Notification & Audible Alarms

TopView supports multiple notification methods including audible alarms, email, SMS/text, voice call-out, and pagers.

Notification messages can be sent for transition into alarm, return-to-normal, upon alarm acknowledge, and escalated after the alarm event based on the current alarm and acknowledge state.

Alarm messages

• Custom alarm messages and email subjects with placeholders for current tag values, time-stamps, …

Audible Alarms

• Text-to-speech and WAV file audible alarms (local and remote)

Voice Dial-in

• Call into TopView through a VOIP extension with phone keypad navigation
• Listen to the value of any monitored tag
• Hear and acknowledge alarms
• Optional access code security

Notification (outgoing)

• E-mail notification: SMTP e-mail notification delivery available with authorization, SSL (secure), and configurable retry for SMTP failures.
  • Support for OAuth (“sign in with Google/Microsoft”) allows users to grant TopView access to email accounts without exposing passwords
  • Optional reply-to-email alarm acknowledge (using POP or IMAP) with “secure acknowledge”. Secure acknowledge provides unique acknowledge codes per alarm.
  • Attachments (files) to email notification messages (reports, graphics, instructions).
  • HTML or text-based email message body
• SMS and Messaging
  • SMS/Text messages to cellular phones using a cellular modem (GSM/CDMA) connected to a cellular network or hosted SMS provider
    • Cellular modems: Support for connected (USB/serial) and networked cellular modems. Learn more about supported SMS devices…
    • Optional reply-to-SMS alarm acknowledge with “secure acknowledge”. Secure acknowledge provides unique acknowledge codes per alarm.
    • Twilio: SMS notification using Twilio (hosted SMS provider). Outbound (v6.33 and later) and inbound (v6.37 and later).
  • Messaging
    • SIP IM (Session Initiation Protocol Instant Messaging): Instant Messaging support through SIP (v6.37 and later)
    • Microsoft Teams (v7.0 and later)
    • WhatsApp (experimental support in v7.0)
• Voice notification: audible WAV file or text-to-speech delivery to any phone with optional keypad alarm acknowledge.
  • Support for traditional analog phone lines, internal telephone systems, and hosted solutions using VOIP.
  • If your company does not have a VOIP Phone System, we have tested some hosted VOIP Providers and also have solutions to implement VOIP with existing analog lines  to replace TAPI solutions (TAPI is no longer supported in TopView). You can also make phone calls over cellular.
  • Learn more about supported voice call-out devices…
• Notification message templates: optional detailed notification message content based on delivery method and recipient in text or HTML format.
• Escalation of unacknowledged or persistent alarms
  Define additional notification behavior after the time of alarm with the ability to stop notifications after alarm acknowledge or return-to-normal. 
• Notification recipients and Active Directory option
  TopView contains a Contact Manager where notification recipients can be centrally created and managed. Contacts can be imported and linked to Active Directory users to prevent duplication of user details within TopView (e.g. email address, phone number, ….).
• SNMP Traps: send SNMP Traps for TopView alarms. Learn more…
• MQTT: publish MQTT messages upon alarm, return-to-normal, and acknowledge events. Learn more…
• Custom notification and events detection through user-written plug-in modules (TopView EventHooks)
• General
  • Alarm, return-to-normal, and acknowledge notification messages
  • Resend persistent alarms
  • Event output: send notification, return-to-normal, and acknowledge messages to string tags (PI or OPC)
  • Launch other applications in response to alarm or return-to-normal
  • Write your own event-hook code to create custom alarm notification channels.
  • Flexible recipient scheduling for notification (email, SMs, voice, …) with ability to store and send notification once a schedule is active
  • Prioritized message delivery will send high priority alarm messages first
  • Send notification messages upon lost Server connections and errors
  • Local and remote System Notification icons in the system tray