How to configure an alarm

To configure an alarm, follow these steps:

Step 1: Select the sensor you want to configure an alarm for.

There are three ways to do this:
1- Select the sensor widget from the Sensor tab of your Dashboard.
2- In the main menu, on the left side, click on Locations and Equipment, select Locations and the find the desired sensor in your organization structure.
3- In the main menu, on the left side, click Settings, select Monitoring, then find and click on the sensor.

Step 2: A side window (Sensor View) will open. Select the Alarms tab.

Step 3: Select the pencil icon to enter the alarm configuration.

Step 4: Define the alarm levels and allowed notification methods

In this step you must define the alarm levels you wish to enable and their respective value. 

ViGIE alarm configuration dispose of 4 different alarm levels and, when enabled, they must not overlap between each other:

      Critical low limit < Warning low limit < OK < Warning hight limit < Critical high limit

You must also define for both critical and warning limits, which notification methods will be allowed (SMS, Email, App ViGIE or Voice call). This allows you to dictate different notification methods for different alarm levels (critical or warning). This configuration influences the communication method defined individually per each user.

Note that, if you set a Warning High limit you must necessarily set a Warning Low limit. The same does not happen with the Critical Limits, if you define a Critical High Limit, you don't necessarily have to define a Critical Low Limit and vice versa. 

Step 5: Define the time to trigger the alarm and the users to notify.

Here is the place to define after what time after registering off limit values (defined on the previous step) will the system trigger an alarm and alert the defined users. 

To define the users to be alerted you must click on the (+) button. It'll open a specific section to define which users to alert and by which communication method. 

Notes:
1. Voice call method is only available on Enterprise plans.
2. Users without their phone number validated may experience issues receiving SMS and Voice call alerts.

Step 6: Define when to escalate an alarm and who to alert in that case (Optional)

The 2nd level notifications are optional for any alarm but they offer the possibility to escalate an alarm to a different status and alert another set of users. 

If you do not wish to set this level you can simply disable it on the section switch.

When enabled you can define to:

• Send another alert when the alarm wasn't acknowledged 1 hour after the alarm was open (as per example), marking the alarm as "Not acknowledged". This is called the Acknowledge time.

Acknowledge time: Maximum time expected that the users defined above have to react to the alarm.

• Send another alert when the alarm wasn't resolved 1h30min after the alarm was open (see example), marking the alarm as "Not resolved". This is called the Resolution time.

Resolution Time: Maximum time expected to solve the problem that caused the alarm.

• Repeat the latter alert every 1h30min, reminding the users the alarm is still "Not resolved" by activating the "Recursive alarm" option (optional).
• Another set of users that will also be alerted about these status changes.

To define another set of users to be alerted you must click on the (+) button. It'll open a specific section to define which users to alert and by which communication method. 

A few considerations:
- When activating the 2nd level notifications, only the "Not acknowledged" and "Not resolved" timers are mandatory to fill. Recursion is always optional.
- Both "Not acknowledged" and "Not resolved" timers refer to the time after the alarm was triggered.
- "Not acknowledged" time must be lower than the "Not resolved" time as the alerts should be subsequential.
- Note that users defined on the "Notify" after section are here displayed but cannot be changed, since they are automatically set to be alerted.
- At the end of the article you can find a couple of schemas explaining all these timers and options.

Step 7: Define additional alerts 

Next, you have the option to choose from the following additional alerts:

• Severity change alert: Sends an alert when the values measured by the sensor moves from the critical range to the warning range or vice versa (not available for status alarms).
• Alarm validation alert: Informs the users being notified of this alarm when one user acknowledges it.
• Automatic recovery alert: Sends an alert when the values measured by the sensor return to levels within the range defined as appropriate.

Step 8: Don't forget to Save

Click Save at the bottom of the page to register all the defined configurations.

Exemple of alarms configuration:

Alarm generation flow