Alarm Classes

Info

Alarm groups and alarm classes serve the logical grouping of alarms and allow a prioritization.
Alarms classes combine alarms to priority levels for an according reaction depending on the severity of the message.
A name, a number, a color, a function and a status variable can be assigned to each group or class.

The alarm classes have the following tasks:

Alarm priorization	for the picture alarming
Color control	Determination of the alarm color in the Alarm Information List and for the picture alarm guidance
Filter criterion	In the alarm list and the Chronologic Event List
Function call	Activation e.g. of the acoustic alarming

There are three ways of creating an alarm class:

Mouse click on the according icon in the tool bar
Command Alarm class new in the context menu
Click button Paste

Configuration and management of the alarm classes is done via the respective properties.

Configurable properties of an alarm class are:

Name	Name of the alarm class (Display in filter condition of AIL and CEL)
Color	Assignment of the alarm class color. Attention: Color is used for long description and status text in the AIL and picture alarming Button '`...`' opens palette for color selection.
Nr.	Number of the variable, as specified by the system.
Description	Description of the alarm class. Only for informative purposes.
Status variable	Status variable of the alarm group / alarm class. This bit variable indicates whether the class is active or whether the alarms of this class are ignored at the moment. You can only select binary variables. Group active (=1) / Group inactive (=0) The status of this group is logged in the Chronological event list (CEL). Button '`...`' opens the dialog for variable selection.
Function	Function of the alarm class. Selection of a user-defined function which on activation of the alarm group is to be executed by an alarm status, e.g. priority-based setting of the PIO8 outputs for external alarming devices (horn, gong, running lights, etc.) This function is executed automatically if an alarm of this class occurs. Button '`...`' opens the dialog for function selection.

If an alarm class is to be deleted, a query message is displayed.

If the query is confirmed, the alarm class is deleted. All linked process variables lose their class assignment.