General Settings

Utility Settings

The Utility Settings / General Settings page, a portion of which is shown below, lets users with administrative privileges view and in some cases change default settings in BEACON.

The General section Name field displays your utility name. It cannot be edited.

Use the Settings drop-down menus to define:

- UI (User Interface) Default Units of measure
- Timezone of the utility main office, acts as the default timezone if no service point timezones are provided
- Country
- Language
- State
- Center Latitude of your main office, acts as the default map location for Mobile Reading
- Center Longitude of your main office, acts as the default map location for Mobile Reading

IMPORTANT: It is strongly recommended that you enter Latitude and Longitude values for your main office. Leaving them at 0.000000 displays a map view of the equator when a given address cannot be resolved.

Select the weather feed used for the precipitation and temperature overlays on the Monitor page Consumption Graph.
CSV Line Terminator. Choose Line Feed (LF) or Carriage Return + Line Feed (CR+LF) depending on billing systems requirements.
Chart Legend, selects the Monitor page Consumption Graph label source.

Exporting Data with International Decimal and Thousands Separators

Use the Country and Language drop-down menus under Assets>Utility Settings>Settings to export data using different international number formats. For example, if you or your billing vendor prefer to use a comma instead of a period as a decimal place and an apostrophe, period or space instead of a comma to separate thousands, do the following:

Use the Country drop-down menu and choose a country.
Use the Language drop-down and choose a language. The numeric format will be automatically displayed below the Language drop-down menu.

The table below uses Switzerland to illustrate the available export number formats. Data displayed in BEACON and EyeOnWater will still use a period and comma as the decimal separator and thousands separators, respectively.

Note: This feature currently applies to exported data from BEACON and EyeOnWater.

Country	Language	Export number format
Switzerland	German	1’234’567.89
	Swiss German	1’234’567.89
	English	1.234.567,89
	French	1 234 567.89
	Italian	1’234’567.89
	Portuguese	1 234 567,89
	Romansh	1,234,567.89
	Walser	1,234,567.89

Single Sign-On (SSO), visible to utilities that have implemented SSO
Admin users for utilities using SSO can use the Enable Native User Invite drop-down menu turn on (the default) and off the Invite New User button on the Users>Staff page.

Use System Administrator Contact section to enter the name, address, phone and email address of your BEACON system administrator. In addition, enter your web address in the Utility Website field.

Use the Accounts Payable Contact section to enter the name, phone and email address of the person responsible for your account payables.

Use the drop-down menus in the Billing Units section to specify your Billing Unit of Measure preferences. For example, if you bill based on KGallons, select 1000 Gallons and leave the Cubic Feet field at its default. Utilities based outside of North American will see a Cubic Meter drop-down menu.

Note: As shown in the screen, once a Billing Unit setting is changed, it can take up to 30 minutes before the new value takes effect.

Use the High and Low Consumption section and the Conservation section to adjust high and low consumption thresholds and to set a reduction goal for the corresponding Monitor page filters.

Thresholds represent the percentage change in the current period versus the previous period:

Threshold = (current consumption – previous consumption)/previous consumption*100%.

The default threshold values are set to 50% change for High and Low Consumption thresholds and to 20% change for the Reduction Goal.

Use the Valve Settings module on the Utility Settings page to configure restricted flow reasons to use when restricting full or partial flow.

Four predefined reasons are provided. To add a reason do the following:

Click Add.
Enter a reason and press Enter or click outside the reason box.
Click Update Utility.

To remove a reason or all reasons do one of the following:

Click the reason you want to remove.
Click the corresponding red X.
Or click Remove All to delete all of the reasons.
Click Update Utility.

Use the Sync Register Configuration section to enable and disable export of synchronized billing reads from both registers of compound meters.

Enter a Sync Tolerance value to determine the number of minutes that BEACON will look back for high and low register reads. By default Sync Tolerance is 15 minutes.

NOTE: If the endpoints connected to the compound meter communicate at very different times–for example, one reports at 11 pm and the other at 10 am–BEACON may not find synced reads unless the export takes place after both endpoints have communicated with the system. In other words, you should export reads from a date before today; e.g. today -1 or today -2 as shown in the diagram below.

(Requires ORION Cellular LTE-M, ORION Cellular C or ORION Cellular HLA endpoints)
Use the ORION Cellular LTE-M, ORION Cellular C, and ORION Cellular HLA Configurable Time Slots section to configure three of four workday (Monday through Friday) call-in windows. Each slider represents a two-hour time window that can be repositioned as desired. Click-drag a slider to move it.

By default, the system sets the earliest call-in window to 6M-8AM. This ensures that endpoint communications are received at the start of the workday.

Two additional configurable call-in windows let you set when to receive follow-on endpoint communications to best suit your business practices. A fourth workday call-in time is scheduled between the hours of 6PM and 2AM. To optimize performance, the timing of this communication session is determined by the system.

To support EyeOnWater customers, endpoint communication occurs once per weekend day (Saturday and Sunday). To optimize performance, the timing of this communication session is determined by the system.

For ORION Cellular LTE-M, ORION Cellular C, and ORION Cellular HLA endpoints connected to E-Series Ultrasonic meters with integrated valves, following a close command, the endpoint will call in every 2 hours for a period of 5 calendar days. After 5 days (or sooner if the valve is re-opened), the endpoint reverts to its normal call-in schedule.

(Requires ORION Cellular C endpoints)
Use the ORION Cellular C Configure Priority Alarms section to enable and disable near real-time alarms when specified exceptions occur rather than after an endpoint communicates with BEACON.

Check or uncheck the box next to an exception to toggle the exception alarm on and off.

Priority Alarms are counted on the At a Glance page Device Health module and the Monitor page Exceptions filters.

Endpoints can send one Priority Alarm per day.

Note: ORION Cellular C endpoints ship with priority alarms disabled.

The EyeOnWater Page Configurations section is visible to utilities that have opted to use the Branded EyeOnWater customer outreach premium feature.

Double-click the branded EyeOnWater icon to open the link to the signup page.

contact-us-tooltip-enabled-pulldown

When the Contact Us Tooltip is enabled, utility customers will see a tooltip in their EyeOnWater dashboard when they hover their cursor over the Contact Us link.

contact-us-tool-tip

Use the Link Utility Logo drop-down menu to enable or disable a link from your logo to the address specified in the System Administrator Contact Utility website field.

Use the Contact Us Tooltip Content section to enter the job title, name, phone number and email address of your designated EyeOnWater customer service representative or help desk. Use the Header Message and Additional Message fields to customize the message displayed.

Use the Monitor Page Filters section to set the visibility of filters displayed on the Monitor page.

Click a radio button to:

- Show only Filters that Contain Data – Use this option to dynamically optimize your Monitor page experience by showing only filters that are in use.
- Select Filters – Use this option to select filters displayed on the Monitor page based on your needs.

To display a filter on the Monitor page, check the box next to it. To hide a filter, uncheck the box. Select All and Clear All buttons let you check or uncheck all of the boxes related to Tags, Accounts, Locations, Meters, DMA Zones, Meter Reads, Sensors, Reader Messages, High/Low Consumption, Conservation and Leaks.

The Mobile Reading section is visible to admin users whose utility has mobile reading technology.

The fields under Address Search Defaults are automatically determined by the Center Latitude and Center Longitude fields in the General Settings section. If desired, the Address Search Defaults can be entered manually.

The License Valid From start and end dates let you quickly see when your utility has contracted to use ORION Mobile Read.

Click Update Utility when you have finished entering or updating the fields on this page.