In a perfect world, all devices and applications you interface to Attention! Alarm Manager Software will provide complete documentation on the format of output messages. But for those situations when things aren't quite perfect, you'll appreciate the template generation capability available when creating Attention! AM fieldsets.

Suppose you have a device that outputs important status information using a serial line port, but you are not certain of the message format, and you have no up-to-date documentation.

Just turn on the Attention! Alarm Manager Software Collector Agent for the device, and let it run for awhile before you establish alarms. The Attention! AM Server will automatically record all activity for the device over whatever time period you choose. Then, when you are ready to define alarms, you will base the fieldsets for those alarms on actual data.