Alarms and events (configuration)

Add alarms to views

By adding the following items to your views, you can share a list of prioritized alarms allowing operators to put focus on and respond to alarm-related incidents. Typically, you would add both of the following to the same view:

  • The Alarm List shows a prioritized list of alarms and has multiple filtering options
  • The Alarm Preview lets you preview video from the alarm that is selected in the Alarm List

To perform the following steps, you need a view layout with at least two view items.

Steps:

  1. On the Views pane, select the view where you want to add the Alarm List and the Alarm Preview.
  2. On the workspace toolbar, select Setup to enter into setup mode.

  3. On the System overview pane, expand Alarms and drag the Alarm List to a view item.
  4. Drag the Alarm Preview to a different view item.
  5. Select Setup again to exit setup mode and save your changes.

Alarm list settings

In setup mode, you can select whether or not you want to see the alarms or events grouped by servers in a navigation tree and how many alarms or events you want the list to display at a time. This is also where you specify whether you want the alarm list to display alarms or events.

Name

Description

Show navigation tree

Select to display the navigation tree on the left of the alarm list. The navigation tree lets you view alarms or events grouped by server and filter for alarms with different states.

Max. rows to fetch

Controls the maximum number of lines to fetch and display in the alarm list. By default, the alarm list displays up to 100 alarms or events at a time. This provides a good response time because retrieving and displaying larger numbers of alarms or events can take time. If there are more than 100 alarms or events, click the following button to view and retrieve the next 100 alarms: 

In the field, you can set the maximum numbers of rows from 1 to 999.

Data Source

Select whether you want to display a list of alarms or events in the Alarm List.

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

Alarm preview settings

If alarms or events have video associated with them, when you select a particular alarm in the Alarm List, the alarm preview displays the recorded video from the selected alarm or event. If there are many cameras associated with an alarm, or if you have selected more than one alarm, the preview displays several previews. If there is no video associated, the alarm preview will be gray. You can change the alarm preview's properties in setup mode.

Name

Description

Show duplicate cameras

Select to display video from duplicate cameras several times in the alarm preview. The alarm preview reflects what is selected in the alarm list. Because you can select multiple alarms or events, video from the same camera may appear several times in the alarm preview if some of the selected alarms or events relate to the same camera.

Show event source cameras

Select to display video (if any) from the camera for which the alarm or event has been set up on the surveillance system server.

We do not recommend clearing this field.

Show related cameras

Select to display video from related cameras in the alarm preview. You can display associated video from up to 16 related cameras for a single alarm or event. You cannot determine the number of related cameras in the XProtect Smart Client; the number may vary from alarm to alarm, and is specified as part of the surveillance system configuration.

Show overlay

Only relevant if using the alarm preview together with a plug-in capable of displaying overlay information, such as lines tracking the paths of moving objects, or similar. This is not default functionality in the XProtect Smart Client.