By Angelo Sarto, Watchdog Engineering Technician 

Watchdog alarms can be acknowledged remotely. If you want the ability to acknowledge alarms remotely with the Watchdog system and don't want to remember to call into the Watchdog every day to check if there are any new alarms, you need to utilize the Voicemail feature for alarms. As this feature is combined with Email, Paging and/or Call Out, the voicemail system provides the ability to acknowledge alarms remotely.

Scenario:
You are driving home from work and you are only about five minutes away from your house when your pager goes off. At the next stoplight you quickly glance at the pager message and notice that it is the Watchdog system telling you that Room 123 is in alarm for a high temperature. You remember that today that room was emptied out and you were going to set it inactive but you were too busy. You know that the paging won't stop until the alarm gets resolved. You could just turn off your pager but what if there was a real alarm? You then remember that you have voicemail enabled for all of your alarms that have paging. As you pull into the garage the pager goes off again for Room 123, you quickly push the pager button and walk inside. Inside the house you grab the phone and call the Watchdog Voicemail System. It asks you for your PIN and then gives you the option to listen to your alarms. You acknowledge the alarm on Room 123, and now the alarm will stay acknowledged for your voicemail acknowledgement time. Problem solved!

How do you set this up on your system?
When you are setting up alarm methods simply check the box next to “Voice Mail Enabled”, set the “Alarm acknowledgement time” and then add each user that needs to have voicemail for this alarm, by clicking Add.

Who should I put in the Voicemail list?
You should add someone to voicemail if they meet the following two general rules:
1. This person is being remotely notified of alarms. That means that they get emailed, paged or called during non-working hours and are expected to respond.
2. This person should be able to acknowledge this alarm without coming into the building.