Concepts

Tasks

Settings

Setting up Alarm Types and Notification Ranking

An alarm type describes the severity of the state of an indicator and ranks it numerically relative to the other states.

APM comes with three alarm types already defined in the Install database (Warning, Alarm, and Critical). You can edit the existing alarm types and add new ones for your organization.

The minimum alarm notification ranking allows you to determine whether or not indicator alarms are displayed on parent assets. APM calculates the notification ranking for each alarm by multiplying the alarm type’s ranking with the asset’s prioritization ranking. For more information, see Alarm Notification.

By default, a new alarm type uses the acknowledgment methods allowed at the site level. You can fine-tune methods for individual alarm types. For example, you can turn off “Monitoring”, even when it is allowed in the site options. However, the “Monitoring” option will not be available on the alarm type if it is not enabled for the site.

In the process of setting up an alarm type, you can set failure options. When acknowledging an alarm includes creating a failure record, you can select a related failure mode. By default, the failure mode’s PF interval determines the PF interval on the new failure record. Alarm type options provide alternatives for calculating the failure record’s PF interval. You can select one of the following:

•	The indicator’s frequency is subtracted from the failure mode’s PF interval

•	You can enter a duration to be subtracted from the failure mode’s PF interval

•	You can enter a duration to be used as the failure’s PF interval

You can also use the PF interval to calculate the requested completion date on the work document created from an acknowledgment.

This topic explains how:

•	To Set up Alarm Types

•	To Set the Minimum Notification Ranking for Indicators

To Set up Alarm Types

1.	From the Site window, select the Inspection Management view, the Settings tab, and then the Indicators tab. Select the Indicator Settings node in the tree.

Tip: You can also click the Administration menu, Inspection Management Settings, and then Indicator Management. The Indicator Settings window appears.

2.	Select the Alarm Types tab. This tab shows a list of the existing alarm types.

3.	Click New. The Alarm Type dialog appears.

4.	Enter the following settings:

Setting Name

Description

Alarm name

The name of the indicator alarm. You can enter up to 50 characters to describe the alarm.

Icon	If you wish, you can change the icon used for the alarm type. This is the icon that will appear in the site’s Indicators view when an asset has an indicator with an alarm turned on. To change the icon, click Change Icon. Select the new icon and click OK.

5.	On the Alarm Ranking tab, enter a number that represents the severity of this alarm in relation to the other alarm types. Use smaller numbers for less severe alarms and larger numbers for more severe alarms.

APM multiplies the ranking of an indicator alarm by an asset’s consequence priority ranking number to calculate the alarm notification ranking. The alarm notification ranking determines whether or not the alarm is shown on parent assets in the indicator monitoring panel.

6.	Select the Acknowledgments tab:

7.	Use these settings to control the acknowledgment methods available for alarms of this type. The site’s acknowledgment policies must also support the methods you select here.

8.	Select the PF Interval tab.

9.	Select the appropriate option for setting the PF interval in the failure record created from an alarm acknowledgment:

Setting Name

Description

PF Interval options

Controls how the failure record’s PF interval is calculated. Options are: • Use the failure mode’s PF interval • Use the failure mode’s PF interval less the indicator’s frequency • Use the failure mode’s PF interval less the duration entered below • Do not use the failure mode’s PF interval. Use the duration entered below only

PF interval

Duration and unit of measure used with the third and fourth options for determining the failure records PF interval.

Note: The alarm type’s rule for setting the failure’s PF interval can be overridden on the indicator state, where a PF interval can be entered directly. For more information, see Adding States and Alarms to an Indicator or Template.

10.	To automatically calculate the requested completion date on work documents created from alarm acknowledgments for this state, select Calculate the requested completion date based on the PF interval.

11.	Select the Charts tab and provide the following information in the Chart banding with numeric indicators section and the Chart banding with descriptive indicators sections:

Setting Name

Description

Band or range color

Select a band or range color for the chart or gauge. You can use the system/theme default or select a specific color.

12.	Select the Gauge tab and provide the following information:

Setting Name

Description

Band or range color

Select a band or range color for the chart or gauge. You can use the system/theme default or select a specific color.

Indicator color

Select the color for the indicator on the gauge. You can choose from the system/theme default or a specific color.

Note: In table configurations where you want to use this feature, you must set the appearance properties for the grid. Select the Formatting tab, and select the join path to the alarm type’s font and color control attribute.

13.	On the Mobile Inspections tab, you can select background colors to highlight the alarm in mobile inspections.

14.	Click OK to save the alarm type and close the dialog.

To Set the Minimum Notification Ranking for Indicators

1.	Select the Alarm Types tab.

2.	Click Edit to modify the site settings. The Edit button is replaced by the Save button.

3.	Set the minimum notification ranking:

Setting Name

Description

Minimum alarm notification ranking

You can have parent assets display indicator alarms in the indicator monitoring panel. To prevent users from being inundated with alarm displays, you can control how high the alarms are pushed up the physical hierarchy. To do this, you will need to: • Enter alarm types for the indicator states (for example, Normal, Early Warning, and Critical). The alarm type describes the severity of the state of an indicator, and ranks it numerically relative to the other states. • Enter numeric rankings for your asset consequence priorities • Enter a minimum alarm notification ranking To calculate the alarm notification ranking, APM multiplies the alarm type ranking by the asset’s consequence priority ranking. Whenever this ranking is equal to or higher than the minimum alarm notification ranking, APM displays the alarm on the parent asset. For example, you might have: • Alarm Types: Early Warning (1), Alarm (5), and Critical (10) • Asset Consequence Priorities: Normal (1) and Critical (5) • Minimum Alarm Notification Ranking: (5) An Early Warning on a Normal asset (alarm notification: 1 x 1 = 1) is not be displayed on the parent asset, or on any other asset that is higher in the hierarchy. However, for an Early Warning on a Critical asset (alarm notification: 1 x 5 = 5) APM looks at the priority ranking of the parent asset and calculates the alarm notification ranking for that asset. If the parent asset is also a critical asset, APM displays the alarm on the parent asset, and then calculates the alarm notification ranking for its parent in the hierarchy. When APM reaches a parent asset with an alarm notification ranking below the minimum ranking, the alarm is not be pushed any higher in the hierarchy. To prevent alarms from being displayed in the top assets in the physical hierarchy, you should assign consequence priorities with low numeric rankings to those assets.

4.	Click Save.