This technical report (TR) was written in support of the standard ANSI/ISA-18.2-2016, Management of Alarm Systems for the Process Industries. ISA-18.2 deals with alarms for the operator role.

Modern automation systems are capable of creating many types of notifications and routing them to roles other than the operator. This technical report defines notification types for nonoperator roles, including alerts, prompts, and notices. Alerts, prompts, and notices to the operator role are also defined and discussed. In addition, recommendations and guidance for effective notifications are provided.

The definitions and terminology in this TR are general enough to encompass all possible notifications from the automation system to any role, without limiting the methods and equipment involved.

This TR is of interest to several other ISA standards committees, including:

– ISA84 on safety instrumented systems,

– ISA88 on batch control,

– ISA95 on control system and enterprise system integration,

– ISA99 on control system cybersecurity,

– ISA101 on control system human machine interface,

– ISA106 on procedural automation,

– ISA108 on intelligent device management, and

– ISA112 on SCADA systems.

This TR’s intended audience includes the designers, implementers, and maintainers of systems that generate automation system notifications, as well as the recipients of those notifications.