Dickson Webinar: The Power of Alarms

Recently, we hosted a webinar about DicksonOne’s alarm capabilities and some of the best practices for implementation. It opened up a great dialogue with our DicksonOne users that we thought was worthy of sharing and could be a great resource for those who were unable to attend. Below you will find a link to the recording of the webinar along with the Q&A that also includes some links to helpful resources.

If you have additional questions feel free to reach out to us at support@dicksonone.com.

The Power of Alarms

Q&A

Below are some of the questions asked during our webinar sessions. You will also find links to other resources that will go into further detail on specific subjects.

DicksonOne Alarms

Q: Can a user create more than one alarm and apply it to a device?

A: Yes, a user can create multiple alarms for one or more devices. Upper and lower limits can be created by applying multiple alarms to a device, and a device can also have a hardware not reporting alarm for when the device is not reporting to DicksonOne.

 

Q: Can you choose the device sample interval?

A: Yes, the sample interval can be configured in the device settings as well as in the manage devices page where that interval settings can be applied to in bulk. Read About Sample Intervals & Alarm Delays.

 

Q: How do alarms work when there is a power outage or the device is not reporting to DicksonOne?

A: If a not reporting alarm is configured on a device, the notification will be sent out that the device is not reporting. Visit Not Reporting Alarms.

 

Q: Are alarm templates visitable to everyone?

A: All users with Manage access are able to view and edit alarm templates. Users with Read Only access will not be able to view or edit alarm templates.

 

Q: Can there be multiple alarm delays and escalations?

A: Yes, there can be multiple notifications created for the alarm by selecting the amount of readings before the notification is triggered and that will create the dealy as well. Visit  Using the Alarm Escalation Feature .

 

Q: Can an alarm exceed the MKT value?

A: DicksonOne does NOT currently offer alarms for Mean Kinetic Temperature.

 

Q: Do all Dickson products have an audible alarm toggle?

A: The DicksonOne data loggers such as the DWE, TWE, and TWP all have an audible alarm toggle in DicksonOne. Other Dickson devices do offer audible alarms but their configuration may differ.

 

Q: When an escalation is in progress and someone responds, how do you cancel the notifications from continuing to those further down the chain?

A: When an alarm is triggered there is no way to “snooze” the alarm such that further notifications are not sent. The exception being you can snooze the audible alarm on a TWE or TWP device but doing so will not prevent SMS, phone, or email messages from being sent. Only correcting the condition will cause the alarm to clear or future notifications to not be sent.

 

Q: What are the total readings for an escalation?

A: If the first escalation is 5 readings, and the second escalation is 10 readings, the first escalation is the first 5 readings and the second one is the first 5 readings plus 5 more readings to make it a total of 10.

 

Q: After the 3rd escalation, will it cycle notifications again until the problem is resolved or does it stop notifying? Can you set it up to keep sending emails texts etc until the problem is fixed?

A: Once a notification is sent out for a triggered alarm, the notifications will not continue to repeat.

 

Q: When you select the phone notification method for an alarm, what message does the called party hear? Is it customizable? Are other notification methods customizable?

A: The messages that are included in the Email, SMS, and Phone cannot be customizable. The notification includes the condition, device, channel, time the condition occurred and location.

 

Q: Can we configure hysteresis? Or something similar? or what is the policy the system took to notify the alarms off?

A: DicksonOne does offer the ability to program in a custom delay for any given alarm. Because the hysteresis changes by application the specific delay for an application, if any, must be determined by the user.

 

Q: What happens after an audible alarm has been triggered

A: An audible alarm can be snoozed on the device. Once the audible alarm is triggered it is not expected to continue to go off again. The alarm clears after the first reading that is back in range.

 

Q: Why am I receiving so many notifications?

A: Notifications are triggered according to the conditions that are set, as well as the sample interval that is selected. Changing the amount of readings per an escalation can allow a delay as well as the threshold that is set.

 

System

Q: Is DicksonOne validated?

A: While Dickson does follow a rigorous software development lifecycle (SDLC) we do not validate the system upon every release. Many of our customers do choose to validate the system either on their own, with the use of our DicksonOne IQOQ Validation Package  or even our Validation Service.

 

Q: Can acknowledgments and comments be deleted from DicksonOne

A: No, acknowledgments and comments cannot be removed from the system or edited as they are significant to the audit trail; however, users may add additional comments to explain previous comments

 

Q: Can the superuser be changed?

A: The owner of an account is the first user who registered your organization’s DicksonOne account. You can add additional owners or change the existing owner to a new one. As a best practice, we do recommend having more than one owner. To request a change to your account owner, the current owner must request that in writing to our DicksonOne support staff.

 

Dickson Hardware

Q: What is the extent of calibration?

A: Dickson offers 1-Point and 3-Point NIST traceable calibration. Look at talking to their auditors to determine requirements. We recommend that you also check your regulatory bodies for calibration requirements

 

Q: If there is some network issue and we are not receiving reports from the device, then how to download data from the device itself?

A: On the TWE and TWP the device data including the channels on it can be downloaded to a flash drive and save as CSV files. Once the device is reporting to DicksonOne, the information and data will be updated

 

Q: What is the battery life of DicksonOne Devices

A: According to DWE specifications the device has a battery backup of one week, and the TWE specifications have a 70-hour backup battery

 

Mobile

Q: Is the mobile app going to have more functionality soon such as the ability to “pause” the alarm if we know the temp is off due to a known issue

A: We plan on making changes to the mobile app to introduce features that are beneficial to the user. We always welcome feedback and it is important to Dickson. For more information on how to submit feedback, please email us Feedback