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DB-402 Alarm Editing Guide - 1.3
DB-402 Alarm Editing Guide - 1.3
PRESENTATION
DATE: MARCH 23, 2015 VERSION 1.3
Version History
TABLE OF CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT, NOTICES AND TRADEMARKS ....................................................................................... 4
ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION .............................................................................................................. 4
ABOUT THIS MANUAL ..................................................................................................................... 5
REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................... 5
1 Alarm Formats ........................................................................................................................... 6
1.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 6
1.2 Alarm Format Data Fields .............................................................................................. 8
1.3 Alarm Formatting ......................................................................................................... 12
1.4 Use of Application Data by the System........................................................................ 13
1.5 Examples of Alarm Formats ......................................................................................... 14
1.6 Default Alarm Formats ................................................................................................. 16
2 Alarm Priorities ........................................................................................................................ 17
2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 17
2.2 Alarm Priority Data Fields ........................................................................................... 18
3 Master-Slave Alarm Suppression ............................................................................................ 23
3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 23
3.2 Creating Master-Slave Relationships ........................................................................... 24
3.3 Operation of Master/Slave Alarm Suppression ............................................................ 25
3.4 Storm Alarm Suppression ............................................................................................. 27
4 External Bell ............................................................................................................................ 29
4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 29
5 Remote Alarm Annunciation ................................................................................................... 33
5.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 33
5.2 Remote Alarms ............................................................................................................. 35
5.3 Remote Alarm Groups .................................................................................................. 38
5.4 Annunciations ............................................................................................................... 39
5.5 Annunciation Service ................................................................................................... 42
5.6 Recipient ....................................................................................................................... 56
5.7 Schedules ...................................................................................................................... 63
5.8 Operational Overview of Remote Annunciation .......................................................... 66
5.9 Remote Acknowledgement........................................................................................... 69
6 Unattended Mode ..................................................................................................................... 71
6.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 71
6.2 System Configuration ................................................................................................... 71
The software described in this document is furnished under license, and may
only be used or copied in accordance with the terms of such license.
www.survalent.com
This manual is intended as a “how to” reference for the STC Explorer Alarm
Database
References
Database documents The following table lists the Windows SCADA documentation.
Document
Document Name
Number
DB-400 Database Editing Overview
DB-401 Point Database Editing Guide
DB-403 Calculation Database Editing Guide
DB-404 Historical Database Editing Guide
DB-405 Report Database Editing Guide
1 Alarm Formats
1.1 Introduction
About this chapter This Chapter describes how to use the STC Explorer to define the format of
the alarm messages in your system.
Alarm Priority
The Alarm Priority (also called Alarm Severity) is a number in the range zero to
10, which represents the alarm severity. See Chapter 2 Alarm Priorities for
more information.
Point ID
The Point ID field in the alarm request identifies the point associated with the
alarm. If the point is a status point, and the alarm represents a status change,
the Point State field specifies the new state of the point.
Point State
For status change, limit violation and rate-of-change alarms, the alarm priority
is taken from the Alarm Severity fields in the point’s definition. See Analog
Point and Status Point chapters of the Point Database Editing Guide, DB-401
for more information.
Alarm Format
An alarm format is a text string that defines the format of the text of the alarm
message. The alarm processor formats the text of an alarm message by
interpreting the particular alarm format referred to by the alarm request. It is
the content of this format string that is the principal subject of this chapter.
See Status Point chapter of the Point Database Editing Guide, DB-401 for
more information.
In the case of analog limit violation, over range, or rate of change alarms, the
alarm format is one of fifteen pre-allocated alarm formats listed in the table
below.
Format Format
Alarm Type Number Number
(without meter) (with meter)
Lower Reasonability 178 190
Lower Emergency 179 191
Lower Pre-Emergency 180 192
Upper Pre-Emergency 182 194
Upper Emergency 183 195
Upper Reasonability 184 196
Overrange 189 197
Rate of Change 121 N/A
The type of alarm dictates which format the system uses. In the case of a limit
violation alarm, it also depends on which limit is violated, and whether the
point has an associated meter point or not. See Analog Point chapter in the
Point Database Editing Guide, DB-401 for more information.
Application Data
The Application Data field of the alarm request contains application-dependent
data that can be included in the alarm message. There are special codes that
you can include in the alarm format string to specify how the application data
is to be used in the alarm message.
In some cases, the SCADA system uses the Application Data field to supply
additional information to be included in an alarm. See section 1.4 Use of
Application Data by the System for more information.
Additional The SCADA system allows for a large number of formats, which can be
information viewed and edited via the STC Explorer. See section 1.2 Alarm Format Data
Fields for more information on editing.
See section 1.3 for more information on how the alarm processor uses the
format string to format alarm messages.
See Database Editing Overview, DB-400 for more information on the default
set of alarm formats that come with the system.
About this section The Alarm Format table is located under the Alarms branch where you find a
list of existing formats. These formats include the formats that are defined in
the default database, as well as those created or modified for your System.
Defining an alarm From the Alarm Formats window you can create a new alarm format by right-
message clicking to access the drop down menu. From this menu select New. This new
alarm format dialog box defines one alarm message format which is the
control string that defines one way for formatting an alarm message.
Field Descriptions
The following table describes the fields in the new alarm message dialog box.
Option Description
Name You give the alarm format a name to allow you to select it for
use when you are editing points. By convention, the formats
reserved for internal use by the system include asterisks (*) in
their names
System This flag is set by default in the alarm formats that are
intended for use by the internal system alarms (those formats
with asterisks in their names). You should set it only for alarm
message formats that you do not want to use with your points
(for example, one that is intended for use by your application
program). Setting this flag prevents that alarm format from
appearing on the drop-down list that you use when editing a
status point.
Note: You cannot select “System” alarm formats when you are
editing your status points.
