Alarms

Alarms are an important part of the G-SIM system, and are notifications that may be generated by hardware or software as a result of some kind of user interaction or equipment failure across the video network. Samples of alarms are: Duress Alarms where somebody pressed a panic button, a Security Breach Alarm if a user tries unsuccessfully for a number of times to get access to one of the G-SIM consoles, or Camera/Hard Drive Failure Alarms where physical equipment failed.

Depending on its definition, an alarm might have an item attached to it, e.g. a camera may be attached to a camera-related alarm. Dragging the alarm item would then actually drag the attached camera, thus a camera failure alarm may be dropped on a viewer to view the camera. Buttons on the alarm detail card also allow a user to view cameras or maps directly from the alarm card.

Alarms may be critical or non-critical (there are three alarm levels), and not all users will receive all alarms. While certain equipment failure alarms may only be of interest to support personnel, they may not be able to handle a duress alarm, for example. The basic idea is that a user must acknowledge an alarm as soon as possible after it was generated. After acknowledging an alarm it is the user's responsibility to handle and complete it.

As soon as a new alarm is generated by the system, it will be broadcast to all users who may handle the specific type of alarm. A red indicator light on the Alarm Tab will inform a user that there are new alarms in his alarm list and it will appear in the Alarm View for immediate access. An audible alarm sound will also be generated by the Operator Console if audible alarm sounds were not disabled in the Management Console by the system administrator. Different alarm sounds will be played depending on the importance of the alarm. New (unhandled) alarms are displayed in a separate list accessible via the first tab at the top of the Alarms list. These alarms cannot be filtered and will remain visible until they are acknowledged by any user with the necessary rights.

If a user acknowledges an alarm, the alarm level colour will darken to indicate this. It will stay in the list until you switch to another tab. Once tabs have been switched, acknowledged alarms are moved to the "Mine" tab list. They will be removed from there once they have been completed. If you have the privilege, then you can click on the tab "Others" to see alarms acknowledged by other users.

Acknowledged alarms are the user's responsibility and s/he must go through the whole process of handling and completing the alarm. Every type of alarm may have a unique list of handling procedures that must be completed (these procedures are specified in the Management Console).

An important feature that the administrator can configure is that certain alarms may be set to auto-expire. This is necessary in the case of equipment malfunction or misconfiguration which causes a flood of alarms. It is never a fix for a problem — merely a work-around until the problem itself is fixed.

Uncompleted alarms may be transferred from one user to another if the responsible user is unable to complete the alarm for whatever reason. The other user must accept the transferred alarm, and it will remain the responsibility of the original user until the other user has accepted it. Alarms which are not completed within 24 hours will be flagged by a status indicator.

An important feature of the alarm lists is multi-selection and simultaneous handling. This allows a user to select multiple alarms of the same type for acknowledgement or handling, easing the management of large volumes of similar alarms that may be generated under extreme fault conditions.