Monitoring and notifying of "Bad Status" tag values in TopView

Monitored data points can report with a "Bad Status", which is an indication that the value of a tag in TopView may be questionable, or the server is experiencing issues.

Notification of high bad status counts using "tags_badstatus_count" or "tags_badstatus_percent" is the easiest way to prevent missed alarms and notifications.

Bad Status values may prevent alarms from occurring, depending on the "Check for Good status" setting on your tags.

You can detect bad statuses in TopView and notify people when they are present.

Detecting bad statuses in TopView

Bad statuses can be detected in aggregate using two available TopView Status Tags:

1. "tags_badstatus_count" (formerly "statusnotgood_count")
   
2. "tags_badstatus_percent"
   

You can add these Status Tags to your tag list, alarm, and notify based on these values so you can be aware of bad statuses before they cause missed alarms or notifications.

This example set up will notify a TopView administrator when the number of bad status tags is over 50% of the total tags in the TopView Configuration:

1. Add "tags_badstatus_percent" to your monitored tags on the Tags & Limits screen.
   
2. Double-click the row to open the "Alarm Limits and Notifications settings screen"
   
1. Create an alarm condition ">" with a value of 50 (for example)
3. Add the tag to a tag group tied to a TopView Administrators Email notification group
   

InTouch and System Platform can often report bad statuses after application changes or PLC adjustments.

We recommend restarting the OI Gateway first and then setting up notifications, as suggested above.
Be sure your Gateway is configured for a large number of reconnection attempts, according to our SCADA Sync Users Guide.

Best practices

1. Do not "OR" the bad status condition ("?") with another alarm condition. OR'd alarm conditions require mutually exclusive conditions to ensure alarm states transitions are consistent.
   
2. If you do not want alarms when a tag has a bad status value, use the "Check for Good Status" option in the tag's Alarm Limits and Notifications settings to prevent alarms from occurring when a status is bad.

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