Create Alarm & Event Queries

The Report Studio is still under development and has not officially been released. Be warned that code may change such that reports you create with this pre-release trial version might need to be updated in order to continue working after your next VTScada update.

Until the official release, documentation for the Report Studio will open in response to the F1 key but will not be shown in the menu system. To view a table of contents for the complete chapter, navigate to Report Building (Report Studio)

If your query involves more than one tag or more than one calculation, additional columns will be created as required when the report runs, to a limit of 30 columns. You do not need to create a separate column for every tag and every calculation.

To report on alarms and events, start by creating a Data Set in the Data Set Manager.

Create a Data Set

In the Data Set Manager, click [ + ] , select the correct Type from the drop list and give your Data Set a name. You may cultivate a selection of Data Sets in a single report configuration so you should opt for a descriptive name.

Click OK and the Data Set Properties will open on the right-hand side.

If you navigate away and want to get back to this properties panel, click on the Data Set in the manager.

Alarm and Event Data Set Properties

Delete the Data Set

The trash can located in the header of a Data Set Properties panel will delete the Data Set. If you delete a Data Set that is being used by components or other Data Sets, they will stop working until you revisit their properties and select a suitable replacement.

Before deleting, double check the header: Are you deleting a Data Set? Or a Data Cell?

Name

The name of your Data Set is displayed in this field. To change the name, edit the field.

Database

By default, all alarm and event databases will be queried (<< All>>). Select one or more to restrict the query. For example, you should choose the System Event DB if you want a report that shows only operator actions.

Available Data Columns

The properties that are listed as available data columns are the same as their counterparts on the Alarm Page. Each alarm or event property selected represents one additional column associated with the selected table cell in a report. You must include at least one column, Description is enabled by default.

Note that columns that are useful for events might not be useful for alarms and vice versa.

• Time occurred - The timestamp recorded for the entry.
• Priority - The priority level of the alarm. The priority level for events is, "event".
• Description - A property of the tag that is in an alarm state.
• Value - The value recorded for the entry. (If there is one).
• Event - History list only. Shows the transaction that occurred to add this to the list. Often matches the state.
• Area - The area configured for the tag that is in an alarm state.
• Deadband - Changes in value smaller than this are not written by the tag.
• Device - History list. Indicates where an action was done. For example, if an alarm acknowledgment arrived by email, this would display "Email". If the acknowledgment was done on a workstation, the workstation name or IP address would be shown.
• Name - The name of the tag that is in an alarm state, or otherwise the source of the event (ie. Application)
• Off Delay (s) - An optional period of time to delay before normalizing an alarm.
• On Delay (s) - An optional period of time to delay before triggering an alarm.
• Rearm Delay (s) - An optional period of time to delay before rearming an alarm.
• Setpoint - The setpoint configured in the tag that is in an alarm state.
• Setpoint Label - The display name given to the setpoint (High High, High, Low, Low Low, Digital)
• Units - An optional display name to denote units (such as gpm, rpm, A, °F.)
• Value Label - The display name of the value.
• Workstation - The name of the workstation from which the alarm or event originated.

Define Filters

Use filters to define the alarm or event report that you want to generate. For example, to create a report of all alarm acknowledgments you should ensure that the System Alarm DB (or your own alarm database) is selected and add an Event filter of "Ack". Columns might include Timestamp, Action, User, Description.

Filters match those available within the Alarm Page except that here you can add multiple criteria to each category to be ORed together. e.g. User of "a" or user of "b". Different categories are ANDed together. (See: Sort and Filter the Alarm List).

Description

Filter using the text of the alarm's description field. For the description field only, the filter will include all alarms that include the text you provide, not just those that match the text exactly.

This filter can be made case sensitive.

Name

Filter using the name (or unique id) of the alarm tag. This will find only tags with an exact match for the name. Use leading or trailing wildcards to expand the filter to names that include the provided text.

Select the option, Include children, to filter for a parent tag name and populate the list with all alarms in all child tags of that parent.

Area

Use the drop-down list to select one area property for the field. You may type an area value if you would like to expand the filter using wildcards. For example: Zone* will filter for alarms in Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3.

Priority

The priority option creates a filter matching alarm priority values. Use this to filter the list to show only Critical or High alarms. By selecting the "Or higher priority" option, you can filter for High and also include Critical alarms in the list.

User

Enter the account name of an operator to filter for alarms and events attributed to that operator. It is not possible to filter for more than one operator at a time.

All operator actions including setting output values and shelving alarms, are attributed to the operator signed in at the workstation where the action occurred. Each alarm is attributed to the operator who acknowledges it. Unacknowledged alarms will not be included in this filter.

Event

Select one of the predefined event types from the list to filter for all alarms or events matching that type. Event types are described in Alarm Event Reference

Maximum Records

Optionally, set a maximum record limit for notes that appear within a report.

Using Alarm and Events Data Sets in your reports

Drag a table component onto the canvas, and select the default cell.