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Generic Events Source Doesn't Link to Camera

Answered
Permanently deleted user

Summary:When sending Generic Events to the Nx Witness server, you can link the event to a camera at a specific time stamp so clicking on the "Description" of the event opens the camera. However, we have been unable to link the "Source" so that the Source of the event in the Event Log is the same as the camera that acts as a Source for all other events. This means that if the user filters by Camera in the Event Log, no Generic events show up even if the event is successfully linked to that camera, and the camera opens when the event is clicked.

You can see this in the event log where the "Source" for Generic Events lacks the camera icon, even when the event is linked to the camera and the name matches:

How can we make the source of the Event link directly to a camera so that the event is filterable with the camera drop down in the Event Log? We tried sending camera IDs but they showed up as plaintext. 

Is this possible with Generic Events or with the Metadata Plugin SDK?

Environment:
Nx Witness Version: 4.1.0.31398
Client OS: N/A
Server: N/A
Network Topology: 1 server with 13 cameras directly connected to it at one site
Special features: Nothing except the site has two perpetual licenses attached to it (for 12 and 4 cameras) rather than a single license. No other 3rd-party integrations. Our integration has admin rights and is using server time to send events.
Reproduction Scenario: Send any generic event with a camera name.

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Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • Anton Babinov
    • Network Optix team

    Hi Benjamin,


    thanks for the detailed description. At the moment it isn't possible to link the generic event to a camera in the Event Log. Server considers generic events as an external trigger. The idea was to use the source field to write name of the software or script which triggers an event. Could you please provide more details on your use case scenario so that I'll be able to share your feedback with our dev team? Is this something you wish to use on daily basis? Which task would it help to solve?

    Metadata Plugin SDK allows you to trigger an analytic event, which can be linked to a camera. You can check our sample analytic plugin as an example. Sample plugin can trigger 'new track started' analytic event. However, analytic event will appear in Event Log only if you have some action assigned to it with event rule:

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  • Permanently deleted user

    Thanks Anton, that's what I suspected but I wanted to confirm.

    Our use case it to make our Analytics Events as useful and intuitive to the customer as possible. Think about how this UI looks to the customer:

    Based on the order, one would expect the "Any Camera" drop down to align with "Source" from a filtering perspective. Because you can't link the Source to a camera using Generic Events, you end up with a UI that feels broken to the customer: The drop-down that seems like it should filter "Source" just doesn't work, and it leaves them with no way to filter based on Source at all. Because of this we've basically had to include the Source, camera, and caption information within the "Description" field to make our alerts searchable at all.

    Lining up the filters and fields and making the Event Log more accessible would clean up the UI a lot from the user perspective: We get a lot of great feedback on how easy to use the Event Log is because people never use it before we show it to them and they associate it with our product.

    We're planning to migrate to a Plugin for other reasons, so good to hear that we'll be able to do so, but this seems like a missed opportunity for Nx to better embrace partner solutions in the UI.

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  • Tagir Gadelshin
    • Network Optix team

    Hi, @...

    Thanks for the great idea!
    Yes, it's really a missed opportunity. We'll consider fixing this in future releases. Frankly speaking, our event log dialogue indeed needs a revamp and we'll see if we can stick it in our planning releases roadmap.
    Although it's more like an event rules engine feature, I suppose

    internal: JIRA-FDBK-294


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  • Permanently deleted user

    Awesome!

    And honestly, you may be selling yourselves short here. Our customers love the event log, minus the issue I've identified above. It already works really well as a search UI. If you fix this problem and maybe add a button to access it more easily I think the current Event Log UI is pretty robust.

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  • Tagir Gadelshin
    • Network Optix team

    There is always a room for improvement 😉

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