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Version: v3.6 (Non supportée)

What's New in ALERT 3.6

The version 3 5 of Alert had introduced a new user interface , offering a structured and synoptic view of the whole supervised application and on-call management organization.

The revision 1 of the version 3.5 of the software, by developing certain aspects of the organization of the data and by correcting some weakness of the original version, still has reinforced the possibilities offered by this interface:

  • Extension of the station concept, allowing the management of virtual stations . The organization of the data in stations meets the need to define specific subsets for the management of operators and data attached to companies or sites. With the concept of virtual stations, this logical organization is now possible independently of the organization of the data acquisition: data can be recovered through a single frontal or database and then redistributed between the various stations according to their origin.
  • Identification of the DDE and OPC data servers . The tags issued from the same data server (local or distant) are gathered in a branch of the tree structure, allowing to visually identify a proble m of connection with a server and to perform specific operations on a server (start/stop polling, acknowledgment ...). For each data server, it is possible to define a list of redundant servers, able to ensure the data supply in the event of failure of the main server (or of the previous redundant server in the list).
  • Redefinition of the organization of the functional groups: a group can now contain at the same time groups (old grouping) and tags. This organization makes it possible to define tags in all the levels of a tree structure of groups.
  • Extension of the client OPC interface for a full integration of specificities of the OPC interfaces Data Access V2 and Alarm & Event . New mediator OPC allows the static importation of the data to be supervised, while profiting from the possibilities offered by the OPC Data Access V2 specification of properties attached to a variable to retrieve automatically all information associated with an alarm (message, priority ...). This new mediator allows also the dynamic imp ortation of alarms by the automatic creation of alarms at the time of their activation according to preconfigured filters.
  • Improvement of the management of the operator call numbers : unlimited list of call numbers, customizable recovery options on the leve l of each number, graphical weekly schedule of the numbers to be used. Possibility of calling several numbers for the same operator (e.g. transmission of SMS + confirmation by phone call), automatic adaptation of the numbers to dial when internal and exter nal telephone line are simultaneously used.
  • Improvement of the graphical interface: optimization of display, customization of the lists, sorting on columns, new columns (call following...).
  • New contextual on-line help. The archiving of the configuration da ta and the data exchanges performed during the synchronizations between the redundant stations and the server and client stations were completely modified. The archived and exchanged data are now structured in accordance

with standard XML. This choice reinforces the interoperability of the software and offers a standardized access to all the configuration data of the application.

The revision 2 of the version 3.5 of the software introduced the following new functionalities:

  • Option to run as Windows service. When this option is validated, the software is automatically registered as Windows service. It is then automatically launched at the system initialization and is operational even if no user session is open. (See § 8.8 "Alert as service")
  • ActiveX interface giving access to all the functions of the programming interface (API) of Alert.
  • Extension of the data server concept to all the tags, other than DDE and OPC tags (mediator and other tags).
  • New option "Explicit call acknowledgment" allowing a call to be explicitly accepted or refused. When a call is refused it is automatically reiterated to a relief operator.
  • New Text To Speech interface allowing the new generation Text To Speech engines to be integrated (SAPI5).
  • New communication drivers to call users throw an IP network ( VoIP driver, SIP compatible) and usage of instant messaging (MSN driver).

The revision 3 of the version 3.5 of the software introduced the following new functionalities:

  • Transfer of alarm calls to another group Thanks to this new functionality, an operator dealing with alarms can, to treat some alarms, require the intervention of another operator group, either in support (need for a complementary competence) or in substitution (impossibility of processing the alarm at the level of the group).

  • History of temporary alarms Alarms declared as temporary (created at the alarm time then automatically deleted when the alarm is reset and acknowledged) are now recorded in the alarm history when the "database export" option is activated. This allows history of all alarms, including deleted alarms.

  • Automatic saving of the configuration The functionalities of automatic saving of the configuration have been extended. The saving can contain a list of any external files. It is also possible to keep a configurable number of savings achieved periodically, allowing restoration of a configuration of several days or weeks.

  • Deactivation of automatic synchronization (redundancy) In order to facilitate maintenance operations, it is now possible to suspend the automatic synchronization of redundant stations during a configurable time.

  • Management of operator unavailability An operator can now declare himself unavailable, for example during an intervention or a meeting. In this case, the calls are no longer transmitted to him until he declares himself available again. This status means the operator is on duty, but not available to treat an alarm.

