Using the Spectrum FlashGreen attribute to inform users of alarms that have occurred but have cleared.

Products

• CA Spectrum
• DX NetOps

Issue/Introduction

Alarms can clear quickly, how can we verify if the model alarmed and the alarm cleared before anyone acknowledged that the issue happened?

• We have a number of transitional alarms that only last for several seconds before auto-clearing.
• We see these alarms being logged via AlarmNoftifier set and clear scripts, however, we sometimes don't see these alarms appear in the OneClick client. 

How can we verify if the model alarmed and the alarm cleared before anyone acknowledged that the issue happened?

Environment

• Release : All versions of Spectrum

Component : Spectrum Core / SpectroSERVER

Resolution

• Spectrum has an attribute called FlashGreen (attribute id of 0x00011a58) that is used to inform users of alarms that have occurred but have cleared.  
• This attribute needs to be set to TRUE (or Yes) for all models in the database that you want to see when an alarm has generated and cleared but was never acknowledged.  This can be done either in the Attribute Editor or in the Attribute Tab of each device.  You can use the Locater - Devices - All Devices - Select all, right click, Utilities - Attribute Editor:

• Once this is enabled, you will need to create a Global Collection that has the following parameters: 

Acknowledged =False

Condition = Normal(0)

FlashGreen = Yes 

• This will produce a result set visible within OneClick that will show all models that have the FlashGreen attribute enabled that have alarmed and the alarms have already cleared.

 

Additional Information

The trigger for this is a combination of the FlashGreen attribute and the Acknowledged attribute.  When FlashGreen is true, the Acknowledged attribute changes to No.  If a user acknowledges the alarm, the attribute changes to Yes.  If nobody acknowledges the alarm, the attribute stays at No when the alarm clears.  If you do not set FlashGreen enabled to True, when the alarm clears, the acknowledged attribute changes to Yes.  For this to work, you need to have FlashGreen set to Yes.

Once the alarm has generated and cleared and the models are in the Global Collection, to remove them from the GC you need to manually update the Acknowledged attribute to be True.  This can be done from the Attributes tab in OneClick (or using CLI).  You can then either wait for the next time the GC search runs, or right click the GC and select "Update Global Collection Now".