# Broken Custom Alarm Notifications after Upgrade to 8.1.2

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/broken-custom-alarm-notifications-after-upgrade-to-8-1-2/45507>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Tags:** ignition80\
**Created:** [April 12, 2021, 7:54pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/broken-custom-alarm-notifications-after-upgrade-to-8-1-2/45507 "2021-04-12T19:54:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AIO](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/aio/32/87549_2.png) [@AIO](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/AIO)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 7:54pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/broken-custom-alarm-notifications-after-upgrade-to-8-1-2/45507/1 "2021-04-12T19:54:11Z")

</div>

Hey folks,

I’m working with a pair of servers running 8.1.2 and using scale-out architecture.  
Since upgrading to 8, we’ve noticed the following inconsistencies with alarm notification:

The alarm notification pipeline uses the following default message:

```auto
At {eventTime|hh:mm:ss}, alarm "{name}" at "{displayPath}" transitioned to {eventState}.

```

Many of the alarms use a custom message variation that looks something like this:

```auto
At {eventTime|hh:mm:ss}, alarm "{name}" at "{displayPath}" transitioned to {eventState}: {value}.

```

An alarm that uses the default pipeline message compiles fine and sends as expected:  
`At 10:15:03, alarm High Level at Sump transitioned to active.`  
While a custom message will result in nulls:  
`At null, alarm High Level at Sump transitioned to null. 23.025`

To add to this, the custom message with associated value will fail to compile if the alarm tag is in the same folder as the referenced value binding. Moving the alarm tag to the root tag folder however will compile with the correct value tag added. I believe this to be related to not using a fully qualified path.

For instance, the working tag reference binding is `[Ignition]WW_Pond/Analog/Level`. This binding is is being shortened to `[.]../Analog/Level` for tags that share a common folder, and will not compile.

Can anyone offer any guidance as to what might have changed from 7.9.12 to 8.1.2 that would have caused this behavior? I notice the tag alarm configuration has many more properties availble for binding, but cannot find them documented anywhere in the user manual, and [the old page seems to not be available.](https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC81/Custom+Email%2C+SMS%2C+and+Voice+Scripts)

Many thanks.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AIO](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/aio/32/87549_2.png) [@AIO](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/AIO)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2021, 12:03am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/broken-custom-alarm-notifications-after-upgrade-to-8-1-2/45507/2 "2021-04-13T00:03:35Z")

</div>

After speaking with support, it sounds like in order for the following syntax to work, it needs to be forced into an expression.

```auto
At {eventTime|hh:mm:ss}, alarm "{name}" at "{displayPath}" transitioned to {eventState}.

```

Would then become:

```auto
'At '+"{eventTime|hh:mm:ss}"+', alarm '+"{name}"+' at '+"{displayPath}"+' transitioned to '+"{eventState}"+'. '

```

Once done, the issue with the tag references appears to have resolved itself.  
Definitely an issue to be aware of when upgrading from 7.9 to 8.1.2.