Description This is a description of this format, and is optional. The
description appears in the STC Explorer when you are editing
alarm formats, so you may want to enter something here that
will help you identify this format.
Format This field contains a 64-character text string that defines the
format of an alarm message. When you make a change to an
alarm format, it takes effect immediately (on the next alarm
that uses it). Note that previously raised alarm messages are
not re-formatted.
Control Strings The following table describes the Control Strings used in an alarm format.
Output pointer When formatting the alarm message to be output, the alarm processor uses
an “output pointer” to keep track of where in the line of the alarm message
output pointer is located.”
You can control the output pointer by using the “Xn” or “Tn” control codes.
The “Xn control code may be used to advance the output pointer by “n”
character positions. The “Tn” control code may be used to reposition the
output pointer to any place in the alarm message, including the timestamp
Data pointer (which is further left than the text would normally be placed. “T0”, for
example, sets the output pointer to the position of the first timestamp
character).
To keep track of data taken from the Application Data field of the alarm
request, the alarm processor maintains an application data pointer that
points to the next available byte in the Application Data field. Whenever the
alarm processor encounters a control code that formats application data, it
takes an appropriate number of bytes from the portion of the Application
Data field pointed to by the application data pointer, formats the bytes as
specified by the control code, and then advances the application data
pointer by the number of bytes just used.
The number of bytes of application data used by each control code depends
on the control code itself. For the “Fm.n” control string, the number of bytes
used is eight and the bytes are treated as a double-precision floating-point
number. For control string “Im”, the number of bytes used is four and the
bytes are treated as an integer. For control string “Bn”, the number of bytes
taken is “n” and the bytes are treated as character data.
You can control the application data pointer, if you wish, by using the “An”
Delimit text control string. The “An” control string allows you to skip data in the
application data area or to move the pointer back to previous data (“A0”, for
example, sets the application data pointer back to the beginning of the
Application Data field of the alarm request).
The single or double quotes (‘or “) are used to delimit text that is simply
inserted into the alarm message. If you want to include one type of quote
character in your string, be sure to use the other one as the delimiter.
Use care to format alarm messages of reasonable length. Think about the
size of the point names and descriptions that you have created in your
database. A typical 80-character printer will only be able to show 60
characters of alarm text, after the time stamp and alarm clear indicator have
been printed.
About this section Each alarm format contains a series of alarm format control codes
separated by commas. The alarm processor creates the text of the alarm
message by interpreting these control codes. Each control code is an
instruction to include one element in the alarm message.
Some of the control codes instruct the alarm processor to include a data
Alarm format string item such as the name or description of the point (recall that Point ID is
included in the alarm request). Other control codes instruct the alarm
processor to format data from the Application Data field of the alarm
request. Still other control codes insert fixed text into the alarm message, or
to move to any position within the alarm message.
The control codes that you can use in an alarm message skeleton are listed
in the table on page 10. For each code, the table indicates the source of the
applicable data:
“Point data” means the control string formats a data item obtained from
the associated point’s database record, where the Point ID field of the
alarm request specifies which point to use.
“Application data” means the control string formats a data item contained
in the Application Data field of the alarm request.
“Request data” means the control string formats a data item contained in
some field of the alarm request other than the Application Data field.
where:
It is the “text...” part of the alarm message that is formatted by the Alarm
Format.
Cleared and sustained When a sustained alarm is cleared, whether it’s related to a status point or
alarms an analog point, the alarm processor:
marks the original alarm record as cleared but leaves the entire message
text unchanged
adds a new alarm record with the same text as the original message
except that the timestamp (and the current state, if present) is updated,
and the character string “(CL)” is inserted between the timestamp and the
main text of the message (without the quotes)
In the case of sustained status alarms, this means that if the original alarm
included the state (for example, TRIP) the cleared alarm will include the
new state (CLOSED), and the (CL) means that the original alarm condition
cleared.
About this section Although you can use the Application Data field in any way you choose when
writing you own SCADA applications, the SCADA system uses it to supply
additional data in certain alarms.
The following tables describe the use of the Application Data for different
alarms. In each case, the data is floating point, and the Fm.n control string
should be used.
Application data for Use of Application Data in Analog Limit Violation Alarms
alarms Offset Length Data Type Description
0 8 Float Current value
8 8 Float Limit value
16 8 Float Meter value (if a meter point exists)
Alarm format for a An example of an alarm format that could be defined for a status point is:
status point
D,X2,C,X2,P,T60,F8.2
This format would be appropriate for a status point that has an associated
meter point. When the status point goes into alarm, the meter’s value is
included in the application data area of the alarm request that is sent to the
alarm processor.
Construction of the For this format, the alarm processor constructs the text of the alarm
alarm message text message as follows:
The first 20 characters of the message are formatted to contain the time
stamp and space for the alarm clear indicator (CL)
Next, the D code in the format causes the alarm processor to insert the
point’s description
The X2 code in the format causes the alarm processor to insert two blanks.
The C code in the format causes the alarm processor to insert the
appropriate state string based on the point’s state that was specified in the
alarm request
The next X2 code causes the alarm processor to insert another two blank
characters
The P code causes the alarm processor to insert a string of asterisks (*) to
represent the alarm priority. Four asterisks indicate priority four, three
asterisks indicate priority three, etc.
The T60 code forces the output pointer to character position 60 in the
alarm message. This is being done because the P format code produces a
variable number of asterisks, and the user wants the stuff that follows the
asterisks to line up on displayed and printed alarms no matter how many
there were
An example of an alarm message that might have been created from this
format is:
Alarm format for an An example of an alarm format that may be defined for a limit violation for an
analog point analog point is:
G10,X1,D,X1,“HI EMG”,X1,F8.2,X1,F8.2
In this case, the application data area of the alarm request must contain two
floating-point numbers at offsets 0 and 8 respectively. These numbers are
the point’s current value and the value of the limit violated. They are placed
in the alarm request by the program responsible for processing limit
violations.
