Winpager - Remote Alarm Handling

  • | More

List of specifications

Purpose

The Winpager module enables on-duty personnel to receive alarm messages on a cellular phone without being physically present at an operator station.

Alarm messages

Winpager will send out alarm messages to on-duty personnel when the following conditions are met:

  • a duty schedule is active (Winpager calendar)
  • the specific alarm has been marked as "To Winpager" in the design module
  • the alarm matches the alarm priority range and alarm filter defined in Winpager

An alarm message can be sent out as an SMS message, an email or a fax.

Services supported

Several services are supported for sending out alarms to the operator (dial-out) and allowing the operator to acknowledge the alarm back to the IGSS Alarm List (dial-in). See the list of services here.

Duty schedules in Winpager

Building duty schedules in Winpager is very simple. A weekly calendar is set up defining the specific time intervals when Winpager sends alarms to on-duty personnel. As an example, a calendar may specify that alarms should be sent out all workdays from 4 p.m. till 6 a.m. and all day during weekends. Special duty schedules for holidays and special periods can also be set up.

Next step is to define the PRIMARY, BACKUP and REFERENCE recipients of alarms for each active period in the calendar.

  • the PRIMARY operator receives the alarm first
  • the BACKUP operator receives the alarm if the PRIMARY operator does not respond within a user defined period
  • the REFERENCE operator receives a copy of the alarm message, similar to the cc: function in an email program
Winpager Main Window

For each calendar the following can be set up:

  • Alarm priority range - Only alarms within this range will be sent out.
  • Alarm filter - Only alarms matching the filter will be sent out.

Operators and operator groups

The individual operator is defined with the relevant dial-out service and phone number. Once an operator is defined, he can also become a member of an operator group. In the group, he will have a predefined role - PRIMARY, BACKUP or REFERENCE.

When the alarm is sent out

When the alarm fulfills the criteria set up, Winpager will do the following:

Alarm Fulfillment Procedure

Control process components via SMS

When the operator receives an alarm, he will in some cases want to regulate the process by controlling specific process components (IGSS objects). The relevant objects are simply listed in a text file and can now be addressed via an SMS message. As an example, if the operator wants to start a motor, he would simply write "M1 1" in the SMS message. M1 is the object name and 1 corresponds to the "Start" command defined for the motor.

Change the duty calendar via SMS

By defining a special calendar object in IGSS, a supervisor can change the active duty schedule with an SMS message. Assuming that we have two calendars - Normal and Weekend - a supervisor will simply send the relevant command to activate either Normal or Weekend in the calendar object.

SMS format

The contents of the SMS message sent by Winpager is fully user defined. The fields include configuration name, alarm number, alarm priority, alarm text, etc.

Winpager Remote Alarm Handling