Defining alarm dispatch

To set up the alarm dispatch, open the “Alarm contacts settings….” in “Administration” menu.

This will open ‘Alarm contact settings’ dialog shown below.

The ‘Error types’ list on the left contains all the alarm sources defined in the system.

To select the alarm sources

Click the plus sign left from ‘Alarm codes’ to unfold the alarm tree,

Click a rectangle left from an alarm source to mark it and select alarms to distribute.

‘Low Diskspace’, all ‘S2_Node2_T’ and ‘S2_Node4_T2_A’ alarms are selected in the example below.

Note that you may select all the alarms in a certain branch by marking a rectangle on top of it. If you select an alarm at the end of a branch then all the rectangles on the path to it will be selected as well.

Click ‘New’ to define to whom, when and how the alarms selected will be distributed.

Choose period

In ‘Availability of contact’ select the week days and time range when the alarm will be distributed to a given contact or group. This gives you the opportunity to send the alarms to correct person e.g. in case of a shift work.

Select the alarm dispatcher

Select the alarm dispatcher from “Email”, “SMS”, “Voice”, “Email and SMS” or any of alarm units that are available in the system that were set up as described in 9.9.2. Please note all dispatchers will be on the list even if they are not available in the system. The administrator must set-up the dispatchers he wants to use and test if they work correctly.

Select a user or a group

If you selected “Email”, “SMS”, “Voice” or “Email and SMS” as a dispatcher, then you have to choose a user or group of users the selected alarms will be sent to. Select a position from the drop down list.

Select additional options

If you selected an alarm unit then additional options, like relay port for IP-Switch module or the indicator number for CCP terminal, will be displayed.

Alarm escalation option

If you mark “Use only if unsigned after” checkbox and choose a delay from the list right from it, then the alarm defined will be an escalated alarm.

If you use this method the system may send an alarm to a lab technician first and then, after a predefined delay, it will send an escalated alarm to a lab manager, if the alarm remains unsigned.

Saving the alarm dispatch

Click OK on the Contact dialog and sign to store the alarm dispatch defined.

Example

In the example the alarm sources selected above were distributed to Bell Laboratory via email, always and with no escalation.

There were already different alarm dispatch definitions in the example system. After signing, the list of contact entries looks as below.

There is Bell Laboratory (selected, marked yellow) added with the selected alarm sources.