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Objects for Alarm Management

Alarm Configuration

This is the required base object of alarm management. When you insert the object below an application, it is automatically named Alarm Configuration. Below that, objects for the Error, Warning, and Info alarm classes are also inserted automatically, as well as for alarm storage (AlarmStorage). You can adapt this structure. You can remove objects and insert other alarm objects.

Alarm Class

In this object, general alarm criteria are combined into a class. Then the configured classes are available for selection in the editor of the alarm groups in the Class column as a "basic configuration" of an alarm. You can insert any number of alarm classes in the alarm configuration. The Error, Warning, and Info classes are automatically inserted first with the Alarm Configuration object.

Examples of alarm criteria:

  • Acknowledgement method

    How the user acknowledges and/or confirms the alarms for this alarm class

  • Notification Actions

    What happens automatically in case of certain alarm states

  • Display options for the alarm table or the alarm banner 

    How the alarms are visualized

Alarm Group

In this object, alarms are created specifically (alarm definition) and combined as a group. Therefore, each alarm is unique. The alarms of a group can have a shared deactivation variable and shared archiving parameters. You can insert any number of alarm groups in the alarm configuration. You can use folder objects to organize alarm groups hierarchically. A text list with the same name is created with each alarm group. There you can localize the alarm messages.

Alarm Group Template

In this object, alarms (alarm definitions) are created for a specific type and combined as a group.

The following applies to this object:

  • Each alarm is identifiable as unique.

  • The alarms of a group can have a shared deactivation variable and shared archiving parameters.

  • A text list with the same name is created with each alarm group template. There you can localize the alarm messages.

  • It is recommended that you select the location where the type object is stored so that the type and the respective alarm group template are located in parallel.

Alarm Storage

The object is possible only one time per application. The archiving of alarms is configured in this object.

Remote Alarms

The object is possible only one time per application. The remote alarm configurations with the remote alarm groups and classes are managed in this object. The information is prepared by the data sources. In the case of this "distributed alarm management", the observation, alarm triggering, and execution of follow-up actions on remote PLCs are performed here.

With this functionality, it is possible centrally display alarms from multiple remote PLCs in one alarm table in one HMI. The alarms are archived in the remote PLCs as well as in the HMI. Remote alarms are possible only in an HMI controller.