Wonderware Alarm List Issue

Hello all,
First of all, pardon my lack of expertise, but I guess if I was an expert I wouldn't be asking the questions.

I'm having an issue with an active alarm list in a Wonderware (2012 R2) application using Archestra. The alarm list, which I think is technically called an Alarm Control Viewer, will display all of the appropriate information when the alarm is UnAck but when I acknowledge the alarms (we use Acknowledge All) the alarm comment goes blank. It is still available in the alarm history but I think this comes from DB Logger. I read all over the internet and InTouch user manuals to find out why. All of the culprits I found didn't fix my problem. Below are what I've tried.

1. Install ASP2012R2-P01 patch
2. Make sure "Use default Ack comment" is unchecked
3. Make sure "Retain Ack Comment As Alarm Comment" is unchecked

Right now there are no settings enabled to allow Ack Comments but I checked anyways.

I didn't develop the application, so I don't know if the alarm list was a copy from a previous version (2012 or 10.1 if any) in case something doesn't carry over.

I'm afraid we may have to do some scripting to copy alarm comments but this may not even be available. Otherwise, I'm curious to know if there is a registry entry this is active that shouldn't be.

All help is greatly appreciated.

Jay

Jay, you should know InTouch has two separate objects to show the alarms: summary and history. Alarm summary only shows something if the alarm is active. Once the alarm condition is gone and you "acknowledge" the alarm, it will be gone from the alarm summary list. There's even an option to clear the alarm automatically from summary when the alarm returns to normal. Many operators un-check this option to make sure they see the alarms and acknowledge them manually.

In your case I think InTouch works as designed. You just have to use the history list to see past alarms. Also look in the tag database to make sure the alarm comment for each alarm tag is not blank.

I'm aware of the difference between the summary and history. History works fine and I had to look at it to verify past alarms and that it does indeed work. I've checked all of the tags to see if the comment existed and they all do. The alarms do disappear from the summary once the alarm is gone and and it is acknowledged. My only problem is the alarm comment vanishing on active but acknowledged alarms. This application was merged from 2012 to 2012R2 through the course of its development. I don't know if that is the issue or not. I believe this has been the only application developed in 2012R2 for us, so I don't know if this problem is affecting anything else.

I could see from the Patch 01 that it suppose to fix the alarm comment:

HF CR L00124873 SR 43910669: If an alarm was acknowledged with "AlarmClient.ACK.Selected ("")" or �AlarmClient.ACK.Selected (NULL)" (NULL or empty string) functions within a script, the default Alarm comment was not displayed.

... but in your case it still doesn't fix the issue.

Did you look in the ack button to see if it has any scripts behind? The other option is to export the database and check for errors. The worst case scenario, you might have to rebuild the application. I'm sorry. I cannot duplicate your problem on my testing application.