  • Dynamic management of priorities The alarm priority can be automatically incremented when it has been set and a continuous flow of high priority alarms prevents it from being transmitted. This functionality makes the priority of an alarm relative to the time elapsed since its activation.

  • Consultation of instruction file The instruction file attached to an alarm can be directly consulted from the tag views (for tags in alarm state) and alarm table.

  • Data servers The device notion has been introduced at the level of the data servers. A device is defined as an entity capable of grouping several alarms (high threshold, low threshold, sensor failure..., for example). In this version, this notion is only used for license management (device counting instead of tag counting) and display (disp lay of devices in the tree of data servers). An option has also been added allowing a data server to be forced to "error link" status when at least one of its attached tags is invalid.

  • PLUGIN interface The functionalities of the ALERT product can now be ex tended by integrating additional modules. These modules are automatically loaded by ALERT and integrated to its main screen. They interact with ALERT through a new "Plug-in" type interface. So, the ALERTDATI module has been developed with ASCOM Company to propose a graphic interface for visualization and localization of alarms transmitted from personal security systems. This module allows security alarms to be received and localized on ALERT situation plans.

  • New communication drivers New communication drive rs have been developed and are integrated to the new version:  OXEPaging driver to transmit alarm messages to DECT through Alcatel 4400 PABX. This driver replaces the old "Alcatel 4400" driver. The Notification Server gateway, which is no longer sold by Alcatel, is henceforth not necessary.  SNMPTrap driver to automatically transmit SNMP traps to a network management station on alarm reception.

The 3.6 version of ALERT software, beyond the refreshing of its user interface and some new interesting features, implements important structural evolutions which extends its internationalization capabilities (Unicode, multilingual management) and increase its capacities (number of manageable tags and users). The main new features given by this version are the following:

  • UNICODE management (-> Chinese version) The ALERT software has been entirely revisited to be compatible with the UNICODE standard (character encoding has been encoded from 8 bits to 16 bits). This important evolution allows all e xisting languages to be supported, for data input and message display, and for the translation of the user interface in idiomatic languages or in non Latin alphabet base languages (Chinese, Russian, Arabic...). Consequently, the user interface of ALERT, alre ady available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch, is now proposed in Chinese (Mandarin).
  • Extension of the multi-language management The multilingual management introduced in 3.5 version of the software has been revisited and extended to be completely operational in this new version. This feature allows:  sending messages and alarm consultation in the accurate language of the recipient operators,  switching the interface completely to another language, including labels and displayed messages  simultaneous utilization of the user interface in different languages from client stations
  • Synoptic visualization of alarms A new alarm supervision feature has been integrated to generate and animate HTML synoptic views of the supervised installation, i n order to have a better visual control and a graphical localization of alarms detected on the installation. This feature includes the supervision server module (derived from Visual Access) for the animation of synoptic views, the Web browser plug -in to di splay the synoptic views on the Alert screens (server and clients) and the VAEdit synoptic editor to edit the synoptic views. This feature is particularly interesting when the installation does not integrate a SCADA application.
  • Call overview A call overvi ew feature has been added, allowing the call cycles triggered by an alarm to be supervised in real time (in order to know who is warned) or later controlled (called groups, operators and numbers, call reports). Reports on call cycles can be printed. This new feature, attached to the database export option, requires this option to be activated.
  • On-call schedule management The scheduling now distinguishes between preprogrammed periods (initialized from the on-call program of the corresponding group) and perio ds forced by direct assignment of a team at a given date. The preprogrammed periods are displayed in a light color. The modifications of a group program directly affect the preprogrammed periods of the group

schedule. The forced periods remain unchanged, except if one forces the reinitialization of the schedule (button « Copy program »). In the same way, the definition of public holidays directly affects the preprogrammed periods for the corresponding days. When a team is forced in the schedule, it can be removed to be replaced either by the preprogrammed team (choice program) for the corresponding range, or by no team (choice no team).

  • User duty schedule For each operator a duty schedule can be defined to program off -duty periods and substitutions, accordi ng to the planned unavailability periods of the operator (vacation, training, trip...). This schedule can be defined from a weekly programming (week + public holidays) and calendar (forcing of periods over some calendar days). It can be read either as an on -duty schedule (on duty periods), or as an off-duty schedule (off-duty periods).
  • User availability management Various service statuses can be defined giving in real time the availability status of each operator to be called for alarms. By default, two statu ses are predefined: "available" and "unavailable". Additional statuses can be defined ("Meeting", "Intervention"...), with the possibility for

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