alarms were received by the server, either at a specific time or within a defined time range.
- Record Id—This column enables Geo SCADA Expert to retrieve and display ‘dynasets’ of data.
- State Desc—This column displays the description of the alarm state of the associated alarm.
- Sub Condition Name—This column displays the active subcondition of condition that provides an indication of the state of an alarm.
- UnAck Time—The date and time that the alarm was unacknowledged.
- Visible Time—The date and time that the alarm subcondition became active, or the alarm became visible after being suppressed or disabled.
For further fields not mentioned here, see Fields by Which you can Filter an Alarm Summary.