7. Control Nuisance Alarms

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There are three ways to control nuisance alarms in T/Mon:

• Alarm tagging: Tagging an alarm silences it permanently until the user un-tags it. To tag an alarm, highlight the alarm point in the T/Mon COS screen and press Shift-F10. The alarm will remain silenced until you un-tag it by highlighting the point and pressing F10. This was the original way of silencing an alarm but you do have to remember to remove the alarm tag to see the alarm active.
  
  
• Alarm silencing: Silencing an alarm temporarily silences an alarm for a user-specified time. To silence an alarm, highlight the alarm point in the T/Mon COS screen and press Alt-F3. Alarm silencing is the recommended method to silence an alarm since there is a timer associated to this alarm. This allows System Administrators and Users the option of not having to remember an alarm has to be untagged to see it active again.
  
  You can also silence an entire alarm window. Select the window in the T/Mon Alarm Summary Screen and press Alt-F3. This is extremely useful for when a site is being worked on and you know that there will be a lot of activity at a specific location associated to an alarm window.
  
  
• Alarm qualification times: Alarm qualification is a convenient way to control alarms that are usually self-correcting, like power failures and fades. You won't see the alarm if it self-corrects, but if the alarm stays failed for a user-specified time, T/Mon will declare an alarm.

8. Create Automatic Derived Control Responses

With T/Mon's Derived Controls feature, you can use alarm inputs to trigger automatic control relay actions. Both ordinary and Derived Alarms can be used as Derived Control inputs.

For example, you could configure T/Mon to automatically start a remote site generator if there's a low battery alarm. Or a Derived Alarm signaling that the battery is low AND the generator is down could trigger an automatic page to a service tech.

9. Create Derived Alarms for Events That Don't Happen As Scheduled

A Derived Alarm can even tell you when events DON'T happen. Why is this useful?

Let's suppose a generator self-test is supposed to happen every Tuesday at 3 A.M. You don't want to be notified every time a successful self-test happens - that's a nuisance alarm that your staff will ignore, and no one will notice if the weekly notification doesn't come.

But you can create a Derived Alarm that will be triggered only when the self-test doesn't happen on schedule - so you get the most useful information when you need it.

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