Provide translated system alarms that cannot be translated with ResX files

Big Picture User Experience

Operators expect all system alarms that they see to be in their native language.

Not all operators in all customers see system alarms, and some have a strict "no system alarm for operators" policy. However, the majority of customers will show some system alarms to operators.

Detailed Description

Not all system alarms can be translated via the ResX files mechanism due to the way they are created and stored in the windows event log.

We either need to re-design how these system alarms are generated and logged, or we need to provide more languages in the product for this sub-set of system alarms that cannot be translated by the project.

From R&D:

Historically and in Enterprise SCADA 2021 There is a certain category of system alarms that are copies of events which are recorded simultaneously in the Windows Event Log. Only a small percentage of the different types of alarms are generated in this way; most notably arbitration events (e.g. services starting, stopping and failing over) and process/system health monitoring alarms. These alarms are administrative in nature, and are not usually of interest to SCADA operators.

The Windows Event Log does not support internationalization of string resources using ResX files and satellite resource assemblies. Instead, it uses compiled message event DLLs, as described in the Windows Developer documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/eventlog/message-files.

The message DLLS must be rebuilt, deployed and configured (or “registered”) with the Windows operating system whenever new messages are added, or to add support for new languages. Consequently this is not a procedure that can be performed easily by projects or customers. If additional languages are required, an enhancement request with the translations in required language can be provided to R&D and they will be added to a future release or service pack.

Business Value

To support growth outside English speaking countries, full language support for all operator facing text is required.

Assumptions

These system alarms are simple enough that one translation in the target language is enough. There will not be a need to support variants (like Mexico vs. Spain)

Links

Initial IMS defect request (sonatrack): ADO# 1231322