Acknowledge alarm for a duration

[rlao]

Is there a way we acknowledge an alarm for a duration, similar to disabling alarms for a duration?

By that, I mean that a user has the option to specify a duration when acknowledging an alarm, and any time that alarm clears then raises again within that period, it is automatically acknowledged or treated as the same acknowledged alarm instance.

We have a lot of issues with lots of chattering alarms coming from a single alarm source such an instrumentation failure which can take weeks to fix. An action is taken on the first acknowledgement (raising of a work order) but the alarm will continually clear then raise again, which requires continual acknowledgement with no further action needed. Being able to keep the alarm acknowledged during that entire period of time until the work order is actioned would be a big improvement.

I am aware disabling the alarm is a possible solution, but the desire is to still see the alarm indications when they occur, just without the need to acknowledge them over and over again.

Just wondering if something can be done as an extension to acknowledge alarm with comment maybe?

[sbeadle]

I see the issue. Alarm disable (which the operator can select a time for) is the most suitable except you will see the point change to the disabled colour, and the event list won't show alarms (it shows state change) and the alarm list won't show anything.

You could use Suppression, but you'd need a point source to cause it, and it's a bit like disabling the alarm with another colour.

I'm stuck thinking of an answer. Cchanging the point's alarm severity to a low number, and setting the users alarm banner config to filter the low priorities out won't work because the next alarm will have the default severity again.

Ideas anyone?

[tfranklin]

Nothing native OOB that I can think of without writing a little code. 

First thought is to create a "flag" of sorts that the operator can set for auto-ack.  On alarm raise, an alarm redirection would trigger a call to an ST program which checks for the auto-ack field and acks it.  Should be fairly simple to implement, the hardest part really would be considering a form of sorts for the operator to flag a point as "Auto-Ack" until whatever maintenance is completed.  Part of the shift changeover could also be reviewing auto-ack points which would allow users to turn off auto-ack on an object by object basis. 

[rlao]

Yes, I was thinking of something similar with an auto-ack method action. Just need to test it out to see how much overhead such a scripting solution would create, given that it would be called for every alarm occurrence.