The most innovative web-based HMI, SCADA and MES software solution just got better. Ignition v7.6 includes a new, completely revamped alarming (previously also known as “alerting”) system with powerful new features – many of which were developed in response to requests from the Ignition user community.

The result is an industry-leading alarming system that is more intuitive, consolidated and easily customizable. You can use it as your overall SCADA solution, or as a standalone alarming package that meets and even exceeds the capabilities of other alarming products on the market.

New Alarming Modules

In addition to upgrading the alarming capabilities of the Ignition platform, Ignition v7.6 supports new alarming modules that can add even more advanced alarming features to your system.

Alarm Notification Pipelines

To answer many users' requests for more ways to configure alarm notification delivery, we've invented a new tool – alarm notification pipelines – that allow you to control what happens between when an alarm goes active and when it is sent out. Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can create different types of alarm notification logic, including: escalation, delay, consolidation and selection.

Powerful Alarm Configuration

In Ignition v7.6, you can configure multiple alarms per tag. There are many new types of alarms available, including equality, inequality, inside or outside range, bad quality, outside engineering limits, and more.

With the new capability to bind alarm configuration properties to external data, Ignition v7.6 allows you to create very powerful, dynamic configurations:

• Dynamically variable alarm set points
• State-based alarming
• Intelligent alarm enable / disable

You can also add associated data to get contextual information from your alarms.

More Notification Options

In addition to the 1-way email notification that Ignition has always supported, Ignition v7.6 offers expanded notification capabilities:

• Email: 2-way email allows users to receive and acknowledge alarm notifications by email.
• SMS: 1-way and 2-way SMS notification allows users to receive and acknowledge alarm notifications by SMS.
• Voice: Voice notification uses text-to-speech technology to notify users of an alarm via a phone call and allows them to acknowledge it with a simple code. It supports alarm notifications in a variety of languages. The SIP / VoIP phone notification system can be tied in with a VoIP voice system or an online VoIP service such as Skype, or bridged to a standard phone line using a phone gateway.

By providing more ways to notify users, Ignition v7.6 reduces the chance that an important alarm will be overlooked.

Streamlined Contact Management

Contact and user management has been consolidated in Ignition v7.6. What used to be called Authentication Profiles in previous versions of Ignition is now part of a broader system called User Sources. Contact information can now be added to each user profile, instead of only a username and password. Also, as many Ignition users have requested, users in a particular project can now be administered in the client instead of only through the Ignition Gateway.

Improved History

Ignition v7.6 replaces the legacy alert log with a more robust alarm journaling system. Now it's easy to record and quickly query alarm events, system events, user actions and other relevant data. The journaling system works with the store-and-forward system to ensure that no data is lost due to connectivity interruptions.

Enhanced Alarming Components

Now, alarming components such as the status table have been made more powerful and configurable in Ignition v7.6. The status table now supports alarm shelving, a capability that allows you to temporarily silence an alarm while you work on fixing the problem. The new and improved status table component also allows users to acknowledge alarms and even see trending, all within the table itself.

Schedules and Call Rosters

These new features in Ignition v7.6 give you more control over who should be notified of an alarm and when. Users can be organized by roles into call rosters. When an alarm notification is sent, it goes to a designated call roster. The system then evaluates each user's schedule so that only those who are currently on shift will be notified. Using the rosters, you can change schedules, assign roles and specify who should be notified when alarms pass through different notification blocks in the pipelines.