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Niagara alarm SMS: send Tridium Niagara alarms as texts

When a parkade sump runs high in the spring thaw, the on-call operator gets a Niagara alarm SMS with the station, point and state. A Niagara station can already email alarms through its email service. Link one email recipient with your Welco address to your urgent alarm classes, and nothing new goes on the JACE.

Text me my Niagara alarmsBook a demo

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing

  • No texting module or modem
  • One email recipient per station
  • No per-user fees

Setup guide for

  • Niagara

Published:

A floor plan of North Tower: Sump pit (water level) goes into alarm, high level, its room turns orange and JACE North emails the alert. The email reaches Welco and the phone shows: “Welco: [North Tower] Sump pit HIGH water level, unacked at 1:12 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.”

Animation: a long Tridium Niagara alert email is trimmed into one short text: "Welco: [North Tower] Sump pit HIGH water level, unacked at 1:12 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."

Niagara alarms at night, before and after Welco

Today

  • Alarms pile up in the console or the Supervisor's alarm table, with nobody looking.
  • Changing who gets alarms often means a call to the controls contractor.
  • Morning brings a flooded parkade, a cold lobby or a warm server room.

With Welco

  • The on-call phone gets the station, the point and the state in one text.
  • Who gets which class, and at what hour, is a rule you change in Welco.
  • The station still logs the alarm, and acks still happen in Niagara.

What you need

Any system that can send an email works with Welco. Here's how to set up Tridium Niagara for building alarm texts.

A Niagara station runs on a JACE, the small controller in the mechanical room, or on a Supervisor that gathers many stations.

If a controls contractor looks after your stations, share these steps with them. The Welco side is quick once the station can send mail.

  • Workbench access to the station, with rights to add services and change the AlarmService.
  • Your outgoing mail server name, port and a login if IT requires one.
  • A verified Welco account and your Welco address. Start free if you need one.
  • Your building operators, invited by email. Each joins with their own cellphone and answers the confirm text with YES before Niagara alarms flow.

Set up Niagara alarm texts in 5 steps

These steps follow the setup most Niagara guides describe. Labels can differ slightly by version, and your controls contractor can confirm them. Recipients the station emails today are left alone.

  1. Approve the station's sender address

    Decide which From address the station will send as, such as jace-north@bas.example.ca. Add it to your approved alarm senders in Welco, or its alarms will be refused.

  2. Add the email service and an outgoing account

    In Workbench, open the station and go to Config > Services. Add the EmailService from the email palette if it isn't there. Then add an outgoing account with your SMTP host, port and login.

  3. Add an email recipient for Welco

    Under the AlarmService, add an EmailRecipient. Put your Welco address in its To field. Name it something plain, like WelcoOnCall, so the next person can find it.

  4. Link only your urgent alarm classes

    On the AlarmService wire sheet, link each urgent alarm class to the new recipient. Leave routine classes linked to the console only.

    • The recipient can limit which transitions it sends, such as offnormal and fault.
    • Leave out to-normal if you only want a text when something goes wrong.

  5. Trip a test alarm in test mode

    Turn on Welco's test mode that sends nothing so no phone rings yet. Force a safe point into alarm and check that the logged text reads well.

Send your next Niagara alarm to a phone

Sign up, verify your business and link one email recipient in the station.

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing

Text me my Niagara alarmsBook a demo

A Niagara exhaust fan alarm, before and after

An underground parkade exhaust fan stops proving flow on a weeknight. Niagara alarm emails list the station, the full source path, the alarm class and the ack state. Welco keeps the place, the problem and the time.

Alert email from jace-parkade@bas.example.ca, subject “Niagara Alarm: EF-3 Status Fault”. Welco trims it to one text of 97 characters: “Welco: [Parkade P2] EF-3 exhaust fan fault, no proof of flow at 9:40 PM. Reply STOP to opt out.”

Text received: Welco: [Parkade P2] EF-3 exhaust fan fault, no proof of flow at 9:40 PM. Reply STOP to opt out.

Characters248971 credit

Animation: the alert email "Niagara Alarm: EF-3 Status Fault" is trimmed into one text: "Welco: [Parkade P2] EF-3 exhaust fan fault, no proof of flow at 9:40 PM. Reply STOP to opt out."

A Welco alert rule can drop the source path and keep a single line for each Niagara alarm.

Tips for Tridium Niagara alarm texts

Niagara decides which alarms leave the station. Welco decides who reads them and when.

  • Text the night person, not the whole team

    Use night and weekend routing so Niagara alarms at night reach one phone. During the day, they can reach the full maintenance crew.

  • Give critical classes a backup person

    Pair the night operator with the property manager for critical classes. One alert to many phones sends each person a single copy.

  • Keep station names short

    Niagara source paths can run long. Trimming alerts to one text keeps costs down, and short station names help too.

  • Plan for a JACE that drops off

    A lost network link can trip a stack of alarms from one station. Alarm flood limits keep that pile from swamping the on-call phone.

Why didn't a Niagara alarm become a text?

Check the station first, then Welco, then the phone. Most problems sit at the station.

  • The outgoing account can't send. Look for mail errors in the station, and confirm the SMTP port and login with IT.
  • The alarm class isn't linked. Only classes wired to the email recipient leave the station by email.
  • The From address isn't approved. Welco refuses it and the feed records the reason.
  • The phone can't take texts. It may be a landline or may not have replied YES. Per-phone delivery reports spell it out.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a special Niagara module to text alarms?

No extra texting module is needed. Welco only needs the alarm email a station can send through its email service. If your station already emails alarms to someone, you add one recipient with your Welco address. If not, set up the email service and an outgoing account first.

Should I set up email on each JACE or on the Supervisor?

Either works. If your JACEs already pass alarms up to a Supervisor, set up the Welco recipient once on the Supervisor. If each JACE handles its own alarms, add a recipient on each one and approve every From address in Welco.

Do building operators need an app or Workbench to read the alarm?

No. The alarm shows up as an ordinary text that begins with Welco:, on any mobile phone. Workbench is only needed to ack the alarm or dig into the station. Each operator confirms their own number with YES before the first text.

Does Welco open a path into the JACE or the BAS network?

No. The station pushes an email out through your mail server, and Welco never connects back. There is no Fox or BACnet access and no port to open. Only From addresses you approve can turn into texts.

Can different Niagara alarm classes go to different phones?

Yes, if the class name is in the email. A Welco alert rule can match a class such as Critical or Plumbing and send it to its own phones. You can also link different classes to different email recipients in the station.

Will Niagara send a text when an alarm returns to normal?

Only if the recipient sends the to-normal transition. Turn that off to get texts for problems only. Or keep it on and add a Welco rule that drops messages showing a Normal state, so clears stay in email.

Does replying to a Niagara alarm text ack it in the station?

No. Welco emails the reply to the station's From address, and nothing flows back into the AlarmService. The alarm stays unacked until someone acks it in Workbench or the web UI. Replies also use message credits, so most crews phone the supervisor instead.

What does a Niagara alarm text cost?

A Niagara site pays no per-user fees, buys no hardware and pays no setup fee. A short alarm uses one message credit, and a trim rule keeps long source paths to one text. Test it on a live station during the 7-day trial, which includes 15 credits. See plans and pricing, in US dollars with no overage charge.

Text your next Niagara alarm to the on-call phone

Link one email recipient in your station. Welco sends the text.

Text me my Niagara alarmsBook a demo

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing