Freelance Operations - How can I stop the use of F12 to acknowledge the horn?
Operators just block F12 on the keyboard permanently to prevent from sound alarms - any idea to ignore presses F12?
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Hallo Elmar,
you can disable the repeating function for the keybord in Windows settings.
This helps to prevent Alarm acknowledge by fixing the F12 Key.
Or you can disable the F12 Key by using the software SharpKeys.
In sharpKeys you use Add -> Type Key, Press F12 and mark Turn Key Off and last "Write to Registy".
Hope that fits your problem.
Bernd
you can disable the repeating function for the keybord in Windows settings.
This helps to prevent Alarm acknowledge by fixing the F12 Key.
Or you can disable the F12 Key by using the software SharpKeys.
In sharpKeys you use Add -> Type Key, Press F12 and mark Turn Key Off and last "Write to Registy".
Hope that fits your problem.
Bernd
Answers
Hello Elmar
As you are a "Freelance insider", I suppose there is no easy way within the system.
If you don't intend to block or pry out the key physically, you could use specialised software for key remapping. The major drawback is that this change probably affects all applications.
Some keyboards come with such software. There is general software with this functionality (one outline), though I haven't had to use any of them yet.
I'd probably go with the MS keyboard layout creator mentioned in the article. A different keyboard layout at system level should have the lowest "total effort footprint", so to speak, especially in bigger environments.
If you need to keep F12 active in other applications, maybe this superuser thread can help (though I also haven't used this yet).
Best regards
Björn
As you are a "Freelance insider", I suppose there is no easy way within the system.
If you don't intend to block or pry out the key physically, you could use specialised software for key remapping. The major drawback is that this change probably affects all applications.
Some keyboards come with such software. There is general software with this functionality (one outline), though I haven't had to use any of them yet.
I'd probably go with the MS keyboard layout creator mentioned in the article. A different keyboard layout at system level should have the lowest "total effort footprint", so to speak, especially in bigger environments.
If you need to keep F12 active in other applications, maybe this superuser thread can help (though I also haven't used this yet).
Best regards
Björn
Hello Elmar,
If the operators want to block the control room horn it points to a suboptimal configuration of the alarm behavior for me.
In order to get a sound on an alarm you need to configure it. So someone wanted a sound to ring. Obviously, if the operators feel they need to auto-silence the sound by continuously pressing the sound-off key, too many sound triggers are configured.
You can configure the sound in the Local Alarm Configuration for an OS. The first way to reduce the amount of sounds coming up is, to restrict the sound configuration to a single OS in the control room.
You can configure sounds for alarm priorities and you can configure whether the sound should come for active-going and/or deactive-going alarms.
To reduce the number of sounds generated, restrict the sound to a single priority and only for the active going phase.

If you still get too many sounds you either have too many P1 alarms for different tags going on at the same time or the same tag repeatedly triggers a sound by coming-going-coming....
In the latter case have a look at the hysteresis of an alarm point configuration. The default value is 3.0, which means the hysteresis is 3% of the set limit value. In case you have a measuring range from 0.0 to 100.0 and you have set a Limit to 80.0, the alarm will be re-triggered if the value goes below 80.0 x (1-0.03) = 77.6 and afterwards again rises to 80.0.
Above example looks ok, but consider limits which are small (or even close to zero. Note a value of zero does not have a hysteresis at all!). For example if LL is set to 10, then the alarm is re-triggered if the value shortly goes above 10.3 and then again falls below 10.0. Here the default hysteresis can be too small and the sound might be re-triggered several times.
Solution is to increase the hysteresis for that Limit.

If the amount of sounds does not come from re-triggered alarm points, but simply because too many alarms of P1 go off at the same time, consider to not use priority controlled sounds at all, but use point specific sounds only.
Point specific sounds are configured under Hints for a specific alarm point.

So you might want to analyze, which P1 alarms always come up as a group under a certain condition and only give the earliest P1 alarm point a sound.So instead of getting 10 sounds from 10 different Tags you only get 1 sound from a single Tag.
Hope that helps
If the operators want to block the control room horn it points to a suboptimal configuration of the alarm behavior for me.
In order to get a sound on an alarm you need to configure it. So someone wanted a sound to ring. Obviously, if the operators feel they need to auto-silence the sound by continuously pressing the sound-off key, too many sound triggers are configured.
You can configure the sound in the Local Alarm Configuration for an OS. The first way to reduce the amount of sounds coming up is, to restrict the sound configuration to a single OS in the control room.
You can configure sounds for alarm priorities and you can configure whether the sound should come for active-going and/or deactive-going alarms.
To reduce the number of sounds generated, restrict the sound to a single priority and only for the active going phase.
If you still get too many sounds you either have too many P1 alarms for different tags going on at the same time or the same tag repeatedly triggers a sound by coming-going-coming....
In the latter case have a look at the hysteresis of an alarm point configuration. The default value is 3.0, which means the hysteresis is 3% of the set limit value. In case you have a measuring range from 0.0 to 100.0 and you have set a Limit to 80.0, the alarm will be re-triggered if the value goes below 80.0 x (1-0.03) = 77.6 and afterwards again rises to 80.0.
Above example looks ok, but consider limits which are small (or even close to zero. Note a value of zero does not have a hysteresis at all!). For example if LL is set to 10, then the alarm is re-triggered if the value shortly goes above 10.3 and then again falls below 10.0. Here the default hysteresis can be too small and the sound might be re-triggered several times.
Solution is to increase the hysteresis for that Limit.
If the amount of sounds does not come from re-triggered alarm points, but simply because too many alarms of P1 go off at the same time, consider to not use priority controlled sounds at all, but use point specific sounds only.
Point specific sounds are configured under Hints for a specific alarm point.
So you might want to analyze, which P1 alarms always come up as a group under a certain condition and only give the earliest P1 alarm point a sound.So instead of getting 10 sounds from 10 different Tags you only get 1 sound from a single Tag.
Hope that helps
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