Construction of the For this skeleton, the alarm processor constructs the alarm message as
alarm message text follows:
The first 20 characters of the message are formatted to contain the time
stamp and space for the alarm clear indicator (CL).
Next, the G10 code causes the alarm processor to insert the first 10
characters of the description string of the point’s station.
The D code causes the alarm processor to insert the point’s description
string
The next X1 code causes the alarm processor to insert another blank
space
The “HI EMG” code causes the alarm processor to insert the string HI
EMG into the alarm message
The next F8.2 code causes the alarm processor to get a (double-precision)
floating point number from the next 8 bytes of the application data area of
the alarm request, convert it to an 8-character string and insert it into the
alarm message
An example of an alarm message that might have been created from this
format is:
About this section This section describes the default SCADA alarm messages.
Default SCADA alarm Your SCADA system comes with a default set of alarm message formats that
messages you can view and modify using the STC Explorer, as discussed earlier in this
chapter. These default message skeletons are listed in DB-400, Database
Editing Overview.
The first several formats are intended for you to assign to your status points
although you should customize those that you chose to use. You need at
least one for each different “style” of alarm message that you want.
It is recommended that all alarm formats used for point alarms contain
N2,",",N1 at the beginning, to cause the station and point names to be
included however, you can delete the record number embedded in the
formats by default.
Other pre-defined formats are reserved for use by the Windows SCADA
system, and are marked as such.
If the existing alarm formats are not sufficient for your needs, you can go
ahead and create additional formats.
2 Alarm Priorities
2.1 Introduction
About this chapter Each alarm that can be raised in the system is assigned one of 11 priorities
(also known as severities). These allow you to differentiate between more
important and less important alarms when you design the points in your
database. Alarms raised by the system itself are assigned a priority by the
system.
Alarm priority In addition to being useful as an alarm-sorting criterion, the alarm priority
criteria also dictates:
The color of the alarm message as seen in the WorldView alarm view
window. Schemes for coloring the different alarms according priority are
described section 2.2.
How the audible alarms (both on the workstation and external) are
sounded. The operation of each workstation’s audible alarm is based on
the priority of the highest-priority unacknowledged alarm in the zones of
that workstation (as determined by the user who is currently logged in).
WorldView can be configured to play a different sound for each of the
alarm severities one through 10 (priority zero alarms do not play a sound).
Refer to the WorldView documentation for a complete discussion of this
feature. The operation of optional external audible alarms is described in
chapter 4.
About this section This section describes the alarm priority data fields.
Coloring schemes There are 11 sets of alarm priority coloring rules in the system, sometimes
called coloring schemes. These are used by alarms of the different priorities,
when determining the color to use when displaying an alarm message. If you
don’t like the way a particular priority of alarm message is colored, you may
use the STC Explorer to modify the corresponding entry.
Alarm priority Choosing one of these to be edited brings up the “Edit Alarm Priority” dialog
coloring schemes box. The data fields on the Alarm Color dialog are described below. You
cannot delete any of these coloring schemes, nor can you create a new one,
since there are exactly 5 a fixed number of alarm severities, and each
requires its own coloring scheme.
o Ack
This is the color for the second
message of a sustained alarm pair after
you have acknowledged it.
o Nak
This is the color for the second
message of a sustained alarm pair (the
one that has the (CL) in it), if you have
not yet acknowledged it (whether or not
you have acknowledged the first
message).
Operating notes The alarm priorities defined above will dictate the color of any alarm
messages you see in WorldView’s alarm view windows. But which alarm
messages you actually see will depend upon the alarm view window’s criteria
settings. You may be viewing only alarms of a certain priority, or only active
alarms, and so forth.
Furthermore, alarms that are acknowledged, that are no longer active (this
includes all momentary alarms, plus those sustained alarms that have
returned to their normal state), will only remain in the system’s alarm file for a
short time. After this configurable “alarm timeout” they will no longer be seen
in any window. So you may not get to see very much of the “Ack” color you
have chosen for Cleared alarms.
If you take a look at the alarm priorities as they are defined in your system,
you may find that many of the colors are the same. This is a natural situation;
the SCADA system allows for more versatility in alarm coloring than many
users require. But it means that you can enhance your operators’ view of
alarms as their needs grow.
About this chapter This chapter describes the the Master/Slave Alarms facility.
Alarm Suppression
If the alarm suppression function is enabled for a particular master/slave
relationship, then as long as the master point is in the alarm state, alarms on
its slave points are suppressed (i.e. the alarm severity is reduced to zero).
Group Acknowledgement
If the group acknowledgement function is enabled for a particular
master/slave relationship, then whenever you acknowledge alarms on the
master point, all alarms on the slave points will also be acknowledged.
About this section This section describes how to define a Master alarm point with one or more
slaves.
Step Action
Select Edit from the right-click drop down menu on the status or
1 analog point.
Result: The Status Point dialog box displays the Master point.
2 Click on the Alarms tab.
3 Click on the Alarm Suppression button.
Result: The Master-Slaves Alarm Suppression dialog box displays.
You can make status or analog points slaves of this point. Also, a given point
may be made a slave to any number of master points. This allows a slave point
to be suppressed by any one of many master points.
A point that is specified as a slave to one master can itself be a master point. In
its edit dialog, it has its own list of slaves defined. The resulting suppression is
hierarchical. That is, a master suppresses not only its slaves but also the slaves
of its slaves.
Suppress This flag specifies that alarms on this point will be suppressed, when the master
point is in its alarm state. This suppression will continue as long as the master
point remains in its alarm state, up to the maximum Suppression Delay configured
for your system.
Group Ack This flag specifies that group acknowledgement is enabled for this master/slave
relationship. In this case, alarms will be generated as usual. But when the
operator acknowledges the alarm on the master point, the alarms on these slave
points will be automatically acknowledged as well.
