Set up a Smart Alert
What this guide covers
Creating and editing a Smart Alert: a rule that watches live values on a logger and notifies you when a condition stays true. Every field and badge is defined in Smart Alert field definitions.
Where to find it
In the sidebar, click My Devices for the device Overview, or expand it and pick your logger. It opens on a row of tabs: choose Smart Alerts. Alerts run down the left, each with a badge; the right side shows templates until you open one.
Who can do what
No permission gates this tab: anyone who can open the logger can view, create, edit and delete its alerts. They belong to the logger, so everyone sees the same list.
Step 1: Start from a template
Pick a card: Battery low, Grid outage, High consumption and so on. It opens one sentence with the numbers blank, so you fill in the threshold and how long it must hold. A greyed-out card reads Not available on this plant. Build your own opens the editor empty.
Step 2: Say when it should fire
Condition rows read left to right: a value, a comparison, something to compare against. Add condition joins another with AND or OR. Compare against a number, or another live value, by switching Fixed value to Variable. On/off values offer their two states by name.
Under When, Must hold for (s) filters out a brief dip and Clear after (s) stops a flapping value notifying you repeatedly.
Step 3: Set the severity and the message
Treat it as sets Info, Warning or Error. That changes how urgent the alert reads, not which channel carries it: every Smart Alert arrives under the one Smart alerts category.
Leave Message blank and the alert describes itself. Otherwise use the placeholders under Insert into message: each names the value it reads and drops in at your cursor. The blue sentence below the form says what the alert will do.
Step 4: Save, then test
Save alert. It starts watching straight away unless you clear Enabled.
Reopen it and use Test now: it evaluates the condition immediately and says whether it is true right now, notifying nobody and ignoring Must hold for (s). The quickest way to catch a comparison written backwards.
Test now appears only on a saved alert.
Common errors and fixes
- Needs attention on an alert: its condition cannot be worked out. The reason is on the row.
- Fixed value 'x' is not a number. Something non-numeric was typed as the threshold.
- This logger cannot fill in {A2}. It needs software 9.335 or newer. Remove them or use {A} and {B}. Your message names a second or later condition row.
- Smart Alerts needs newer logger software replaces the tab. Update the logger, then Refresh.
- Rule limit reached (32). Delete an alert first.
Tips and gotchas
- Deleting a condition row shifts the placeholders in your message. Check the text before saving.
- For a value the logger does not report directly, create it on the System Variables tab, Computed. It then appears in the value list here.