Glossary¶
Account: Your company's space in Whisker.io. All locations, devices, users, roles, alerts, schedules and dashboards belong to one account.
Account Admin Role: The account-level permission for editing account details and the HMI PIN policy, managing scheduled reports, assigning account roles, and viewing the audit log. See Roles and permissions.
Acknowledge (ack): Telling Whisker.io that someone is dealing with an alert, which stops further notifications for that incident. You can acknowledge by replying to the alert text, pressing 1 on an alert call, or in the web portal. See Acknowledging alerts.
Ack code: The 4-digit code in an alert text. Reply ACK followed by the code to acknowledge that alert, for example when you have several open alerts at once.
Active alert: An alert that has fired and not yet cleared. Shown by red icons across the portal.
Alert: A rule that watches one channel and notifies people when the value passes a threshold, or when the device stops reporting, for a set time. See How alerts work.
Alert contact: A person, or a service such as an answering service, who receives alert texts, emails or calls. Not a login. Can be linked to a user or standalone. See Alert contacts.
Alert History: The list of every alert notification sent (who, how, when and the result), under Alerts → Alert History. Only for the View Alert History role. See Alert history and notes.
Alert Notes: Where the cause and resolution of each alert are recorded. See Alert history and notes.
All at once (texting): An alert setting that texts everyone on the active schedule at the same time. Compare one at a time. See Texts, emails and calls.
Assign Account Roles: The dialog that chooses a role for each account-level permission. See Roles and permissions.
Audit log: The account-wide record of changes and security events, including refused attempts and activity at on-site panels. See Audit log.
Bitmask: Which bits of a register channel an alert or status widget looks at. 65535 means all 16 bits.
Channel: One measured or reported value on a device. The thing you graph, place on HMIs and attach alerts to.
Cluster bubble: The numbered circle on the map that groups nearby locations when zoomed out. Green, red or amber sums up their status.
Configured Products: The tree on the left of a location's page: Location → Hub → Device → Channel, with live status icons. You drag channels from it onto HMI screens.
Cover: A temporary change to a schedule, such as "Tom covers for Bob tonight". It ends on its own and never changes the schedule itself. See Covering and holidays.
Dashboard: A board of panels of gauges and trend graphs, from any channels in the account, with its own view and edit roles. See Dashboards.
Days To Empty: How long a tank will last at its recent rate of use.
Delay: How many minutes a condition must last before an alert fires.
Delivery problem report: A daily email listing alert contacts whose number or email address stopped working, or who opted out of texts. Sent to the Receive Delivery Problem Reports role. See Texts, emails and calls.
Escalation: Notifying more, or more senior, people the longer a problem goes unanswered.
Fallback: What happens when nobody acknowledges an alert after every lap of the schedule, for example an email to the account's administrators. See Schedule groups.
HMI: A graphical screen belonging to a location: widgets bound to channels over a picture of your facility, with its own view, modify and remote-command roles. Some dialogs say "Nexus HMI Tab". See Locations and HMIs.
HMI PIN code: A 4- to 9-digit number, separate from your password, that you enter at on-site panels and in WhiskerHMI. Your account can require one and set its length. See Logging in.
Holiday: A date on the account's holiday list. Schedules can run on holidays, skip them, or run only on them. See Covering and holidays.
Hysteresis: How far a value must come back past the threshold before an alert clears. Stops an alert flapping on and off.
Inactivity alert: An alert that fires when a channel stops reporting for a set time.
Incident: One firing of an alert. Notifications continue until someone acknowledges the incident or the condition clears. See Acknowledging alerts.
Laps: How many times Whisker.io works through a schedule's list of contacts, one at a time, before giving up. 0 means keep going until someone acknowledges or the alert clears. See Schedule groups.
Location: A physical site on the map, with its own equipment, HMIs, alerts, permissions and history.
One at a time (texting): An alert setting that texts the contacts on the active schedule in order, waiting between each, until someone acknowledges. Voice calls always work this way. Compare all at once.
Opt-out (STOP / START): Replying STOP to a Whisker.io text stops all texts to that phone number. Only the person can turn them back on, by texting START. Administrators can't opt someone back in. See Texts, emails and calls.
Role: A named group of users. Each protected feature is granted to a role; for most features, no role means everyone. See Roles and permissions.
Schedule: One time window in a schedule group, such as weekdays 8–5, with an ordered list of contacts and how to reach them (text, email, call). See Schedule groups.
Schedule group: A named set of schedules that decides who is notified when an alert fires, in what order and how. Each alert uses one schedule group. See Schedule groups.
Set User Alerts: The dialog that adds a person's alert contact to every alert on the devices you choose. See Managing users.
Snooze: Pausing a device's alerts for a time, with a reason and an optional repeat, for example during maintenance. Snoozed devices show blue instead of red. See Snoozing alerts.
Threshold alert: An alert that fires when a value goes above or below a limit for the delay time.
Two-factor authentication (2FA): A 6-digit code texted to you at sign-in, as well as your password. Turned on per user. See Logging in.
View Only user: A limited login for wall displays: can look but not change anything, has no Control Panel, and stays signed in. See Managing users.
Whisker.Block™: A D6 Labs sensor or I/O device that reports through a hub.
Whisker.Hub™: The gateway that connects a site's devices to the cloud.
Widget: One item bound to a channel: on an HMI (gauge, tank, status light, sparkline) or on a dashboard panel (gauge, graph, text).