You may select both Suppress and Group Ack for the same slave point. This
means the alarm on the slave point will be suppressed. Later, if the Suppression
Delay expires, the alarm on the slave point will be raised. If the operator then
acknowledges the master point, the slave alarm will be automatically
acknowledged.
About this section This section describes how Master/Slave alarm suppression operates.
Abnormal state on a When a Master point goes into its abnormal state, alarms on the Slave points
maser point are still generated as they occur, but their severity is reduced to zero. This
means that the alarms are logged and added to the alarm database as usual
(where they are viewed on alarm displays), but they:
Alarm suppression Suppression of these Slave alarms continue until the Master point returns to its
normal state, or until the maximum Suppression Delay configured for your
SCADA system expires.
When the Master point returns to normal, the alarm suppression is cancelled,
even though the maximum suppression time may not have run out. If the Master
point returns to an alarm state again, it causes alarm suppression to resume
and the maximum suppression timer is re-started.
Suppression raise The alarm suppression system has a delay built in to allow for all status changes
delay to come in before deciding whether or not to suppress the alarm. This
Suppression Raise Delay has a default value of 5 seconds, but it can be
customized for your SCADA system if necessary.
If you have a fast communication system, the default value of 5 seconds may be
fine. If your poll cycle (time required to poll all RTUs) on any communication line
is longer than 5 seconds, then you need a longer Suppression Raise Delay.
Contact your system manager or technical support contact for assistance.
Suppression If the Suppression Re-annunciation Delay for your SCADA system is non-zero,
re-annunciation delay then after the Master point clears, any Slaves that do not also clear within this
time are re-annunciated.
The original Slave alarm, which was annunciated at priority zero (and pre-
acknowledged), is left in the alarm file with its original timestamp. But it is now
updated to have the priority that it would have had were it not suppressed.
This alarm also becomes unacknowledged, if dictated by its updated priority
Alarm types The types of alarms that can be suppressed are the following:
Master alarm The severity of the Master alarm does not affect alarm suppression. Even a
severity zero master alarm can be configured to suppress Slave alarms. But in the
case of analog master points, the type of alarm does affect suppression.
Pre-emergency alarms do not cause alarm suppression, only emergency alarms
or reasonability alarms do.
About this section This section describes an alternate type of alarm suppression.
Storm alarm suppression is a type of alarm suppression that does not involve
master/slave relationships. The purpose is to allow the operators to suppress all
point-related alarms of certain priorities.
Storm alarm In the Alarm menu of the WorldView alarm viewer, there are menu items that
suppression in allow you to suppress alarms of any priority.
WorldView
These menu items have a toggle action: selecting once suppresses, selecting a
second time un-suppresses. The presence of a check mark beside any of these
menu items indicates that the corresponding alarm priority is currently
suppressed.
The priorities that are currently suppressed are also shown in the column
heading labeled ALARM. In the example above, priorities 0, 1 and 2 are
suppressed.
Priority suppression There are also priority suppression flags visible in the Alarm Priorities editing
flags dialog. These boxes appear ticked when the priority is suppressed, and un-
ticked when the priority is not suppressed. Clicking on any of these targets
causes the corresponding priority suppression status to be toggled.
When you use WorldView to suppress the alarms, any alarms that are already
present when you start suppression are unaffected.
Operation of storm Storm Alarm Suppression involves hiding the suppressed alarms from all
suppression displays. The alarms are still submitted to the alarm file, however, and can be
viewed as soon as the suppression is removed. You don’t have to acknowledge
these alarms; they appear already acknowledged when you remove the
suppression.
Alarms that are suppressed by Storm Alarm Suppression are also not printed,
but they are included in the operations message file. This means that they can
be reviewed in the operator's summary (oprsum) display, and reported if desired
4 External Bell
4.1 Introduction
About this chapter This chapter describes the operation of the external alarm bell handling
program, and how to configure it.
Note: The External Bell software is not licensed in the base SCADA system.
This feature requires an additional software option license.
External alarm bell The external alarm bell handler is a program that drives a number of external
handler alarm devices. You can define the number of external alarms, and which zones
they are in. You can also decide which alarm priorities each bell operates for.
If you do not choose to configure any external alarm bells, audible alarms are
still sounded at each workstation by the WorldView operator interface. Refer to
your WorldView documentation for a description of this standard capability of
the base SCADA system.
Selecting Bells (located under the Alarms branch in the left pane of STC
Explorer) shows a list of existing external alarm bell definitions. Choosing one of
these to be edited, or selecting New, brings up the “Edit Bell” or “New Bell”
dialog, as shown below.
Define an external For an external bell to function, it requires certain hardware. You need an audible
bell or visible annunciation device of some kind, and some means of connecting it to
the SCADA system. Usually this takes the form of a small RTU connected via a
simple communication line. The communication line, RTU, and the points
mentioned later in this chapter all need to be created in the database in the usual
way, before you can define the external bell.
You may create as many external bells as you need in your SCADA system.
Each bell operates according to the definition you give it. Workstation audible
alarms (in the form of Windows sounds) are also played, even if no external bells
are defined.
Field Description
Name You must assign a name to each external bell you define.
The system automatically assigns an ID number for internal
purposes. Although you may change the name at any time,
you cannot change its ID number.
Using the point browser (the button marked “…”), select the
point in the database that is used to control this bell. The
external bell handler program issues a:
Silence Point This is a status point which, when set (i.e., its value is set to
a 1), causes the bell program to silence this external bell
(and then reset the silence status point to 0). You must
create this point in the database if you want to use this
feature.
Operation of the Once you have defined the bell, the SCADA system will attempt to send control
external bell commands to the designated point to operate the bell. A Close command is sent
to turn on the bell in response to alarms of the indicated priorities, if the points are
in a corresponding zone group. An Open command is sent to turn off the bell,
when the alarms are silenced or acknowledged.
Note: The correct operation of the bell requires the communication line, RTU, and
its related hardware to function properly.
