Notifications Overview
CygNet Software supports several types of notifications, which are sometimes referred to as callouts. Notification types include email, SMS (text) messages, voice messages (via a SIP server or Dialogic board), messages sent to third-party notification services, pager messages (alphanumeric and numeric), and net send messages. A text message (via SMS) can be sent to a mobile phone using an email notification. Voice messages can be sent over Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in a Cloud environment using the SIP protocol. Messages can also be sent to communication ports for specialized applications. WAV files can be sent using systems that support voice notifications.
Notifications are processed by the General Notification Service (GNS). A notification is configured in the GNS and supports many different options, including: a notification type, address or number of the recipient, a description, notification messages (alarm set and alarm clear messages), propagation rules, acknowledgment options, resend options, and blackout periods.
A notification can be sent to up to 1,000 different recipients (addresses associated with the notification). The GNS processes notifications in alphabetical order sorted by notification type, then by address. It also eliminates any duplicates before sending.
Notification Features
CygNet notifications include the following features:
- Notifications can be sent when alarms are set and/or when alarms are cleared.
- Notifications can require acknowledgment and can be escalated if not acknowledged. Acknowledgment methods depend on the type of notification, but include acknowledging voice messages while on the line with the system, dialing into the system and entering the acknowledgment ID, acknowledging the message in the GNS queue, or sending an acknowledgment email (or SMS) message back to the system.
- Notifications can be configured to continuously resend while the alarm condition exists.
- Blackout periods can be applied.
- Notifications can be sent to individuals or groups.
- Notification message text can be static text or dynamically created through the use of text tokens that represent a point attribute. For example, you can substitute in a tag’s value and description for a dynamic value in the message. Tokens allow a small number of messages to be applied to a wide range of tags. Any alphanumeric-type notification can be a dynamic message. See Using Tokens in Notifications for more information.
- In addition to current value information about the point that triggered the callout, notification messages can also include data values or descriptive information about other points, adding more context to your notification messages. You can include a reference point token in a notification that resolves to another point in the same CVS, or to another point in a different CVS. Implicit (meaning the same facility as the point triggering the alarm), relative, and absolute facility references are supported.
- Notifications can be forwarded to external recipients via a custom third-party plugin. See CygNet Notification Plugin Interface for more information.
- Notifications and acknowledgments are logged as events in the ELS and to the GNS log file, if the appropriate keywords are configured in the Gns.cfg file. See GNS Configuration File Keywords for more information.
The GNS must be configured to support each type of notification. The topics in this section provide information about notification record types, notification address types, and notification message types.
CygNet Broadcast
A simple feature is available that allows an administrator to display small messages, such as upcoming outages or important system information, across the top of the application window inside specific CygNet clients: CygNet Studio and CygNet Vision. The broadcast messages are stored and distributed by the GNS. Broadcast messages are created via script using methods in the CxGNS COM API. The whole feature is controlled via GNS service configuration keywords: ENABLE_BROADCAST and BROADCAST_REFRESH_RATES.
See CygNet Broadcast for more information.
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