Sorting and Filtering Alarms

In addition to providing you with List Options buttons (see: Alarm Lists) that enable you to choose the category of alarms that are displayed on-screen, the alarms list may also be filtered and sorted to make certain events within the displayed list easier to find. This is especially convenient when the alarms list being displayed contains a large number of entries.

There are 3 alarm filtering tools and 1 sorting list as identified below:

Note that whenever any of the 3 filtering tools is active, it will be highlighted, as shown in the following image.  The sorting list is never highlighted.

 

From left to right, the tools are:

Date/Time or Priority Sort List

The Date/Time or Priority sort list (initially set to "Sort List by Priority" by default) enables you to sort the currently displayed (and filtered) alarms list by date and time, or by priority, with the most recent or most urgent alarms (respectively) displayed at the top of the list.

Priorities Filter

The Priorities drop-down list (initially set to "Show All Priorities") enables you to filter the currently displayed alarms list to show alarms of a given priority. The default action of this filter is to show those alarms having the selected priority or higher.  If you would like to restrict the list even further to only alarms with exactly the selected priority, select the Single Priority checkbox.

The available selections in the Priorities drop-down list include:

•    0 – Event: When selected, only events will be displayed in the alarm list.

•    1 – Critical: When selected, only critical alarms will be displayed in the alarm list.

•    2 – High: When selected, both high and critical alarms will be displayed in the alarm list.

•    3 – Warning: When selected, warning, high, and critical alarms will be displayed in the alarm list.

•    4 – Notice: When selected, notice, warning, high, and critical alarms will be displayed in the alarm list.

 Name Filter

The Name Filter allows you to restrict the display to only those alarms whose names match the pattern you provide.  The pattern may include wildcards to extend the selection to match similar names.  Two wildcards are available: an asterisk (*) will match one or more characters starting at that position, while a question mark (?) will match any single character in exactly that position.

For example:

            PUMP4   matches only the alarm named PUMP4

            PUMP*   would match PUMP4, PUMP5,  PUMPSTATUS9,  PUMP3ALARM, etc…

            PUMP?   would match PUMP4 and PUMP5.

The wildcards may be placed anywhere within the name filtering pattern.

Alarms that are built into tags such as the high and low alarms on the analog status tag, can be filtered for by specifying the tag name. 

The button,  clears the name filter by replacing it with a single asterisk wildcard. In effect, this means that no filter is applied.

The Filter by Selected List Item button  creates a new filter based on the currently selected alarm.  This can be useful to view the history of only a specific alarm. The filter based on the selection will be shown in the name filtering box, where you may edit it to broaden, narrow or change the search.

 

These priorities are tied to the alarm priority tags in your system. Information on alarm priority tags is provided in Alarm Priority Tags.

Areas Filter

The Areas drop-down list (initially set to "Show All Areas" by default) enables you to filter the currently displayed alarms list to show alarms from a specific area, such as a page or station (i.e. alarm tags whose Area property matches the list selection will be displayed). The available selections in the Areas drop-down list include:

•    Show All Areas: (Default) displays all alarm tags, regardless as to their Area property configuration.

•    Show All Non-System Areas: Displays all alarm tags whose Area property is not set to "System".

•    Alarm Dialer: Displays all alarm tags whose Area property is set to "Alarm Dialer".

•    Default: Displays all alarm tags whose Area property is set to "Default".

•    Modem: Displays all alarm tags whose Area property is set to "Modem".

•    Operator Log: Displays all alarm tags whose Area property is set to "Operator Log".

•    Report: Displays all alarm tags whose Area property is set to "Report".

•    Security: Displays all alarm tags whose Area property is set to "Security".

•    System: Displays all alarm tags whose Area property is set to "System".