5.1 Introduction
About this chapter This chapter describes the Remote Alarm Annunciation facility.
Note: Remote Alarm Annunciation is not licensed in the base SCADA system. It
requires an additional software option license.
It can call a central paging computer and submit a digital alphanumeric page
request
Communication In each case there is communication between the SCADA Master and another
protocols device, using the appropriate communication protocol:
Traps are sent using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
Text messages are sent using the Short Message Service (SMS) provided
by your cellular company
Annunciation Using STC Explorer, you can assign annunciation messages to any point-related
messages sustained alarm (e.g. analog limit violation or status alarm value). You can also
assign an annunciation message to the return to normal. Annunciation messages
are defined as text strings in the Remote Alarms table, found under the Remote
Annunciation branch in STC Explorer.
Annunciation service Specifying the personnel who receive the annunciations begins with one or more
Annunciation Services. Each such service defines a single method for reaching
your recipients, such as a paging system’s central computer, or an e-mail server.
Define recipients Under each Annunciation Service, you must define the individual recipients. Each
of these usually represents a single pager, cellular phone, or e-mail address to
which annunciations are sent. If you are using SNMP traps, a recipient represents
a management station and SNMP community name that receives the trap
messages. In the case of the Voice type, specify only a single recipient to
represent the speech synthesis device itself. For the Phone type (which also used
the voice synthesizer), you may specify a number of recipients, each with its own
phone number.
Annunciation table Also in the Alarms branch, you will find the Annunciations table. This allows you
to specify which alarm severities will be routed to particular Annunciation
Services, and at what times the remote annunciation system will be active.
Think of each place where you list an annunciation service against a particular
alarm priority you wish to send messages for as an individual “Annunciation”.
When an alarm (with an Alarm Voice specified) occurs, each Annunciation will be
processed, in order from highest priority to lowest. Within each alarm priority, the
individual annunciations will be processed in the order you have listed them in the
Annunciations table.
This causes the messages to be sent using each annunciation service, to each
recipient attached to that service. The services will each utilize their specific
messaging method; either alphanumeric paging, e mail, SNMP “trap”, SMS text
message or speech synthesis.
Each service can further filter the messages to be sent to individual recipients
according to the particular alarm. This can include the point’s zone group and the
alarm voice’s group.
About this section This section describes how to define the text of an annunciation message for
remote alarms.
Define a remote alarm A remote alarm defines the text of an annunciation message. The data entry
fields of the editor are described below.
Field Description
Name Enter a name for your remote alarm, which you will use to
select this from a list (when you are editing the points that
will use it). The ID is assigned automatically by the system,
and cannot be changed.
Description This is a description you may enter to more clearly identify
this voice. It is only visible in STC Explorer.
Group This drop-down list allows you to optionally organize your
Membership remote alarms into “groups” that you define for yourself.
These groups can be used to control which recipients
receive a particular annunciation.
If you have created one or more groups, and you want this
remote alarm to be sent only to recipients who are
“listening” for voices in a particular group, select that group
name from the drop-down list. Otherwise, select <All> to
allow this voice to be used to send annunciations to all
recipients.
Text Format Represents the text the message will use when being sent
to pagers, e-mail addresses, SNMP trap receivers, or cell
phones (via text messaging).
Speech Format String is used only by speech-synthesis annunciation
services, i.e., only services of the Voice Messenger and
Phone types.
Formats In both of the above strings, the message format consists
of any desired text, plus embedded control codes that
indicate where you want SCADA data to be inserted. In the
Voice string, you can make adjustments to improve the
pronunciation of the speech synthesis device, such as
spelling changes, and inserting spaces between letters that
you need to have spelled out (rather than pronounced as a
word).
In the case of control code &A, the text excludes the timestamp.
In the case of the Voice string, you can also insert any special characters that
can be used to modify the operation of the speech synthesizer (see the
documentation for the speech synthesis device).
and a remote alarm used for state 0 that includes the following text:
When the breaker trips you will see an alarm on the SCADA system, which is
formatted by your choice of Alarm Format (see chapter 1).
But because of the Remote Alarm, the following would be sent by the alarm
annunciator:
About this section This section describes how to create a new remote alarm group. In addition to
zone groups and the alarm priorities, Remote Alarm Groups provide a way to
limit remote annunciations so that particular alarms are only annunciated to
specific recipients. See Group Fillers in section 5.6.
Remote alarm group The table of Remote Alarm Groups is located under the Remote Annunciation
dialog box branch of STC Explorer as displayed in figure 8.
To create a group, right-click in the right-hand pane and choose New. The
Remote Alarm Group displays allowing you to create the group by giving it a
name, and optionally a short description.
The group you create can be used in Recipients and in Remote Alarms to
control who sees certain annunciations.
5.4 Annunciations
About this section This section describes how to specify some general characteristics of the
Remote Annunciation System.
Annunciation enabled Remote annunciations are not performed unless the Annunciation Enabled box
is checked in the Annunciation Properties dialog box. This action turns the entire
Remote Annunciation system on or off in one step
Field Description
Annunciation This is a time delay, in seconds, which the annunciator
Delay, sec, min program is to wait before sending a message to anyone
when a new alarm occurs. This gives the local
operators, if any are present, a chance to acknowledge
the alarm before anyone outside of the control room is
bothered.
About this section This section describes how to create an annunciation service.
You must create at least one Annunciation Service in order to make use of the
remote annunciation feature. An annunciation service represents a computer
system or device that your messages are sent to. Each service has a list of one
or more recipients attached to it; typically, the annunciation service is
responsible for forwarding the message to these recipients. Each such
annunciation service can be used to annunciate alarms of one or more priorities.
Annunciation service Under some circumstances you can create more than one annunciation service
dialog box that uses the same paging system or e-mail server. For example, all alarms of
one priority can be e-mailed to a different list of recipients than the alarms of
another priority, even though the same mail server would be used in both cases.
