In addition to alarm limits, you can select an alarm priority for your database blocks. This priority ranges from INFO, LOLO, LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, HIHI, to CRITICAL. The priority indicates the importance of a block's alarms. Typically, you assign the priority of your most critical blocks to CRITICAL. This distinguishes the highest priority alarms from less-critical ones. You can also filter your alarms based on their priority so that operators see only the alarms you want displayed, as the following section explains.
For more enhanced alarm prioritization, consider using the Analog Alarm block. This block lets you assign one priority to each alarm type that the block generates instead of one priority for all alarms. Consequently, you can easily filter out specific alarms coming from the block. For more information on the Analog Alarm block, refer to the iFIX Database Reference.
Filtering Alarms
SCADA servers also have an alarm priority that acts as a filter, as the following table describes.
|
If a block's alarm priority is... |
Then iFIX... |
|
More severe or equal to the SCADA server's alarm priority |
Distributes the alarm to the enabled alarm destinations. |
|
Less severe than the SCADA server's alarm priority |
Filters out the alarm and does not distribute it to the enabled alarm destinations. |
Filtering Alarms by Alarm Area
Alarm areas also act as a filter for alarms and messages. For example, using the configuration in the Sample Alarm Areas figure, STATION3 only receives alarms and messages from alarm area Ovens. iFIX filters out the alarms and messages from all other alarm areas.
To allow greater flexibility, you can also apply both filters simultaneously, as the following figure shows. This figure filters out the CRITICAL, HIHI, and HIGH alarms to the alarm service.
Using the Alarm Priority and Alarm Area Filters
