Events and alarms

Alarms (explained)

On the surveillance server, virtually any kind of incident or technical problem (events) can be set up to trigger an alarm. These can all be viewed from the Alarm Manager tab, which provides a central overview of your VMS incidents, status, and possible technical problems.

The Alarm Manager tab is either displayed or hidden depending on the settings defined by your system administrator.

You cannot set up alarm triggers in the XProtect Smart Client, this is done by the surveillance system administrator as part of the surveillance system configuration.

The Alarm Manager tab provides a dedicated view for your alarm or event handling. The tab itself displays the number of active alarms (up to nine—more alarms than this are shown with a 9+) . The Alarm Manager tab includes an alarm list, an alarm preview (for previewing video associated with individual alarms or events), and, if available, a map position (for geographical display of alarm indicators). Click the Report button, to display relevant reports on the incidents (see View alarm reports).

Alarm list (explained)

The Alarm list displays incoming alarms by default, with the most recent alarms at the top of the list. Alternatively, the alarm list can display a list of MIPShort for "Milestone Integration Platform". plug-in and analytic events, for example, access control or license plate recognition. To see a list of events, in setup mode, define that the alarm list displays events (see Alarm list settings). Alarms or events that have video associated with them are listed with an icon . To preview a still image from the time of the alarm or eventA predefined incident occurring on the surveillance system; used by the surveillance system for triggering actions. Depending on surveillance system configuration, events may be caused by input from external sensors, by detected motion, by data received from other applications, or manually through user input. The occurrence of an event could, for example, be used for making a camera record with a particular frame rate, for activating outputs, for sending e-mails, or for a combination thereof., place your mouse over the icon. To preview recorded video from the camera or cameras associated with the alarm or event, select the alarm or event in the list. To stop a repeating alarm sound, select the alarm associated with the sound in the list.

You can decide how you want the list to display, you can filter the columns, you can drag the columns to different positions, and you can right-click to show or hide certain columns.

The event list does not display system- or user-generated events, such as motion detection or archive failure.

The list is updated every 3 seconds.

See also

Servers in alarm list (explained)

On the left side of the alarm list, you can view the servers that the alarms originate from. Many surveillance systems only have a single server, but some systems may consist of several servers in a hierarchy. All the servers you have access to are listed. In the alarm filters, you can filter alarms by servers.

Alarm states (explained)

Alarms can be in one of the following states: New, In progress, On hold, or Closed . You can see the state of each alarm in the Alarm List, in the State Name column. The Filters pane lets you filter according to certain criteria (see Filter alarms). Initially, all alarms will be in the New state, but when an alarm is being handled, its state is updated.

Filter alarms

There are several ways you can filter the alarm list, so it displays just the alarms or events that you are interested in.

Steps: 

1. In the toolbar of the alarm list, click the Custom (filter applied) or No filter text. The text may differ depending on the filter selected.
   

   

2. Enter filter criteria on any of the columns you want to filter on. For example, if you enter a user ID in the ID field, the list will only display alarms assigned to that particular user.
3. You can combine filters, for example State name and Owner (assigned to).
4. To return to the unfiltered alarm list, click the Clear filter button.
5. To sort the alarm list's content, in the alarm list, click the title of the column.

If your alarm handling views contain map content, you can also filter the alarm list by right-clicking an element (camera, server, or similar) on the map, then selecting Show Alarms. This will make the alarm list show only alarms from the selected element.

Responding to alarms

Print alarm reports

You can print a report with information about the alarm, including the alarm history and, if available, a still image from the time of the alarm. If you have selected multiple alarms in the alarm list, you cannot use this feature.

Steps:

1. In the alarm list, right-click the alarm.
2. Select Print. A window appears.
3. To add a note, enter the text in the Note field.
4. Click the Print button.

View alarm reports

Alarm reports are available only if you are using XProtect Corporate, XProtect Expert, XProtect Professional+, or XProtect Express+.

• Click the Report button to open the Alarm Report window, where you can view two graphs representing one of the following predefined reports:
  • Category
  • State
  • Priority
  • Reasons for closing
  • Site
  • Response time

You can filter the interval of the report, so it displays alarms over a period of 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, 6 months, or a year.

Select the categories, states, priorities, reasons for closing, sites, or response times to display in each of the two graphs so you can compare these side by side. The graphs display the number of alarms on the vertical axis and the time frame on the horizontal axis.

Alarms on maps (explained)

If your alarm handling view contains one or more map positions, you can view alarms on the maps too. Maps display alarms based on the geographical location of the camera, server or other device triggering the alarms, so you can instantly see where the alarm originates from. You can right-click and acknowledge, disable, or suppress the alarm directly from the map.

Camera elements display video in thumbnail format when you move your mouse over it. When used together with alarms, the graphical elements on maps display white circles around them if alarms occur. For example, if an alarm associated with a particular camera occurs, the graphical element representing that camera will immediately get a white circle around it (1 in the following illustration), and you can then click the camera element and not only view video from the camera, but also handle the alarm through a menu that appears.

If white is not an ideal color for signifying alarms on your maps, you can change this color.

Now, say the camera which has an alarm associated with it, is located on a street level map, but you are viewing a city level map. How will you then notice the alarm? No problem, thanks to hot zones—graphical representations linking different map hierarchy levels together. If an alarm is detected on the street level map, the hot zone on the city level map will then turn white (2 in the following illustration), indicating that there is an alarm on a lower level map—even if there are map levels in between.

To return to an alarm list mode where you can see alarms from more than just the one element, click the required server, priority or state in the alarm list.

Events (explained)

An event is a predefined incident on the surveillance system that can be set up to trigger an alarm. Events are either predefined system incidents or user-specified events (for example, analytics events, generic events, or user-specified). Events are not necessarily linked to an alarm, but they can be.

Typically, events are activated automatically and in the background (for example, as a result of input from external sensors, detected motion or by data from other applications), but can also be manually activated. Events are used by the surveillance system to trigger actions, such as starting or stopping recording, changing video settings, activating outputData going out of a computer. On IP surveillance systems, output is frequently used for activating devices such as gates, sirens, strobe lights, and more., or combinations of actions. When you activate an event from your XProtect Smart Client, it automatically triggers actions on the surveillance system, for example recording on a particular camera with a particular frame rateA measure indicating the amount of information contained in motion video. Typically measured in FPS (Frames Per second). for a particular period of time as well as sending of a mobile phone text message with a predefined incident description to a particular security officer.

Your surveillance system administrator determines what happens when you manually activate an event. Your surveillance system administrator may use the terms event buttons, user-defined events or custom events for manually activated events.