InTouch classifies alarms into several general categories based on their characteristics. These categories are known as Class and Type. The Distributed Alarm System categorizes all alarms into five general Conditions: Discrete, Deviation, Rate-of-Change, Value, and SPC.
The table below summarizes the alarm condition for both systems:
Alarm Groups
Each InTouch alarm is assigned to a logical Alarm Group. These groups areuser-definable and can be arranged into a hierarchy up to 32 levels deep. The groups provide a way of categorizing alarms based on an organization, plant layout, or any other metric. Alarm Groups are useful for filtering alarm displays, Alarm Printers, and acknowledgment scripts.
Every tagname is associated with an Alarm Group. If you do not associate an Alarm Group name to a tagname, then by default InTouch automatically associates it with the root group, $System. Any Alarm Group may have both tagnames and other Alarm Group names associated with it.
Alarm Groups are organized into a hierarchical tree structure with the root group, $System, at the top of the tree. All defined Alarm Groups automatically become descendants of the root group.