Alarm annunciation

The client announces unacknowledged events three ways: it opens the event panel, it sounds a tone, and it counts them in the status bar. The first two are switched on and off from the Settings menu; the third is always on.

All of these preferences live in the user profile on the server, so a choice made at one workstation follows the account to the next.

The event panel opens by itself

Settings → Show Events on Arrival (on by default).

When a new unacknowledged event arrives, the client opens the event panel without taking focus: the operator keeps working in the current window while the list appears beside it. An event that arrives already acknowledged does not open the panel.

With the option off, the panel opens only when the operator opens it from the Window menu. The unacknowledged count in the status bar keeps counting either way, so nothing is lost — the events simply stop asking for attention on their own.

And closes by itself

Settings → Hide Events on Acknowledge (on by default).

The panel closes once the last event is acknowledged. All events count, not only those from the server: the client’s own local messages — the control success message, for one — are unacknowledged until the operator acknowledges them, and they hold the panel open.

With the option off, the panel stays on screen until the operator closes it.

The alarm tone

Settings → Sound Alarm on Event (off by default).

On Windows, while at least one event stands unacknowledged, the client repeats a system tone. It stops as soon as the last event is acknowledged rather than after a fixed time, so a client that has gone quiet is a client with nothing outstanding.

On every other platform the tone sounds once when the alarm arrives, rather than repeating: the client has no looping system sound to offer there. The option is live on both — what differs is only whether the tone repeats — and the annunciation that lasts until the last event is acknowledged is the unacknowledged count in the status bar.

Window flash

Settings → Flash Main Window on Event (off by default).

While at least one event stands unacknowledged, the client asks the desktop for attention: the taskbar button flashes on Windows, the Dock icon bounces on macOS.

The request is only made while the client’s window is not the active one — an operator already looking at the client is not interrupted — and the system withdraws it as soon as the window is brought to the front. So the flash ends when the operator turns to the client, not when the events are acknowledged; the tone and the status-bar count are what stay until the last event is acknowledged.

Spoken announcement

Settings → Speech (on by default, where it is available at all).

When an event arrives and nothing was standing unacknowledged before it, the client says “Unacknowledged alarm” once. It does not repeat while the alarm stands, and it says nothing when the last event is acknowledged: the announcement marks the arrival, and repeating it would talk over the operator.

Spoken announcements are available in the Windows build only — they use the platform’s own speech synthesis. Elsewhere the checkbox is drawn disabled rather than hidden, so the option reads as unavailable on this platform rather than as not existing.

What is always visible

The status bar shows the number of unacknowledged events and the current severity threshold. The threshold is the panel’s filter: an event below it never reaches the current-events panel and so never opens it. If an expected event did not appear, check the threshold first.

Acknowledging

Acknowledge an event by double-clicking its row, from the row’s context menu, or with Acknowledge All on the toolbar; hold Shift to select and acknowledge several rows at once. See the event panel section of the client page and the event journal.