# Using accolades in alarm message

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-accolades-in-alarm-message/11233>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [February 18, 2016, 4:51pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-accolades-in-alarm-message/11233 "2016-02-18T16:51:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![thierryv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a8b319/32.png) [@thierryv](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/thierryv)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 4:51pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-accolades-in-alarm-message/11233/1 "2016-02-18T16:51:43Z")

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Greetings,

I need to insert {} in a custom message in the email notification properties of the alarm of a tag.  
Something like ‘[Admin]{Sender}Message’.  
This email is then send to another device and the email has to be in this format.  
But how can I insert the accolades?

I even tried making 2 tags, one with the open accolade and one with the closed one.  
And then make a string with these but the parser then sees the {Sender} as invalid and changes it to null.

Any ideas?

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**Author:** ![Colby.Clegg](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/colby.clegg/32/3282_2.png) [@Colby.Clegg](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Colby.Clegg)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 6:24pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-accolades-in-alarm-message/11233/2 "2016-02-18T18:24:28Z")

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Hi,

Unfortunately there is not currently an escape, and there isn’t a great work around (the only work around I could get to work would be to create an associated data item called “Sender”, and then _bind_ it’s value to a string expression of “{Sender}”. It can’t just be a string value, as that ends up with the same problem).

I’ve created a ticket for 7.8.3 to at least allow for some sort of escape. In other places, we use the paradigm that if the referenced item isn’t present (so in this case, there isn’t an actual property “Sender” to reference), instead of “null”, it would just put the text back in… which is exactly what you want.

If you can use a different character in your 3rd party program (like “[” instead), that would also work.

Regards,

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**Author:** ![thierryv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a8b319/32.png) [@thierryv](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/thierryv)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 6:42pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-accolades-in-alarm-message/11233/3 "2016-02-18T18:42:37Z")

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Colby,  
Thanks for the ticket.

To help myself out I am using a tag event to trigger a script that send the message by a HTTP put.  
This works fine.  
Is it possible to access a alarm property and use that in a tag event script?  
Something like:  
shared.myScript({CustomSmsMessage})

?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Colby.Clegg](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/colby.clegg/32/3282_2.png) [@Colby.Clegg](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Colby.Clegg)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2016, 8:11pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-accolades-in-alarm-message/11233/4 "2016-03-28T20:11:02Z")

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Hi,

Just wanted to update that this has been fixed for 7.8.3. You will be able to escape such as “{mycode}”. Note that in some cases, it will be necessary to use double escape characters, such as “\{mycode}”, which unfortunate, but due to how multiple systems parse the messages.

As for your other question, no, it is currently not possible to retrieve sub-properties of an alarm definition from inside of the tag definition. I believe that technically this may be possible to add, but I don’t think it would go into a maintenance update.

Regards,