Aliases are the various names or abbreviations found in BAS alarms that represent a specific building or asset. They can be used in Virtual Facility for identifying buildings, floors, rooms, equipment, and systems.
Examples:
- Building - "Building A" could have aliases of Bldg A, BldgA, BA, Building-A, and 00A
- Floor - "Mezzanine 4" could have aliases of Mezz 4, 4th Flr Mezzanine, 4F Mezz, 4Mezz
- Room - "Room 101 (Office)" could have aliases of Office 101, RM101, Rm 0101, and 101 Exec Office
- Equipment - "AHU-1" could have alias of AHU1, AHU01, AH-1, ACS-1, Air Handler 1, and Unit 1
- System - "Chilled Water System" could have aliases of CHW Sys, CHW System, CHW-1, Chill Water System
Understanding what aliases exist in alarms helps the Virtual Facility parser associate alarms to assets more accurately. BAS alarm texts are often non-standardized and can be inconsistent, therefore, it is important to understand what multiple words and abbreviations exist in alarms to reference the same asset. The more obscure the alias, the less likely that the parser is able to identify it correctly without the alias being known.
Aliases are also important for correctly assigning assets to alarms that have not yet been seen by Virtual Facility. Having more complete asset aliases mean that future alarms will be associated to the correct asset.
Parser Interaction and Decision Hierarchy
Virtual Facility's alarm parser minimizes the need to manually assign alarms to an asset. The parser uses a combination of VF standard libraries, industry terms, previously seen variants, and machine learning to identify assets within the text of a BAS alarm. If a known alias is found in an alarm text, the parser will ignore what it thinks is correct and default to the asset of the alias. In cases where a human has manually entered the asset, the human-entered value is always honored.
Decision Hierarchy
- Human-Entered Values
- Aliases
- Standard Parsed Values
Viewing Aliases for an Asset
Aliases are visible on the Details tab of the asset slide out.
Valid Aliases and Word Boundaries
Aliases are strings of text that must be bound by a separator within the alarm text, meaning that a boundary of a space or other punctuation must exist at the beginning and end of the entire alias string.
Example: The alias of "AHU1" for asset AHU-1:
Valid alias & correct word boundaries - The "AHU1" alias will be correctly identified in the following alarm texts, and the alarm will be associated to the AHU-1 asset:
- AHU1_DAT_Alm
- Building4 AHU1 FanFail
- BA.AHU1.ZTLO
- AHU1-CommonAlrm
Invalid alias & incorrect word boundaries - The "AHU1" alias will not be identified in the following alarm texts, and the alarm will not be associated to the AHU-1 asset:
- AHU1DATAlm
- Building4AHU1FanFail
- BAAHU1ZTLO
- AHU1CommonAlrm
Creating an Alias
For an existing asset
From a table - Click on an asset in a table to open the asset slideout. Click to the Details tab. Click the "+ Add Alias" button at the bottom. This will open the Add Alias modal. Enter the alias exactly, then click Save.
This alias will appear in the Aliases area of the slideout. Changes can be previewed with the Alias Preview (Beta Feature), see below. Click the Update button to apply the alias change.
Adding aliases will trigger a reparse of alarms that will be evaluated against the aliases according to the Decision Hierarchy detailed above. This reparse may take several minutes to complete, so users should not expect to see updates immediately.
Alias Preview (Beta Feature)
When creating an alias for an existing asset, users will be given the option to "See Affected Alarms", Clicking this button will show a preview of the alarms that will potentially be affected by the alias change. It should be noted that this feature is still in Beta, so there may be alarms shown in the preview that will not be affected after applying the alias due to human-entered values or incorrect word boundary identification. This should be considered expected behavior.
For a new asset
After filling in the required fields in the Create Asset slideout, click the "+ Add Alias" button at the bottom. This will open the Add Alias modal. Enter the alias exactly, then click Save. This alias will appear in the Aliases area of the slideout.
Additional aliases may be added by clicking the "+ Add Alias" button and repeating the process. When the desired aliases have been added, click the Create Asset button to finish the process.
Validating Applied Changes
Alarm reparsing happens in the background after applying an alias. You may continue to work in-platform as usual, but updated alarm associations may take several minutes to take effect.
To check that alarm to asset associations have been applied, you may do one of the following:
- From an alarm, verify that the asset name shown at the top of the alarm slideout matches the expected value after applying the alias.
- Within tables, columns for Associated Alarms and Alarm Asset Name can be used to verify associations for both asset and alarm, respectively.
- From an asset, verify that the expected alarms appear in the Activity tab of the asset slideout.
Removing or Changing Aliases
Click on an asset in a table to open the asset slideout. Click to the Details tab. Click the "X" next to any alias that you which to remove. New aliases can be added back in using the "+ Add Alias" button at the bottom. Click the Update button to apply the alias change.
Removing aliases will trigger a reparse of alarm in the same way that adding an alias does. Removing an incorrect or overextended alias will result in the incorrectly associated alarms being reevaluated using any remaining aliases, or the general parser logic.
Best Practices
What should I create aliases for?
- Asset on alarms that are labeled as either Unknown Building or Unknown Asset.
- Assets that are found to be parsed incorrectly and associated to the wrong alarms.
- Similarly named assets within the same building.
- Unique asset naming that may not be recognizable by industry standards.
- Specialty equipment that may be unique to your facility or out of the normal scope of facilities alarm management.