Create alarms to notify you when an issue occurs in your system.

Introduced in June 2024

Alarms help you implement rules and manage conditions that affect your systems, tests, or assets.

What to Use

You can find the SystemLink Alarm and Utilities APIs on the Data Communication palette in LabVIEW.

What to Do

  1. On the client, create the following diagram in a VI.

  2. Customize the gray sections for your unique programming goals.


 Get System Name obtains the name of the system you want to monitor.


Build Alarm Set Transition creates a set transition parameter. The set transition parameter describes the state and the severity level of the alarm instance that triggers a notification.


Set Alarm triggers an alarm instance on the server.

If Set Alarm has a notification strategy wired to it, the VI sends a notification to subscribers if one of the following conditions is true.
  • The alarm instance is new.
  • The alarm instance reaches a new severity level.
The subscriber then verifies and fixes the issue before acknowledging the alarm.

When the state of the alarm is below the defined alarm threshold, the application clears the alarm with Clear Alarm.

Troubleshooting

  • If Set Alarm only returns True the first time you set an alarm and then always returns False, check whether you or another operator acknowledged the alarm. If you or another operator did not acknowledge the alarm, the alarm remains active.
  • If you specify a notification strategy but do not receive a notification, verify the following things.
    • The alarm is new or has reached a new severity. A notification is only sent when one of the following conditions is true.
      • The alarm instance is new.
      • The alarm instance reaches a new severity level. In the following example, the asterisk (*) indicates a transition of the alarm instance where you receive a notification.
        • Severity 1 (*)
        • Severity 2 (*)
        • Severity 3 (*)
        • Severity 2
        • Severity 4 (*)
        • Severity 3
        • Severity 4
        • Severity 5 (*)
    • You have configured email notifications in SystemLink Enterprise.

Examples

To access the following installed example, search within the programming environment.
  • Alarms

Alarm States Reference

The following table summarizes the alarm states that result from different actions you perform on an active alarm.
Cleared? Acknowledged? Resulting alarm state
Yes

The alarm condition is no longer met.

 Yes The alarm becomes inactive.
Yes

The alarm condition is no longer met.

 No The alarm stays active.
Yes

The user force cleared the alarm.

 Yes

Force clearing acknowledges the alarm.

 The alarm becomes inactive.
No Yes The alarm becomes acknowledged but stays active.
No No The alarm stays active.