Add an Advanced Alarm in Citect Studio | System Model Page 1 of 3

System Model > Alarms > Configure Alarms > Add an Advanced Alarm

Add an Advanced Alarm

Advanced alarms trigger when the result of an expression changes to true. To achieve this, you
enter the required Cicode expression in the alarm's Expression property.

For more information, see Advanced alarms.

To add an advanced alarm:

1. In the System Model activity, select Alarms.
2. On the menu below the Command Bar, select Advanced Alarms.
3. Add a row to the Grid Editor.
4. Complete the property information in each column, or in the fields in the Property Grid (see
below for a description of the properties).
5. Click Save.

Note: Configure the [Alarm]UseConfigLimits parameter to force the Citect SCADA alarms
server to use digital alarm property values from the RDB, rather than using the values
which may be stored in the database file.

Advanced Alarms Properties

Note: If an alarm was generated by the Equipment Editor, a number of fields on the
properties form will be shaded. To configure these fields, you will need to use Equipment
Editor (see Use Equipment Editor to Configure Alarms).

Equipment Properties

Property Description

The name of the equipment associated with the alarm. Select a name from
the drop-down list of existing equipment definitions, or enter a name.
Equipment
There is a limit of 254 characters across the Equipment and Item Name
fields, including any separating periods (.).

Item Name The name of the item with which the alarm is associated.
Items form part of an equipment hierarchy. They can be used to associate
tags, alarms and trends with a particular attribute of a physical piece of
equipment (see Items).
There is a limit of 254 characters across the Equipment and Item Name,
including any separating periods (.).
If you leave this field blank, the last 63 characters of the Alarm Tag field will
be used for the Item Name. Be aware that the Alarm Tag allows 79
characters, while Tag Item has a maximum of 63 characters. This may result
in compiler errors if the combination of '<Equipment>.<TagItem>' is not
unique.
Note: When entering an Item Name, there are a number of reserved words
that you need to avoid. These reserved words relate to syntax that is used
for tag extensions. They are:
• field
• valid
• override

file:///C:/Users/Marina/AppData/Local/Temp/4SP5JG95.htm 03/05/2021
Add an Advanced Alarm in Citect Studio | System Model Page 2 of 3

Property Description
• overridemode
• controlmode
• status
•v
• vt
•q
• pt
•t
If you use one of these reserved words, an error message will display when
you compile your project.

General Properties

Property Description

The name of the alarm tag. The name needs to be unique to the cluster and
adhere to tag name syntax rules.
Alarm Tag If your project includes a large number of tags, a naming convention can be
helpful when searching and debugging tags (see Using structured tag
names).

A meaningful description of the alarm, for example, a name that includes the
Alarm physical device associated with the alarm. The name is used when details of
Name the alarm are displayed on the screen or logged to a device. This field does
not support variable data.

The name of the cluster that runs the alarm. This field needs to be defined if
Cluster your project has more than one cluster.
Name You can leave this field blank in a multi-cluster system if cluster replication is
enabled (see the parameter [General]ClusterReplication.

The alarm category to which the alarm is assigned, defined as either a

Category category number or a label (see Categorize Alarms).
If not specified, the category defaults to category 0.

A meaningful description of the alarm condition. This description is used

when details of the alarm are displayed on screen or logged to a device.

Alarm This field can support variable data (by enclosing an expression in braces).
Desc For example:
"Line Broken Alarm at Line Speed {LineSpeed1}"
See Add Variable Data to Alarm Messages.

The alarm delay period (see Using Alarm Delay).

An alarm becomes active when the state of the triggering condition remains
true for the duration of the delay period. The active alarm has an ON time of
when the state became true. If not specified the alarm is active as soon as it
Delay is triggered by the digital tag(s).
The delay period needs to be entered in the format HH:MM:SS
(Hours:Minutes:Seconds).
The value needs to be between 0 seconds (00:00:00) and 24 hours
(24:00:00).

file:///C:/Users/Marina/AppData/Local/Temp/4SP5JG95.htm 03/05/2021
Add an Advanced Alarm in Citect Studio | System Model Page 3 of 3

Property Description
Help The name of the graphics page that displays when the AlarmHelp() function
is called by a user-defined command. If not specified no action occurs when
the AlarmHelp() function is called.

Comment Any useful comment.

Source Properties

Property Description

The Cicode expression that triggers the alarm. Whenever the result of the
Expression
expression changes to TRUE, the alarm is triggered.

Custom Properties

Property Description

A user-defined string for filtering active alarms (maximum 64

characters).
Used in a custom Cicode query function as search criteria, the custom
alarm filter enables operators to identify and display a subset of
active alarms.
Custom 1 to
Custom 8 Notes:
•Custom filters are visible only when the Advanced Alarms form is open
in Extended mode.
• The fields are not case-sensitive and can contain 'A'..'Z', 'a'..'z', '0'..'9',
and the underscore '_'.
• A custom filter cannot start with a digit.

Paging Properties

Security Properties

Historian Properties

Project Properties
See Also
Alarms

Published 2018

file:///C:/Users/Marina/AppData/Local/Temp/4SP5JG95.htm 03/05/2021