Create Workflows for Screen Cleaning

Occasionally the monitors for a Workstation will require its screen to be cleaned. When this occurs, you can have Workflows in place which enable a special mode. This mode makes the items on screen non-interactable for a set duration, ensuring accidental clicks are not registered. Cancel conditions can be added as well to avoid having the screen unavailable when an important event occurs, such as an emergency. In this example, we will go through setting up clean screen mode to be triggered on a button click, and to be automatically cancelled if a duress alarm occurs.

Create a Workflow to Initiate Screen Cleaning Mode

Note: It is recommend to give about 20 - 30 seconds per monitor to give the computer a thorough cleaning, depending on the type of monitor.
Before starting, you will require a Button to be added to a Display Layout or Map.
  1. In Project Explorer, right click Background Workflows and select Add.
  2. Configure the button on click trigger.
    1. Double-click the Start block and click Add.
    2. Navigate to the button you want to trigger this Workflow, then select On Click.
    3. Click OK, then OK again.
  3. Add an Action block to the Workflow
  4. Double-click the Action block to open the Action Browser.
  5. Navigate to the Display Layout you want to enable clean screen mode for, and select Start Clean Screen in the Commands pane.
  6. In the Expression pane, click Seconds.
  7. Set this to the number of seconds you want screen clean mode to be enabled for before automatically timing out. Click OK.
  8. Connect the Action block to the Start and Stop blocks.

When the configured button is pushed in Runtime, the Workstation enters screen clean mode for the configured duration.

Create a Workflow to Cancel Screen Cleaning

It is possible that when cleaning the screen, some type of critical event (e.g. high priority alarm) may occur in the system that demands attention. In this case, the Clean Screen command should be cancelled and the event should be handled. Some examples of critical events include door forced-open alarms, perimeter intrusion alarms, or fire alarms.

To create a Workflow which cancels screen cleaning when a duress alarm occurs:

  1. In Project Explorer, right click Background Workflows and select Add.
  2. Configure the duress alarm trigger.
    1. Double-click the Start block and click Add.
    2. Navigate to the integrated system the alarm will be coming from, and select the duress alarm received trigger. This may be a tag button push to tag alarm received trigger depending on the system.
    3. Click OK, then OK again.
  3. Add an Action block to the Workflow
  4. Double-click the Action block to open the Action Browser.
  5. Navigate to the Display Layout you want to enable clean screen mode for, and select Cancel Clean Screen in the Commands pane.
  6. In the Expression pane, configure the command parameters.
    1. Click Seconds and set this value to the number of seconds before the screen clean mode is disabled. Click OK.
    2. Click Color and set this to a color which will be displayed during the countdown to the cleaning mode being cancelled, then click OK. It is recommended to set this to a different color than what is configured for the Display Layout clean screen settings to ensure the Runtime operator can see the screen cleaning mode is about to be cancelled.
    3. Click OK.
  7. Connect the Action block to the Start and Stop blocks.

When a duress alarm is received in Runtime, the clean screen mode is cancelled.