Challenges with AP9631 Event Action Settings

BillP · ‎2021-07-01

Hello,

I am trying to configure the Event Action settings for a UPS. I have three email addresses that need to receive alerts. One address is for critical events, another for warning events, and the last for informational events. I am configuring the event actions by groups. I can go through the steps via the web interface and receive the success statement after programming each one. However, after programming all three, when I go look at the config.ini file or call up any specific event, I see that it has does not save all of the changes. In fact, it seems to save updates to random event lines.

The general settings that I am trying to save are:

critical events
- send to email address #2
- 5 minute delay
- 15 minute repeat interval
- repeat until condition clears
warning events
- send to email address #3
- 5 minute delay
- 30 minute repeat interval
- repeat until condition clears
informational events
- send to email address #4
- 5 minute delay
- 60 minute repeat interval
- repeat until condition clears

The UPS is a SURTA2000XLRM2U with an AP9631 NMC.

The NMC is brand new from the box with factory applied FW Revisions:

apc_hw05_aos_517.bin
apc_hw05_sumx_517.bin
apc_hw05_bootmon102.bin

The goal is to get this UPS configured correctly, download the config.ini and then upload it to the other units at my company.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BillP · ‎2021-07-01

I have a feeling this may be working but since it is confusing where to actually look to validate it, you're being a little mislead which isn't you're fault. (This is something we're working to clarify and make easier to understand in future firmware revisions).

Here is what you should do or how I would do this and let me know if by what I say, you've found a difference in steps or have further questions.

I might recommend you reset Event Action notifications only completely under Administration->General->Reset/Reboot to avoid any strange configurations if you've been playing around with this. I will talk through this assuming a default configuration with one recipient.

When you add one recipient, all event notifications are on for that recipient, by default, and will come every two minutes, until the condition clears. Since this is not really what you want to keep, I recommend going through and just disabling all events for every recipient so we can just turn on what events we want for each recipient.

To disable events for one or more recipients, go to Administration->General->Notification->By Group and select by group and make sure to select/tick the box next to Informational, Warning, and Critical.
Press Next, select Email Recipients, press next, and then select all of the recipients.
On the next screen (which is NOT the screen we should be checking on anything later because it always defaults back to the same thing), make sure to select the radio button for disable notifications.
Press apply and this action, once complete, will disable all notifications for all recipients as a starting point.

Now, let's do the critical notifications set up for recipient #2 and then you can follow this for the rest of the recipients that should receive informational and warning.

Go back to Administration->General->Notification->By group and select/tick the box next to critical only. Press next.
Select email recipients on the next screen and press next.
Select recipient #2 that should receive critical events. Press next.
On the next screen, this is where you should configure the 5 minute delay, 15 minute repeat interval, and tell it to repeat until the condition had cleared. (The radio button would also already say enable notifications. Also, as you can see, this screen defaulted to enable notifications, every two minutes, until condition clears. We had already gone through and disabled notifications so this screen is misleading in the fact that it is not the current configuration.)
Make sure to press apply to change and apply these new configurations.

Now, let's check this configuration. I'll show you the best spot, which is not ideal, but it is the best option.

Go to Administration->General->Notification->Byevent. I recommend clicking on the Power Events heading and then you'll be presented with all of the events.
On the right, there is an Event Log, Email, and Trap column. For Email and Trap, and if at least one of the recipients is configured to receive events, you'll see a bullet. You'll also notice that the events are sorted as Critical, Warning, Informational. From there, if you scroll a bit before clicking on any one event, you should see at this point, just a bullet in the email column for critical and nothing for warning and Information (yet).
Click on any one of the critical events towards the top for power events and you should see that your recipient #2 is enabled with the delay and frequency intervals.
You can also go back to Environmental Events and System events and review the current configuration too for Critical events in those categories.

Assuming this has been completed, then go through and select just informational and just warning for the respective recipients and you can go back in validate it under the By event screen.

If you're still stuck with this guidance, let me know.

See Answer In Context

BillP · ‎2021-07-01

I have a feeling this may be working but since it is confusing where to actually look to validate it, you're being a little mislead which isn't you're fault. (This is something we're working to clarify and make easier to understand in future firmware revisions).

