Understand the Contacts plug-in

In PI System Explorer, the Contacts plug-in provides you with contact options for individual users and groups.

Contacts plug-in versions

PI System Explorer works with different versions of the Contacts plug-in.

• To work with the version that is compatible with the new version of notifications that was released in 2016 R2, execute the 64-bit version of PI System Explorer.

• To work with the legacy version that is compatible with legacy notifications, execute the 32-bit version of PI System Explorer. Note that if legacy notifications is not installed, the new version of the Contacts plug-in will load. For more information on PI System Explorer versions, see PI System Explorer.

Subscriber configuration

You can configure subscribers from these types of contacts:

• Delivery endpoints

  A delivery endpoint is an entity to which notifications can be sent, and is typically an individual user or an application.

• Groups

  A group contact is an unordered collection of delivery endpoints, other groups or escalation teams. Notification messages are sent to all members of the group simultaneously.

  Note: Group contacts that you create in PI System Explorer are not the same as Active Directory (AD) groups.

• Escalation teams

  An escalation team is an ordered collection of delivery endpoints or groups.

Notification messages are sent immediately to the first contact on the list. If the event frame matching the notification rule is not acknowledged or closed within a specified time, notification messages are sent sequentially to the remaining members of the escalation team until the event frame is acknowledged or closed.

The escalation period defines the amount of time to elapse before a notification is sent to the next contact on the list.

Search for contacts

Click the icon to open the Search Contacts window in the Contacts pane on the top left of the screen. Currently available search criteria are: Name, Description, Department and Email.

Note: You must be running the 2018 or later version of PI AF server to use email as search criterion. Note that search by email address only works for contacts in Active Directory but does not find contacts created manually.