Activate and stop alarm

Trigger alarm

In the tab "Trigger alarm", you can see all alarms that you have access rights to. You can find alarm number, the name, the first stored group, the date, the username of the last change as well as the status of each alarm in a well-structured table.

The drop-down field «Organizational Unit» can be used to narrow down the list of displayed alarms as desired. This option is only available if the user has access to different organizational units (Departments). If a category has been assigned to the alarms, you can also filter for that.

Only if the launch via web portal has been configured for the respective alarm, you will see a "trigger" button for an alarm. When clicking on it, a security prompt appears. You can then choose to launch the alarm, schedule the alarm or edit the alarm text, persons and groups before the alarm is triggered (if this was enabled during the alarm configuration).

Depending on the configuration, help texts and warnings were added to help the user to remember the original alarm configuration. It is now shown what was pre-configured in the alarm, whether persons and groups would be added or overwritten as well as a hint whether a calendar or duty roster might overwrite the whole settings all together. See screenshots for examples.  

If you choose to launch the alarm with the pre-configured audience, the following logic checks will be applied (depending on the alarm configuration).

If you decide to change the audience for this particular alarm trigger, the final composition of the alarm audience is determined by whether "Overwrite persons and groups" is switched on or off in the alarm settings.

1. If "Overwrite persons and groups" is switched off, persons and/or groups, as well as geo-location profiles added in this dialogue will simply be added to the pre-configured alarm audience.
2. If "Overwrite persons and groups" is switched on, and you select persons and/or groups in this dialogue, only these persons and groups will be notified. Pre-configured persons, groups, calendars, duty rosters, and geo-location profiles will be neglected.

If "Overwrite persons and groups" is switched on, but no persons or groups are selected in this dialogue, the pre-configured alarm audience will be notified.

Exercise mode

The Exercise Mode feature allows users to trigger alarms for demo or trial purposes. To activate this mode, users must enable the switch " Exercise Mode"   

In Exercise Mode, each alarm triggered will display "[TEST ALARM]" at the beginning of the message. This will even be added to messages of alarms for which editing the message is generally prohibited. Please note that this option is exclusively available for alarm triggering from the web portal. 

1.  For Reports:

After selecting the organizational unit and categories, users can filter the alarms based on different modes:  

• All: This option combines both test and live alarms.  
• Test: It displays alarms triggered in Exercise Mode.  
• Live: This option shows only live alarms.  

1. For Statistics:  

Once the organizational unit and period are selected, users can utilize the Alarm Mode filter to sort alarms accordingly:  

•     All: This option combines both test and live alarms.  
•     Test: It presents alarms triggered in Exercise Mode.  
•     Live: This option displays only live alarms.  

Alarm simulation

The alarm simulations can be used to verify that an alarm or whole alarm flow is correctly configured before activating it in a real emergency.

When a simulation is run, the alarm is processed by the system exactly as it would be in a live situation; however, no messages or notifications (SMS, email, voice calls, or other channels) are sent to the persons or groups included in the alarm(s).

To start an alarm simulation, an alarm must first be configured or multiple alarms must be connected within an alarm flow.

The simulation can then be initiated via the Alarm Cockpit by selecting the desired alarm or alarm flow.

The Trigger button must be clicked for the selected alarm, and the Simulate alarm option must be clicked.

The user is then redirected to the Alarm Monitor page, where all persons, groups, and messages are displayed as they would be during a live alarm.

On the Alarm Monitor, a notification is shown indicating that the alarm has been launched in simulation mode and that no messages or notifications are being sent to persons or groups. The same information is also made available in the alarm reports.

How to get feedback in alarm simulation mode?

Because no real notifications are sent, recipient feedback cannot be collected automatically. 

The system updates notification statuses internally:

• If the alarm requires confirmation from recipients, their notification status is set to Notified - indicating the notification would have been delivered.
• If no confirmation is required, the status is set to Sent (no feedback expected) and the use case flows are immediately closed.

You can manually record simulated feedback for selected recipients to test how the alarm handles different response scenarios. This lets you verify escalation rules, re-notification logic, and feedback thresholds without involving real participants.

How to end an alarm simulation?

A simulation can be stopped the same way as a live alarm - by closing or cancelling the alarm instance from the alarm monitoring view.

After the simulation ends, you can review the results to assess whether the alarm behaved as expected. Alarm reports will be available after the alarm simulation has ended.

The following features are turned off for the duration of the simulation:

• Chat - the in-alarm chat room is not created
• Audio conference - no conference is started, automatic dial-in to conference is disabled
• Video conference - no video session is started
• Location tracking - recipient location is not tracked
• Initiator added to collaboration - the person who triggered the alarm is not automatically added to the collaboration session
• Incident, local alarm - Simulated alarm does not create incidents and local alarms
• "set availability of alarms" and "stop other alarms" features do not work with simulated alarms
• Response-based groups do not take simulated alarms into consideration
• Sending follow-up notifications is not available for simulated alarms

Schedule alarm

Schedule Alarm can be used when a person wants to trigger an alarm after a specific time interval or at a specific day, date or time.  

• In the alarm cockpit, while triggering an alarm, Click on Schedule Alarm.  
• A pop-up screen appears, which offers two options:  

1. Relative time- The time interval after which the alarm will be launched. Add minutes to the blank space and click on schedule.

1. Fixed time- The exact time and date at which the alarm will be triggered. Select the date and time and click on set and then schedule to finally schedule an alarm.  

Monitor and stop alarm

After you triggered an alarm, you will automatically be taken to the alarm monitor, where you can monitor alarm progress and responses, and stop the alarm.