# Planning for Voice Messages

The ideal way to proceed is to first complete the Catalyst Memory Allocation Tool, which is included with your Alarmware™ package. Instructions for using the worksheet are included within this help file. This tool provides a simple way to plan your messages. It includes intelligent utilities to determine if there is adequate recording time capacity available to record all your messages and to help you determine whether you should use the slower or faster recording speed, etc.

The resulting Work File (opened with Excel or as a printed hard copy) can then be used to record your voice messages via phone or at the RTU Front Panel. You can also enter the corresponding text messages via Alarmware™ if that has not already been done. Working with both Excel and Alarmware™ open, you can even use the Windows clipboard to easily copy and paste the text messages from the Message Planning Work File into the corresponding Alarmware™ dialog boxes.

When planning message content, be sure to consider the fact that Tag Words (default or user recorded) will be appended to channel status messages in reports to reflect the channel's state. Information on how Tag Words are related to channel states, see Tag Words and Channel States.

When planning messages, try to be as brief as possible. This is not only to conserve recording time, but also to make voice and text reports easy to understand. When there are a number of channels to report simultaneously, long speech and text messages can become quite cumbersome to deal with.

In addition to determining in advance which channels are analog and which are discrete data types, you should progress to enter all the configuration items for each channel, especially the text messages, prior to making final determination of the amount of recording time available. This step is important because some RTUs need to have many channels configured. If the configuration data (especially the text messages) occupies a lot of space, there can be secondary impact upon the amount of recording time that is available.