The acknowledged status of the alarm, the current alarm state, the priority value, and the timestamp on the alarm determine the alarm's importance in the system:
Unacknowledged alarms have a higher importance than acknowledged alarms.
After the acknowledgement status is considered, alarms that are still active are considered more important than alarms that have already cleared but have not been acknowledged by the operator yet.
When more than one alarm has the same acknowledgment status and active status, alarms with larger priority values have the highest importance.
When more than one alarm has the same priority value, active status, and acknowledgment status, the newer alarm has a higher importance.
For example, the most recent, acknowledged, active alarm with a priority value of 15 is the most important alarm in the system. Then, a new alarm occurs that is unacknowledged and has a priority value of 4. This new alarm is of higher importance than an acknowledged alarm with a priority value of 15 because of the acknowledgement status of the alarms.