Notification Center

When an important alarm comes in, the operator may not be at the screen. The Notification Center sends the alarm to the people you choose by SMS and e-mail. If the operator does not acknowledge it, the message moves on to the next people.

You set it up in Studio under Notifications, and the settings go to Live with the project. Live makes the decision, and messages leave from the Live computer.

The Contacts table holds each person’s e-mail address, phone number and language. Where a translation exists, the message goes in that language. A contact with Enabled cleared stays in the group but gets no messages.

The Groups tab sorts contacts into teams such as shift, maintenance or management. An escalation step goes to a group or a single contact.

Phone numbers and e-mail addresses are not sent to browser viewers, and logs show them masked.

A rule selects which alarms produce messages. All fields must match, and an empty field matches every alarm. The Matching alarms column shows how many alarms the rule covers.

Each rule has steps. A step says three things: after how many minutes, to whom and on which channel. The time counts from the end of the rule’s delay. An example chain:

If the operator acknowledges at minute 12, the Management step does not go out and the delivery log shows Escalation stopped. For a class that needs no acknowledgment, the chain stops when the alarm goes. For a class that does, the chain runs until acknowledgment even if the alarm goes. An alarm that returns while awaiting acknowledgment does not restart the chain.

If Outgoing or Acknowledged is ticked, the people the chain has reached also get a message for that event.

For a shelved alarm and in maintenance mode, no messages are produced and the chain’s clock stops. When the time is up and the alarm is still there, the chain continues from the next step.

Each channel has two routes. You choose them on the General tab.

For e-mail you choose STARTTLS, direct TLS or an unencrypted connection. The HTTP route has ready-made patterns: Netgsm, İleti Merkezi, Twilio and Teltonika router. With Custom you write the address, body and headers yourself.

• A failed send is retried after 30 seconds, then 1, 2, 5, 15 and 30 minutes.
• With E-mail if SMS fails on, an SMS that cannot be sent goes to the contact’s e-mail address.
• Above the Max per contact per minute limit, the remaining messages become one summary at the end of the minute.

SCADA computers are often closed to the internet. The modem route uses a modem with a SIM card, connected to the Live computer by USB or RS-232, and the computer does not need internet access. SMS goes straight from the SIM card. E-mail reaches the SMTP server over the modem’s data connection. The modem resolves the server name, and TLS is set up on the computer.

The modem card takes the COM port, baud rate, modem family and APN. Detect automatically picks the family from the modem’s manufacturer and model reply. The family matters only for e-mail:

The SIM PIN and APN password are entered in Live. A wrong PIN can lock the card: while Live is running, a rejected PIN is not tried again on that port until a new PIN is entered.

A template sets the SMS text, the e-mail subject and the e-mail body. Placeholders bring in the alarm number and text, class, fault location, time, tag value and project name. The template screen shows a sample with an alarm you pick and measures the SMS length.

A single SMS holds 160 characters in the GSM alphabet, or 70 with characters outside it, such as Turkish letters. On the modem route the limit is always 70 characters.

For events not tied to an alarm, a script can send messages too: Notify.send (JavaScript), Notify.Send (VBScript), scada.notify_send (Python).

The Notification center… button in the system menu opens the window.

• Delivery log: alarm, contact, channel, step and result. The recipient is masked.
• Queue: waiting messages and the next attempt time.
• Credentials: passwords, the SMS key and the SIM PIN are entered here.
• Send test…: one message to a recipient on the channel you choose.
• Maintenance mode…: silences notifications for 30 minutes to 8 hours.

Tests, maintenance mode and credentials need the Settings authorization.

• Live itself sends the messages, and there is no Windows service. If Live is closed, nothing goes out. When Live opens again, the queue continues where it stopped.
• There is no on-call or shift schedule.
• Messaging is one-way. Incoming SMS is not read, and an alarm cannot be acknowledged by SMS or e-mail.
• The Sent result means the server, provider or modem accepted the message.
• For e-mail, SIM7070 and SIM7080 modules and Windows dial-up networking (PPP) are not used.