This is easily done by creating two annunciation services with the same server
information, each with its own list of recipients and its own priority selections.
Annunciation Services is located under the Remote Annunciations branch. To
access the Annunciation Service dialog box right-click on the right pane window
and select Edit or New from the drop down menu. The following dialog box
displays.
Field Description
Name Give the service a name that makes it easy to identify when you
are editing your Annunciations. The ID number is assigned by
the system automatically.
Description Add a description to clarify its purpose.
Enabled This box must be checked if this service is to be used by the
system. If you want to define a service, but not to use it for
annunciations at the present time, clear this checkbox.
Type This drop down menu provides a set of tabbed pages
corresponding to the service types available. They are:
Pager
Email
Traps
Voice
SMS
Phone
Annunciation A different tab displays on the Annunciation Service page depending on the Type
service types selected. Each tab contains the fields which define the characteristics of an
annunciation service of that type. Typically this consists of the information required
to establish a connection to the annunciation service.
Pager
This page contains the items that define a connection to your paging company’s
central computer. This uses a dial-up modem connection, and the Telelocator
Alphanumeric Protocol, TAP. It is used to send annunciations by alphanumeric
pager.
If you manually set this point’s value, it will force the program to
use only the port you select.
Email
These items define a service that will send your annunciations by e-mail, using
the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). You can control certain
characteristics of the email messages, and you must define how to connect to
your SMTP (outgoing) mail server, in order to send the messages.
Field Description
Subject You may enter text that is to appear in the “Subject:” field of
all e-mail messages sent by this service. This information is
optional, although it may be required for correct operation of
your mail server or the recipient’s mail program.
From Enter the e-mail address you would like to appear in the
“From:” field of the annunciation e-mail messages. Since the
SCADA system does not receive e-mail, it has no address of
its own. We recommend you use a valid address that can
receive any error reports that might be sent by your e-mail
server (or any replies your recipients might send). However,
SCADA does not impose any requirement for a valid From
address (although your mail server may).
Field Description
Object ID All traps sent by this service are identified as coming from
the Object Identifier you enter here. Therefore this OID
means only “a SCADA Alarm”, and not a particular SCADA
point or event. This trap object’s value (i.e. which alarm it is)
is sent as an SNMP “octet stream” (a string of bytes) that
consists of the characters of the message, as dictated by the
specified Remote Alarm.
This page in the Annunciation Service editor defines the connection to the
external device. Enter the information described in the sections that follow.
For "GSM" carriers, use the MultiTech MTCBA-G GSM modem, with a SIM
card provisioned by your carrier.
For most "CDMA" carriers, use a pre-approved version of the MultiTech
MTCBA-C CDMA modem. Contact MultiTech for details regarding which
carriers have currently pre-approved configurations which may be provisioned
over the air.
For those "CDMA" carriers without an approved CDMA modem (above), use
the MultiTech MTCMR-H HSPA modem. (This may also be used with some
"GSM" carriers). It requires a SIM card provisioned by your carrier.
In all cases the modem must be provisioned by the carrier, registered on their
network, with a service plan that supports the quantity of text messages you
expect to use.
Field Description
Initialization Typical setup of the GSM modem is done automatically by
the program, but if you find that a special piece of
initialization is needed by your modem, you can enter the
string here. It is sent to the modem after all the standard
configuration commands have been sent.
GSM
Suitable for modems compatible with MTCBA-G or
MTCMR-H, when used on GSM networks
CDMA
Suitable for MTCBA-C only. Used on CDMA networks
HSPA on CDMA
Must be used for modems compatible with MTCMR-H4,
when used on CDMA networks (only)
HSPA
Suitable for modems compatible with MTCMR-H5 (on
either GSM or CDMA networks). May also be used for
MTCMR-H4, when used on GSM networks (only)
When an alarm is to be annunciated, the Phone annunciation type builds the list
of recipients from a group of users that:
are Enabled
have a Zone match
are within their scheduled time
are configured for the specified voice code group, if any
Once the first four recipients are collected it stops building the list. These
recipient phone numbers are then automatically programmed into the device.
Then it is placed on-line, and the text of the message is sent. The device then
manages the placing of phone calls according to its internal logic. This includes
(re)calling the numbers until somebody agrees to hear the message, even after
the SCADA alarm has been acknowledged.
This entire process is repeated for each new alarm. The following list provides
recommendations you should follow to ensure the feature works correctly:
All four recipients should have the same zone and voice code groups,
in order to avoid a situation where one alarm would select particular
recipients, but the next alarm would select different ones (which could
result in re-programming the device’s number list while it was still
making the previous calls)
Since the device manages calling and re-calling on its own timetable, avoid
setting a re-annunciation interval in SCADA, which could lead to the same
message being sent to the 3010 more than once. Always use alarm voices that
include the timestamp of the alarm, so that the spoken messages will always
contain the time and date, to avoid confusion.
Field Description
Initialization If the speech synthesizer you use requires setup or
initialization commands, enter them here. Include one
complete command string, including any prefix characters
(such as “AT”).
5.6 Recipient
About this section This section describes how to create recipients for an annunciation service.
For each annunciation service, you should create one or more recipients that
can be reached by that service. Typically, each recipient has an identifying
address that receives a message if the service they belong to is annunciating an
alarm.
Services and The following table lists the address information needed for recipients on each
recipients table type of Remote Annunciation service, and seeks to clarify the differences
between the types of Remote Annunciation services.
In the case of a Voice Messenger service, only one recipient is required (or
allowed). It represents the speech synthesis device itself. It does not require any
ID, but you may insert something if you like (it will appear in ScanMon logging,
for example. For an SNMP Trap service, there also will often be only one
recipient defined.
Creating recipients The following procedure describes how to create or edit your recipients.
Step Procedure
1 Open the Annunciation Service tree in the left hand side of the STC
Explorer.
