An event in XProtect VMS is a predefined incident that can be set up to trigger an alarm. Events are either predefined system incidents or user-defined events, for example, analytics events or generic events. Events are not necessarily linked to an alarm, but they can be.

Typically, events are activated automatically and in the background, for example, through detected motion or by data from other applications. You can also manually activate events. The VMS uses events to trigger actions, such as starting or stopping recording, changing video settings, activating output, or combinations of actions.

When you activate an event from your XProtect Smart Client, it automatically triggers actions on the VMS system, for example, recording on a particular camera with a particular frame rate for a particular period of time. Your system administrator determines what happens when you manually activate an event.