Event Settings

This section describes IWS's logging and event-retrieval features. An event can be any tag change, generating reports or recipes, opening and closing screens, logging onto and logging off the security system, and so forth. IWS saves all of these events in a log file, which can be retrieved by the Alarm/Event Control object.

Event log files are stored in the project's \Alarm folder (the same folder where the project saves alarm history files). The event log file names must conform to the evYYMMDD.evt format, where:

YY represents the last two digits of the year in which the event log file was generated
MM represents the month in which the event log file was generated
DD represents the day on which the event log file was generated

For example, a log file for May 7, 2003 would be ev030507.evt.

The event files ( *.evt ) are ASCII text files created according to the following format:

P1|P2|P3|P4|P5|P6|P7|P8|P9|P10
P1|P2|P3|P4|P5|P6|P7|P8|P9|P10
.
.
.
P1|P2|P3|P4|P5|P6|P7|P8|P9|P10

where:

P1 = File version (Current 1 )
P2 = Event Type
1. SECURITY SYSTEM
2. DISPLAY
3. RECIPE
4. REPORT
5. CUSTOM MESSAGES
6. SYSTEM WARNING
7. LOG TAGS
P3 = Event Time (DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM:SS.SSS)
P4 = Tag Name
P5 = Tag Value
P6 = Source (Not used)
P7 = User Name
P8 = User Full Name
P9 = Event Message
P10 = Station

Configuring the Events Settings

Use the steps to configure the event-retrieval feature:

Select the Global tab.
Double-click the Event Logger icon to open the Event Settings dialog:
Figure 1. Event Settings dialog
Configure the parameters on the Event Settings dialog as follows:
- Enable event logger checkbox: Click (check) this box to enable event-logging.
- Disable text box: Type a tag into this field. If the tag value is other than 0 (false), then the project automatically disables the Event Logger during runtime.
- Event Database button: Click to open the Database Configuration dialog, in which you can enter settings that will enable the project to save event history data to a database.
- Settings:
  - Security System checkbox: Click (check) this box to include security system events in the historic event file. The project logs the following security system events:
    - Log On / Log Off users
    - User created/removed using the CreateUser() or RemoveUser() functions
    - User blocked/unblocked using the BlockUser() or UnblockUser() functions
    - User blocked by the security system after several attempts to enter an invalid password
    - Password expired
    - Password modified
    - Invalid Log On attempt
  - Display checkbox: Click (check) this box to include screen Open and Close events in the historical event file.
  - Recipe checkbox: Click (check) this box to include recipe load, save, init, and delete events in the historical event file.
  - Report checkbox: Click (check) this box to include reports saved to disk or send to printer events in the historical event file.
  - Custom Messages checkbox: Click (check) this box to include events generated by the SendEvent(strEvent) function in the historical event file.
  - System Warning checkbox: Click (check) this box to include general system warnings (such as Division by zero, Attempted to access invalid array index, and so forth) in the historical event file. The project logs the following system warning events:
    - Errors that occur when sending alarms by email
    - Tag was blocked/unblocked
    - Division by zero
    - Connection/Disconnection of the remote security system
- Tags checkbox: Click (check) this box to enable and log tag changes in the historical event file. Configure the tags you want to log in the Tags table as follows:
  - Tag Name column: Type the name of the tag you want to log in the event file.
  - Dead Band column: Type a value to filter acceptable changes against.
    For example, if you specify a Dead Band value = 5 for a tag value = 50 and the tag value changes to 52, the system will not register this variation in the event log file, because the variation is less than 5. However, if the tag value change is equal to or greater than 5, the system will save the new value to the history file.
  - Message column: Type a string (message) related to this tag change. You can specify tags in messages using the {tag name} syntax.
  The Tags parameter can be useful if you want to generate a log file of events that are not necessarily alarm conditions (for example, Motor On, Motor Off, and so forth).