Distribute alarms and events

After you configure object instances for alarm detection, deploy the instances and put them On scan. The instances begin checking for alarm conditions.

When an alarm is detected, or an event occurs, a notification is reported to its alarm and event distributor, which is running on the same AppEngine.

These alarm and event distributors include:

• Area objects: Area objects report detected alarms through the Area, which distributes them to alarm and event clients.

• WinPlatform objects: Report their own alarms and events.

• AppEngine objects: Report their own alarms and events.

• Device Integration objects: Report their own alarms and events

The Area object plays a key role in alarm and event distribution. All objects belong to an Area. Areas can contain sub-Areas. Alarm and event clients are configured to subscribe to a set of Areas.

Areas provide a key organizational role in grouping alarm information and assigning it to users who use alarm and event clients to monitor their Areas of responsibility.

WinPlatforms, AppEngines and Device Integration objects do not report their alarms and events to Area objects even though they belong to Areas. This allows alarm clients to receive alarm notifications without any dependencies on Area objects. For example, a deployed and running WinPlatform can report alarms even though its Area is not deployed and running.

Alarm-event distributor objects maintain a list of all currently active alarms and inactive but unacknowledged alarms. They do not maintain a list of events, which are routed to clients that are currently subscribed at the time of the event.

You can configure a WinPlatform to act as an InTouch Alarm Provider in the runtime environment.

The WinPlatform sends an alarm through the InTouch Distributed Alarm System to InTouch clients when the WinPlatform loses communication with an Area that it subscribes to. This condition typically occurs during a network outage with computers hosting those Areas.

In a network outage, the WinPlatform InTouch Alarm Provider sends an alarm for each disconnected Area that it subscribes to, including all of its alarm distribution hierarchy. Each of these alarms is a high priority alarm that contains the name of the Area to which communication is lost. These communication problem alarms must be acknowledged.

Although they still appear in the historical record, any current alarms from the disconnected Area drop from the InTouch client’s summary list. They can no longer be acknowledged.

When communication to the disconnected Areas is restored, any unacknowledged alarms generated in those Areas are sent to the alarm client.