About Sorting Primary Events

When you create a Primary Event for a unit, an event number is created and stored in the Event Number field, which is included in the Event ID. The value in the Event Number field corresponds to the order in which the record was created for that particular unit for that year, which is determined based on the value in the Event Start Date field. So, for example, if the record is the third record that you have created for a unit for 2016, the event number will be 3 (three).

In the following image, the formatted values from the Event Number field in both Primary Events are highlighted.

Sorting Primary Events

Note: If the value in the Event Number field is fewer that four digits, zeros will be added in front of the value so that the formatted event number will be four digits.

Throughout the year, however, Primary Events may be created in an order that does not reflect the order in which the events occurred. For example, an event might occur on January 12, 2016, but you might not create the record to capture the event data until January 15, 2016. When events are not recorded immediately after they occur, the values in the Event Number field in the Primary Events may get out of order.

Event Occurs	Record is Created	Event Number Assigned
January 1, 2016	January 1, 2016	1
January 2, 2016	January 2, 2016	2
January 3, 2016	January 6, 2016	4
January 4, 2016	January 4, 2016	3

In this example, one event occurred each day, beginning January 1 and ending January 4. On January 1 and January 2, a record was created immediately after the event occurred. On January 3, however, a record was not created immediately after the event occurred. Another event occurred on January 4, and the data was immediately entered into a record. It was not until January 6 that a record was created to record the event from January 3.

In other words, the order in which the records were created does not reflect the order in which the events occurred. GE Digital APM automatically sorts the events in a chronological order so that they reflect the event order based on start date rather than creation date.