One of the most powerful features that the Alarm Summary object provides is the ability to filter alarms. By filtering alarms, you can route alarms to specific Alarm Summary objects, eliminate INFO, LOLO, and LOW priority alarms, or insignificant alarms, and focus the operator's attention to the most severe or important alarms.
For example, you could filter on all HIGH, HIHI, and CRITICAL priority alarms or route alarms from a specific alarm area to one Alarm Summary object. Using OLE Automation, you can also build a display to temporarily change the Alarm Summary filters at run-time based on specific process conditions. For more information on adjusting the Alarm Summary filters, refer to the Writing Scripts manual.
In order for the Alarm Summary object to filter alarms, you must create a filter condition. This condition defines the alarms you want to display. After you create the condition, the Alarm Summary object displays the alarms that match the selected criteria.
Creating Filters
You can create a filter condition by selecting a column from the object's spreadsheet that you want to filter on, a value, and a relational or comparison operator. The exact type of operator depends on the selected column. The following table lists the relational and comparison operators you can select.
|
Relational Operators |
Comparison Operators |
|
Equal to |
Containing, = |
|
Not equal to |
Not Containing, < > |
|
Greater than |
Containing only, > |
|
Less than |
In, < |
|
Greater than or equal to |
NotIn, > = |
|
Less than or equal to |
In, < = |
For example, suppose you want to display all the alarms with an alarm priority of HIGH.
To display all alarms with an alarm
priority of HIGH:
- Display the Filter tab and select the priority column.
- Select the relational operator Equal to.
- Select the value HIGH.
When you do this, the Alarm Summary object adds the following condition to the bottom of the Filter tab:
Priority = "HIGH"
Using Comparison Operators
Comparison operators let you determine if an alarm is from a specific alarm area or SCADA server. The following table lists several sample filters.
|
The filter... |
Displays alarms... |
|
Area In "LA-Line1" |
From the alarm area LA-Line1. |
|
Area NotIn "LA-Line1" |
From any alarm area except LA-Line1. |
|
Node In "MIXER1" |
From the SCADA server MIXER1. |
|
Node NotIn "MIXER1" |
From any SCADA server except MIXER1. |
You can also use comparison operators to determine if the alarm contains specific text in its description column. For example, the following filter displays alarms from any block with the text "Tank" in its Description field:
Description Containing "Tank"
This includes descriptions such as:
- Oil Tank
- Tank 5
- Green Tank with Valve
The Containing Only operator, on the other hand, finds an exact match. For example, if you want to only display alarms from Pump5, you would use the following filter:
Description ContainingOnly "Pump5"
Creating Multiple Filters
You can combine multiple filter conditions together. As you create each condition, the Alarm Summary object automatically places the boolean operator AND before the new filter condition and appends the new condition to the existing one.
If you want to change the boolean operator, you can replace it with either the OR operator or the NOT operator.
NOTE: The Alarm Summary object supports up to nine filter conditions.