2 From the list of annunciation services that appears, select the desired
service.
Result: The right hand pane displays the list of recipients for that
service.
3 Right-click on any of these to edit it.
Result: The following Recipient dialog box displays.
Note: You can more precisely control which messages are sent to each
recipient using two features discussed later:
Field Descriptions
The following table describes the fields that define a recipient.
Field Description
Name The name should identify the person or device that will be receiving
these messages. For pager and e-mail recipients (and the single
Voice Messenger recipient), you may use any name you like.
Example recipients Carefully designing your Annunciations, Services, and Recipients will let you
ensure the right alarms are seen by the right personnel, at the right time.
The following section provides examples of how to fill in the fields on the
Recipient dialog box.
E-Mail Recipient
Notice that it is connected to an e-mail service (an SMTP server), and includes
an e-mail address.
Note: If you enter a name rather than an IP address, the SCADA host must
have a means to translate the name into its corresponding IP address (such as
WINS, DNS or a HOSTS file).
Voice Recipient
For a Voice Messenger service, the single recipient requires no Address.
All messages will be sent to the device using the connection information defined
in the annunciation service, as described on page 49, subject only to the Zone
Group, Group Filters, Schedule and the Enabled flag.
If the device has any telephone numbers programmed into it, it will make the
required phone calls.Otherise it will simply speak the annunciation message
directly.
Phone Recipient
By contrast, a recipient for an annunciation service of type Phone is shown
below. This recipient is connected to a service that represents the voice
messenger device, but does not rely on phone numbers programmed into the
device. Instead, the recipient’s phone number must appear in the Address field.
SMS Recipient
The figure below shows an example of a recipient for an SMS text messaging
service. The Address contains the cellular phone number that text messages will
be sent to.
You can create a duplicate recipient under more than one service if that person
needs to receive the annunciations destined for both services. For example, a
certain individual may need to receive the annunciations of high-priority alarms,
as well as the annunciations of low-priority alarms (where you have created
different services for the two groups concerned with these alarms). Or you may
want a person to receive annunciations both by e-mail and by pager.
5.7 Schedules
Schedule dialog box A schedule is simply a collection of time periods called ranges and is located in
the Systems branch in STC Explorer.
Step Procedure
1 Open the System tree in the left hand side of the STC Explorer.
Select Schedules.
2
Result: The right side window displays the list of Schedules.
Right-click in the right side window.
3
Result: A drop down list displays.
4 Select New.
Result: The Schedule dialog box displays.
Field Descriptions
The following table describes the fields that define a schedule.
Field Description
Name The name identifies the schedule.
Description The description clarifies the purpose of the schedule.
The ranges indicate the time ranges for the schedule. You
Ranges need to have at least one, however you can add as many as
you want.
Select from the list of available types of time ranges, such as
Type
daily, weekly, etc.
Specify the start and end times of this time range, which will
occur each day that matches the Type you have chosen,
From/To
above. If both time ranges are zero it means “all day” (it does
not mean “never”).
Choose On. No other state is meaningful to Remote
State
Annunciation.
Scheduling example Consider a typical Remote Annunciation scenario, where you would like alarm
annunciations to be performed outside of normal business hours. Assume that
this means you need them between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. on weekdays and all day
on the weekends.
Range 1 - Weekdays
Type Every Weekday
From 17:00
To 07:00
In any schedule range, all the conditions in the Range must be true for the
range to be “active”. In this case, the system evaluates:
If used by Remote Annunciations, this schedl range by itself would not cause
paging between midnight Friday night and 7:00 a.m. Saturday, because that is
not a weekday. It does allow paging in the wee hours of Monday (00:00 to
07:00) however.
Scheduling example To complete the example, you will also need a range like this:
continued
Range 2 - Weekends
Type Every Weekend
From 00:00
To 00:00
This is needed to cause paging all weekend. If the From and the To times are
both zero like this, the paging system assumes that you mean “All Day”. You
could try to use 00:00 and 23:59 to be clearer, but that would leave a one-
minute “hole”. Not a big problem, but not quite right.
About this section This section provides an overview of the remote annunciation feature.
Annunciator program When a new alarm occurs and the alarm has Remote Alarm associated with it,
the annunciator program first checks to see if annunciations are enabled. If so, it
then executes the alarm annunciation delay specified in the Annunciations table.
This is to give the operators in the control room a chance to acknowledge the
alarm. It also means that several alarms that occur at nearly the same time may
be handled in a single pass. If an operator acknowledges before this delay
expires, the annunciator program does not contact anyone.
Annunciation delay If the annunciation delay expires and alarms are still unacknowledged, the
program examines the list of annunciations for the priority of the highest-priority
alarm.
For each one that it finds, the program checks that service is configured for it
and that is has an active schedule. If so, it connects using the designated port
and the appropriate communication protocol. Alarms of that priority are then
sent to the recipients as described below.
This is repeated for each annunciation service that is handling the current alarm
priority. It is then repeated for each of the other alarm priorities that may be
configured, working from highest to lowest.
Annunciation service Each annunciation processes the alarms according to its type.
types
Paging Service
If the service is defined as a paging service:
The annunciator program connects to a modem via a serial port. It uses the
modem to place a call to the central paging computer. It logs in to the
computer using the TAP protocol.
For each alarm of the specified priority that has a Remote Alarm and is
unacknowledged the program submits a page request to each enabled
recipient that has a corresponding zone group specified. If any group filters
are specified, messages using Remote Alarms that do not match one of these
groups are omitted.
If multiple alarms are to be sent, all the required pages at this priority are sent
to all the corresponding recipients (pager IDs) before the modem is
disconnected from the paging computer.
