Ignition Alarm Management and Notification Pipelines
Key Takeaway
How to configure alarms, alarm pipelines, notification profiles, and alarm journal storage in Ignition SCADA for ISA-18.2 compliant alarm management.
Quick Answer
Ignition provides a unified alarm system that monitors tag values, triggers alarms based on configurable conditions, logs events to a SQL alarm journal, and notifies operators via email, SMS, or voice through alarm pipelines with escalation logic.
Alarm Configuration
Alarms are configured directly on tags in the Designer. Select a tag, open the Alarm properties, and add one or more alarm states:
- Setpoint alarms — High, High-High, Low, Low-Low thresholds
- Deviation alarms — Value deviates from a setpoint by more than a configurable band
- Bit alarms — Boolean state triggers (e.g., pump fault, emergency stop)
- Expression alarms — Custom conditional logic using tag expressions
Each alarm state supports priority assignment (Critical, High, Medium, Low, Diagnostic), deadband to prevent chattering, time-on and time-off delays, and associated data for contextual information.
Alarm Notification Pipelines
Pipelines define the workflow for alarm notification and escalation. Built using a visual drag-and-drop editor, pipelines can:
- Send notifications via email, SMS, or voice call
- Wait for operator acknowledgment with a configurable timeout
- Escalate to a supervisor or alternate roster if unacknowledged
- Branch logic based on alarm priority, source, or time of day
- Execute scripts for custom notification channels (Slack, Teams, PagerDuty)
Alarm Journal
The alarm journal provides persistent storage of all alarm events — active, acknowledged, cleared, and shelved — in a SQL database. The Alarm Journal Table component displays these events with filtering by source, priority, state, and time range. Journal data supports compliance reporting and post-incident analysis.
ISA-18.2 Alarm Management
Ignition supports ISA-18.2 alarm management practices including alarm rationalization worksheets, priority classification, and shelving workflows. Proper alarm management reduces alarm floods, improves operator response, and meets regulatory requirements in process industries.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ignition uses alarm pipelines — visual workflows that define notification routing, escalation logic, and acknowledgment requirements. Notifications can be sent via email, SMS, or voice call.
Yes. Ignition supports ISA-18.2 practices including alarm rationalization, priority classification, shelving, and alarm journal storage for compliance and post-incident analysis.