Event and Action Overview

Event and action (E&A) management is a component of Macula, which provides additional opportunities for handling surveillance system work under certain conditions. The main task is to assign flexible device/server reactions on a user-defined basis. These scenarios may work within a single server, as well as in distributed systems with Macula Enterprise where events originating from one server can trigger actions on one or more different servers.

Events are entities that arise when something happens in the system - namely, when system or system component states changes, for instance, a video stream has been lost, a recording or disk error has appeared etc. These changes can be set up to trigger certain actions so that system administrators and/or users are notified and can react to them in a timely fashion. Additionally, there are also extra controlling entities that allow a flexible and advanced setup of event-action rules: conditions, delay times and schedules.

Using event & action management, you can specify your desired outcome for your video surveillance system’s operation and determine how software reacts to any event caught on any server and how it turns them into an automated process. Send emails, activate DI/DO, interact with any other software or just bring the attention of the operator to the device that requires their immediate action. The functionality can be used not just for a single event, but on a set of sequenced events to get rid of false alarms and improve the efficiency of the surveillance system.

Possible E&A scenarios may be:

• sending alerts through the server based on camera digital input events;

• starting or stopping video recording based on motion in specific regions during specific hours;

• switching to some camera PTZ preset if the door sensors go off at night;

• directing the camera to a specific PTZ preset if another camera registers the same movement; etc, etc.

Event & action management offers the following functionalities:

• event & action configurator rules

• standard (default) events (available for all servers)

• standard (default) actions (available for all servers)

• custom events of certain types (configurable)

• custom actions of certain types (configurable)

• global events (server-to-server data transmission)

• delay timers

• special conditions

• schedules

• mail server configuration

Each of these components is described in details in the corresponding sections of this document.

Actual setup of E&A depends greatly on your system configuration, E&A usage scenarios, required automation level and other things. However, we recommend that, regardless of system scale and architecture, you stick to the following order of E&A configuration steps for optimum results:

1. Preliminary actions

   1. Create a plan of your E&A scenarios on paper or in any diagramming/smart draw software - this will ensure you always have a basis to check against

   2. Set up your Macula system so that you have all the servers, devices, channels, users and optional elements pre-created

   3. Pre-configure all the necessary hardware equipment (e.g., camera IO wires, external physical alarms, buttons) and connect it

   4. Pre-configure all third-party programs/scripts/executable files, if necessary

2. Extra setup in Macula Console

   1. Create User Buttons, if you are going to use them

   2. Create Maps, Layouts if necessary

3. E&A Management setup per server

   1. Add mail servers if you are going to use e-mail notifications

   2. Add custom events

   3. Add conditions

   4. Add custom actions

   5. Create rules using all elements; add extra events/rules, if required

   6. Add timers, schedules and conditions to the rules

   7. Check your rule map against your initial plan from 1.1

   8. Test your rules