For each enabled recipient, the annunciator program connects to the specified
e-mail server, using the SMTP protocol
SNMP Service
If the service is defined as an SNMP service:
For each unacknowledged alarm of the specified priority that has a Remote
Alarm the program generates a “trap” message (using the SNMP protocol) for
each recipient that has a corresponding zone group. The message is directed
to the recipient’s specified host name or IP address, and contains the
specified SNMP community name. If any group filters are specified, messages
using Remote Alarms that do not match one of these groups are skipped
If multiple alarms are being sent by this service, each results in a separate
trap message being sent
Voice Service
If the service is defined as a Voice service:
The program connects to the speech synthesis device via the defined serial
port
For each unacknowledged alarm of the specified priority that has Remote
Alarm the program sends the voice message text to the device, provided that
the alarm’s zone group corresponds to the zone group of the recipient device.
If any group filters are specified, messages using Remote Alarms that do not
match one of these groups are omitted
If this service is processing multiple alarms, all of the messages of this priority
will be sent to the synthesizer before disconnecting
The voice messenger device will act on the alarm messages according to how
it is programmed. It may speak the messages to a radio or PA system, or
make pre-programmed phone calls
For each unacknowledged alarm of the specified priority that has a Remote
Alarm the program first connects to the phone device via the defined serial
port and sends the alarm's voice text to the device.
For each recipient with a zone group corresponding to that of the alarm, and
which is enabled and within its scheduled times (if a schedule is specified), the
phone number is programmed into the device. If any group filters are specified
for the alarm, recipients that do not match one of these groups are omitted.
The list of recipients is limited to the first four that meet these criteria.
The device is placed online to make the phone calls. If this annunciation is
processing multiple alarms, the entire process (including programming the
recipient phone number) is repeated for each one.
SMS Service
If the service is defined as an SMS text messaging service:
For each alarm of the specified priority that has a Remote Alarm and is
unacknowledged, the program submits a text message for each enabled
recipient that has a corresponding zone group specified. If any group filters
are specified, messages using Remote Alarms that do not match one of these
groups are omitted
If multiple alarms are to be sent by this service, all the required SMS
messages of this priority are sent to all the corresponding recipients (phone
numbers) before the program disconnects from the modem
Re-Annunciation For each message that was successfully sent, the alarm is considered to have
been annunciated. Otherwise, the process is repeated periodically until the
message is successfully sent. (Since SNMP trap messages are
“connectionless”, they are always deemed to be successful.)
About this section This section describes how operators can acknowledge alarms from a remote
location when notification is received using remote annunciation.
Configuration to allow Alarms received using Remote Annunciation can be acknowledged from their
remote remote location. To support this feature, the Annunciation Service must be
acknowledgement configured with the Allow Alarm Ack flag selected (see section 5.5 Annunciation
Service) and the individual recipients must be configured with non-blank Ack
Passwords. The password is case-sensitive and must not include spaces or
other punctuation.
Annunciation service The steps to acknowledge an alarm remotely depend on the type of
type annunciation service used. Currently only the SMS type of service supports
Remote Acknowledgement.
SMS service type When an alarm is annunciated by a service that has the Allow Alarm Ack feature
enabled, the text of the message includes two short code numbers inserted at
the beginning of the message.
The first number is a 1- to 5-digit alarm identifier, and the second is a 3-digit
code. A typical annunciation message that supports remote acknowledgement.
displays as follows:
Acknowledging the To acknowledge the alarm, the recipient of the annunciation message replies to
alarm the message, sending the reply to the phone number of the SCADA system’s
SMS modem. This is the phone number that the annunciation message
originated from. Most devices include a “Reply” function that sends the message
back to that number without the recipient needing to know what the number
was.
Format for the reply The alarm identifier and code numbers are short making them easier to
of alarm remember for the recipient when replying to the alarm notification.
acknowledgement
Some devices have a “reply with text” function that includes the text of the
original message in the response. In this case, it is only necessary to insert the
password after the numbers, before the remainder of the message text. (The
message text can be deleted, since it is ignored by SCADA.)
Step Procedure
1 Enter the alarm identifier number.
2 Add a space.
3 Enter the short code number from the original alarm message.
4 Add a space.
5 Add the password.
6 Add a space.
Add message text if desired.
7 Note: Any text following the password is ignored as long as the
space is entered.
Alternatively, recipients can use their device’s “Forward” function, which then
may include the text of the message. All they need to do is insert the password
after the numbers at the start of the message (followed by a space) and then
send it to the SCADA modem. (This number can be stored in the recipient’s
“address book”, for convenience.)
6 Unattended Mode
6.1 Introduction
About this chapter This chapter describes Unattended Mode and how to use it.
When the system is in unattended mode an operator is not required. This means
alarms do not require acknowledgement, and no audible alarms sound. When
you place the system in unattended mode, you are effectively suppressing all
alarms; all alarms are produced with severity zero.
This feature is for systems that do not require an operator to be on duty at all
times. It ensures that unacknowledged alarms do not create a back log of items
to be acknowledged when the operator is back on duty.
The alarms that occur during an unattended operation are not lost. They are
logged as usual, and appear (already acknowledged) on the usual displays.
However, momentary alarms, and sustained alarms that are no longer active,
may be cleared from the alarm file if the alarm timeout period is not set long
enough.
Configuring your If your system only operates in unattended mode your system can be configured
system to be in to run that way continuously.
unattended mode
continuously See your system manager, or contact technical support at Survalent for help
with this configuration.
Control point If the operator must be able to decide when the system is in unattended mode a
special status point in the database can be created with the name SYS$,
UATTND. This point provides the operator the ability to put the system into
unattended mode, by setting its value to 1.
Alarm timeout Among the system configuration parameters is an alarm timeout period. This
represents how soon an alarm is deleted from the alarm file, after it has been
both acknowledged and cleared.
This should be made longer than the period the system is typically unattended
for, to ensure that a new operator coming on duty sees everything that
happened in their absence. However, this long timeout applies to all alarms that
occur in the system. Contact your technical support person (locally, or at
Survalent) for help with this