Alarm Alerts Overview
Last Modified on 10/01/2019 3:00 pm EDT
If your system uses Connect and it’s configured to send alarm notifications to Dispatch, you can create alerts to specify the amount of time that’s allowed for an alarm to remain in its current state. Alarm alerts can also be created based on the alarm’s location, priority or call category, which are determined by the Dispatch template selected when the alarm was configured in Connect.
Alarms sent to Dispatch can be in the one of the following states:
Received: The alarm has appeared in Dispatch, but no action has been taken on it.
Acknowledged: The dispatcher has confirmed receipt of the alarm.
Escalated: The alarm has been associated with a new or existing dispatch. If a new dispatch is created, the template selected for the alarm in Connect is used to create the new dispatch. If an existing dispatch is selected, the alarm will appear in the Related Alarms section in the Dispatch Details panel.
Closed: The alarm has been closed.
For example, if you created an officer alert for an alarm in the Acknowledged state with a Time Allowed of two minutes, once the dispatcher marks the alarm as Acknowledged, a timer will appear in the Elapsed column of the Alarms panel that will begin counting down from 0:00:00 to 0:02:00, indicating that the dispatcher has two minutes to either escalate the alarm or close it. 
The Alarm Alerts settings.
Alarm Colors
Alarm alerts in the Alarms panel in the following colors:
A green alarm alert indicates there is time left to change the state of the alarm and displays the amount of time left to do so.
A yellow alarm alert indicates that there is only a small amount of time to the state of the alarm and displays the amount of time left to do so.
A red alarm alert indicates time has run out. The timer will start counting the amount of time that has passed since the alarm alert expired.
For more information on managing alerts, see the Dispatch User’s Guide.
Evaluation Rules
You can create multiple alarm alerts for the same state, but only one alarm alert will be displayed based on the order of the criteria below (known as evaluation rules):
- Indoor location.
- Location.
- Call Category.
- Priority.
- Shortest duration.
For example, you created five alarm alerts for the Acknowledged state with the following criteria:
- Time Allowed: 8 minutes; By Location: Company Office > By Call Category: Emergency
- Time Allowed: 10 minutes; By Location: Company Office > Back staircase.
- Time Allowed: 8 minutes
Based on the evaluation rules, officer alert A would take precedence over B and C because it has a location and call category, but officer alert A would take precedence over C because it has an indoor location.
If there are no criteria added for location, priority, or call category, the alarm alert with the shortest time allowed will take precedence. Note that for an alarm alerts to take precedence over any other alerts for the same status (based on the evaluation rules), the location information in the alarm must exactly match the location criteria (including any indoor location points) specified in that alarm alert.
The Alarm Alerts settings.