Here is what you should do or how I would do this and let me know if by what I say, you've found a difference in steps or have further questions.

I might recommend you reset Event Action notifications only completely under Administration->General->Reset/Reboot to avoid any strange configurations if you've been playing around with this. I will talk through this assuming a default configuration with one recipient.

When you add one recipient, all event notifications are on for that recipient, by default, and will come every two minutes, until the condition clears. Since this is not really what you want to keep, I recommend going through and just disabling all events for every recipient so we can just turn on what events we want for each recipient.

To disable events for one or more recipients, go to Administration->General->Notification->By Group and select by group and make sure to select/tick the box next to Informational, Warning, and Critical.
Press Next, select Email Recipients, press next, and then select all of the recipients.
On the next screen (which is NOT the screen we should be checking on anything later because it always defaults back to the same thing), make sure to select the radio button for disable notifications.
Press apply and this action, once complete, will disable all notifications for all recipients as a starting point.

Now, let's do the critical notifications set up for recipient #2 and then you can follow this for the rest of the recipients that should receive informational and warning.

Go back to Administration->General->Notification->By group and select/tick the box next to critical only. Press next.
Select email recipients on the next screen and press next.
Select recipient #2 that should receive critical events. Press next.
On the next screen, this is where you should configure the 5 minute delay, 15 minute repeat interval, and tell it to repeat until the condition had cleared. (The radio button would also already say enable notifications. Also, as you can see, this screen defaulted to enable notifications, every two minutes, until condition clears. We had already gone through and disabled notifications so this screen is misleading in the fact that it is not the current configuration.)
Make sure to press apply to change and apply these new configurations.

Now, let's check this configuration. I'll show you the best spot, which is not ideal, but it is the best option.

Go to Administration->General->Notification->Byevent. I recommend clicking on the Power Events heading and then you'll be presented with all of the events.
On the right, there is an Event Log, Email, and Trap column. For Email and Trap, and if at least one of the recipients is configured to receive events, you'll see a bullet. You'll also notice that the events are sorted as Critical, Warning, Informational. From there, if you scroll a bit before clicking on any one event, you should see at this point, just a bullet in the email column for critical and nothing for warning and Information (yet).
Click on any one of the critical events towards the top for power events and you should see that your recipient #2 is enabled with the delay and frequency intervals.
You can also go back to Environmental Events and System events and review the current configuration too for Critical events in those categories.

Assuming this has been completed, then go through and select just informational and just warning for the respective recipients and you can go back in validate it under the By event screen.

If you're still stuck with this guidance, let me know.

BillP · ‎2021-07-01

Your instructions worked. Thank you.

I have encountered one other issue. When I click to apply the changes, I sometime receive a browser error of "This page can't be displayed". At that point, I have to wait for the logon inactivity timeout before I can log back on to check if the change was successful or not. I am using Internet Explorer 10. Any ideas?

BillP · ‎2021-07-01

Hmm, no I haven't really seen that behavior. Although, I primarily use Chrome and rarely IE9 or Firefox.

When the page is like that and you refresh it, does it say somebody else is already logged in and that's why you have to wait for the timeout or is it completely inaccessible until auto-logout timer expires?

BillP · ‎2021-07-01

Yes, it does say that.

BillP · ‎2021-07-01

The browser error seems to be less prevalent with Firefox. Additionally, while programming another AP9631 NMC with AOS 6.0.6, I have not experienced it at all.

BillP · ‎2021-07-01

You definitely won't see it in 6.0.6 because one of the big features with it is multi-user so you can have multiple users and sessions simultaneously. Under control menu, I am forgetting off the top of my head, but i think there is an option there for session management so you could see the current sessions and also terminate them. So, you'd be able to see if multiple sessions were open. But you won't get told someone else is logged in unless you have so many sessions it can't support more (which is like 8-10).

Also, for you and any user on 6.0.6, I'd recommend apply 6.1.1 which has some critical bug fixes to take avdavantage of. And we have new release coming soon tentatively early August to fix bugs and provide 1-2 new minor features. It's available on our software/firmware download page which I know you can get to from apc.com/support. If you decide to upgrade the v5.1.7 some day to v6, there are also some FYIs regarding that major upgrade in our knowledge base also at apc.com. Let me know if you want further information or details.