Alarm and event management - Metasys - LIT-12011832 - General System Information - Metasys System - 13.0.50

Metasys System Configuration Guide

Product
Building Automation Systems > Building Automation Systems > Metasys System
Document type
Configuration Guide
Document number
LIT-12011832
Version
13.0.50
Revision date
2024-12-02
Product status
Active

You can view and take action on alarms that occur in the Metasys system with the Alarm Manager and the Alarm Monitor in Metasys UI.

Alarm Manager, Alarm Monitor, and the icon to access Alarm Manager from the Alarm Notification Bar are available in Metasys UI for only servers. For Metasys UI on SNx engines, use System Activity to view and manage alarm occurrences. On engines, the Alarm Notification Bar provides an icon to access System Activity. You can also access System Activity through the User menu.

The Alarm Manager and Alarm Monitor display all alarms pending acknowledgment and discarding. You can access the Alarm Manager when you are logged on to Metasys UI, and access the Alarm Monitor when you are not logged on to the Metasys UI. You can access both the Alarm Manager and the Alarm Monitor on computer and tablet platforms. To manage alarms on smartphone platforms, you can access the Metasys UI Alarms list. The Alarms list displays alarms that have occurred for points mapped and unmapped to Metasys UI equipment. You can see the top 100 alarms in the Alarms list. The listed alarms include the latest occurrences, and alarms that were acknowledged, as indicated by a green tick mark.

You can also view and manage all audits and alarms that are forwarded from an engine to the Site Director directly in Metasys UI with System Activity. The data is presented in the form of a timeline in System Activity. Every audit and alarm instance appears in chronological order in System Activity, including alarms that do not require acknowledgment. The alarms are not rolled up, as is the case in Alarm Manager. The feature helps you understand changes that have occurred in the Metasys system over a period of time, whereby you can display audits and alarms as far back as the data set.

The Equipment Activity widget in the Metasys UI also displays alarms and user changes made during a time range of up to one year within the last five years for a selected piece of equipment.

The Alarm Notification Bar in the Metasys UI notifies you when one or more alarms are pending your acknowledgment. The Alarm Notification Bar shows the total number of alarms pending your acknowledgment and provides details and actions for the current top alarm without having to open System Activity or Alarm Manager. The top alarm is the newest or most recent, highest priority alarm that requires acknowledgment, has not yet been acknowledged, and for which you have permission to acknowledge.

Figure 1. Alarm Notification Bar

The alarm and event feature provides event management for the system. You can configure the routing of event messages to destinations such as the server for permanent storage. The SMP UI features a pop-up alarms window, which alerts you to potential problems whenever you are logged in to the system; and an event viewer, which provides for greater analysis or a history of alarms and events in the system.

Note: To ensure proper pop-up alarm functionality, always use the Desktop mode for Windows 10.

You can configure alarms and events with the Metasys system, using either a Metasys alarm extension or a BACnet alarm (intrinsic or algorithmic). Metasys alarm extensions generally provide more feature capability and ease of setup, whereas the BACnet alarms provide better interoperability with other BACnet systems.

Note: An event is a notification of a status change in the Metasys system. An alarm occurs when a value defined in an engine goes outside of a user-defined range, changes to a user-defined contact condition, or fails to respond to a command within a user-specified time. When an alarm occurs, an event is generated. Events can be generated by any Metasys platform. For example, if a network engine detects that a network node is offline, it can generate an event. If an error occurs in the server platform, an event can also be generated. Once an event is generated, it is stored in an Event Repository file located on the device that generated the event. You can retrieve and examine events stored in the Event Repository.