How to create an alarm

An alarm in Properate monitors a measurement and creates an incident when something is wrong. The alarm decides what gets detected; who gets notified is decided by an alert configuration. Those are two different things, and they live on two different pages in the menu.

Alarms are created under Incidents > Alarm configuration.

You need write access to create alarms. With read access the New button is greyed out.

How to create an alarm

• Open the building you want to work on. See How to switch building and search for a building.

• Go to Incidents > Alarm configuration in the sidebar.

• Click New in the top right.

• Fill in Name. This is the name the incident gets when the alarm fires, so make it recognizable to whoever gets woken by it.

• Fill in Instruction — what the person receiving the incident should do. The field is optional, but it's often the difference between an incident that gets handled and one that sits there.

• Select Type. Until you have, the column beside it says Select type to see options. See How to choose the right alarm type.

• Fill in the fields for the type you chose. For most types that means:

• Select the timeseries the alarm should monitor. Use Category to filter down to the right one.

• Set Direction and Threshold — or Difference, if the type compares two series.

• Set Delayed response: how long the condition has to last before the alarm fires. The options range from Latest measurement to 48 hours.

• Click Next.

• Set the Active schedule — when the alarm should be active. Choose All day, or add periods with day(s) and a start and end time.

• Under Holidays, choose whether the alarm should be Inactive on holidays.

• Choose the Level: Critical, Error, Warning or Info. Tick Requires receipt if the incident has to be acknowledged.

• Click Save.

Note: With no active periods the alarm is disabled. No incidents are created and no notifications are sent — the message The alarm is disabled sits at the top of the page until you add an active period. This is the most common reason a newly created alarm never fires.

How to connect the alarm to notifications

The alarm creates incidents, but tells nobody until it is part of an alert configuration. In the Notification section you choose one of:

• Subscribe via an existing alert configuration — recommended, so notification follows rules that are already set up

• Subscribe via a new alert configuration

• Send directly to — a phone number or email address, without going through a group

Note: You can't put the alarm into an alert configuration before it has been saved. Until then it says Create the alarm before adding it to an alert configuration.

See How to create an alert configuration.

What's the difference between the active schedule and the notification schedule?

Two schedules, doing different things:

• The alarm's Active schedule decides when the alarm can create and resolve incidents at all.

• Group rules in the alert configuration decide when who gets notified about the incidents that arise.

If the alarm is inactive at night, no incident arises at night — regardless of who is listed as responsible. If you want incidents recorded around the clock but notifications only during the day, set All day on the alarm and control the times in the alert configuration instead.

Frequently asked questions

My alarm fires constantly. What do I do?

Increase the Delayed response. A value hovering around the threshold fires repeatedly on Latest measurement, but settles down with 15 or 30 minutes. Failing that, the threshold is set too close to normal operation.

My alarm never fires. What do I check?

Check in this order: does the alarm have an active period, is the timeseries the right one, and are the threshold and direction set the way you think. If the alarm fires but nobody hears about it, the fault is in the alert configuration, not the alarm.

Can I delete an alarm?

Yes. Open the alarm, choose Delete and confirm Yes, delete the alarm.

Why can't I change the settings on an alarm?

If the alarm is a locked type, it comes from an external system: This alarm type comes from an external system. Alarm settings can't be changed. You can still control the schedule from Properate.

Tip!

Write Instruction as though it will be read by someone standing in the building at two in the morning who doesn't know the installation. The name and level say something is wrong; the instruction is the only field that says what they should do about it.