Vista Alarm Properties: STATE vs. XSTATE

[Product_Support]

Issue

Alarms (change of state objects) in Vista have many attributes. Two of these are displayed as State (STATE) and X Alarm Status (XSTATE). If alarm blocks displayed on graphics pages are not following the logic in the Menta file, it may be beneficial to use XSTATE bindings instead of STATE.

Environment

• Vista Workstation
• Menta
• Alarms

Cause

In large systems sometimes, there can be a discrepancy between the Vista alarm status and the Xenta alarm status that can manifest themselves especially on a graphic page bound to an alarm block in a Menta file.

Resolution

1. Check the Vista alarm status.
   1. Right click on the alarm and select properties.
   2. Navigate to the General tab.
   3. Check the Status
      
2. Check the Xenta alarm status.
   1. From properties, navigate to the Status tab.
   2. Check the Xenta alarm status
      
3. If the two are not matching, the Xenta alarm status is typically more reliable and always follows the logic in the Menta file.
4. Switch the graphics binding to look to the XSTATE instead of STATE.