When you track assets, one of the main things you need is to get a notification in time about an event or a state of an asset that is important to you. It can be a low battery, entering a restricted area, or a sudden rise in temperature. The cases can be very different, so it's important to have a system that can handle such tasks.
This is exactly what triggers and notifications in Tags are for, and we'd like to tell you more about them.
What is a trigger in Tags?
A trigger is a rule that activates when a specific event occurs. You can define in advance what to track, which assets or sensors are involved, and the conditions that make an event significant.
For example, a trigger can be used if:
- an asset enters or leaves a specific zone;
- equipment moves to a different floor;
- a sensor stops sending messages;
- the battery level falls below a set threshold.
When the condition is met, Tags creates an event record. Every event is an interval with a Start (the condition became true) and an End (it stopped being true). You can also configure notifications for both the start and the end of an event.
Use the Triggers tab to create and manage triggers.
Configuring a trigger
There are two ways to create a trigger in Tags: using a predefined event template ("From template") and using a custom condition ("Own condition").
Template-based trigger
When creating a trigger from a template, the user selects the event type:
- Zone - entering or exiting a zone within a building
- Layer - presence on a specific layer (e.g., a building floor)
- Speeding - exceeding a set speed threshold
- Battery low - battery level dropping below a set value
- Connection lost - absence of messages from the device for a specified duration
- Data delay - no fresh data for the given time
Own condition
This is a custom condition based on telemetry parameters.
You can create a rule that triggers an event if:
- temperature exceeds 25°C;
- a door is open;
- humidity exceeds the permissible level;
- another parameter goes outside the specified range.
Silence timeout
Silence timeout is a setting that determines how many seconds of data inactivity must pass before system automatically closes an active interval.
This setting is available for all event types except "Connection lost" and "Data delay". For these types of events you should specify the number of seconds of inactivity required to activate the trigger.
If the "Connection lost" timeout is set to 300 seconds, Tags will generate an event when no messages are received from the device for 5 minutes.
Object assignment
A trigger can be applied to various sets of objects.
- Assign the trigger to all objects (sensors and assets). In this case, the rule will also apply to any new objects added later.
- Select specific assets or sensors.
- By layer, geofence, or label. The trigger will apply to every object on the selected layer (floor), inside the geofence, or marked with the label.
Additional conditions
When configuring a trigger, you can also set additional conditions. For example, in addition to an asset entering a zone, it may also be necessary to monitor the temperature or some other parameter. Such a rule combines location data with telemetry.
To handle this, you can set additional conditions.
For example: Trigger an event if a forklift enters a cold zone and the temperature is above 25°C.
Notifications
After configuring a trigger, you can set up notifications - to receive them when an event starts, when it ends, or both.
Real-time notifications appear as pop-up alerts within the application.
Clicking the bell icon in the top-right corner of the screen takes you to the full notification list, where you can view both new and read notifications.
You can also view the list of received notifications on the details page for each specific asset or sensor.
Also, when a new notification arrives, the unread indicator of events is also displayed directly in the assets / sensors list.
Our plans for the future include continuing to work on this features. We are going to expand the list of event types, and add more channels for notification delivery.