Remote Monitoring - ARC Cases, Keyholders & False Alarms
Learn how Opscel tracks ongoing monitored-system work handled without dispatching an engineer — ARC-handled cases, keyholders, false alarm counters, escalation to a job, and how it bills as a recurring fee.
Last updated: 27 August 2026
30-Second Version
Who: Office and management roles triage and work cases; engineers see a read-only card on the job
What: Ongoing monitored-system work — an ARC call, a recurring signal, a phoned fault — tracked as a case, never as a job
Where: Monitoring section in the main app (Business tier)
Why: Keep monitoring activity off the planner while still logging keyholders, false alarms, and escalation history against the site
A Monitoring Case Is / Is Not
A monitoring case IS:
- Ongoing work handled without dispatching an engineer
- An ARC call about a recurring signal or panel fault
- A customer-phoned fault that gets triaged, chased, or resolved remotely
- Numbered on its own sequence — MC-NNNNN
- Logged with an append-only timeline of contacts and outcomes
- Something that can be escalated into a real job while it stays open
A monitoring case is NOT:
- A job — it has no visit, no scheduled time, no engineer assignment
- On the planner, ever
- Something that consumes engineer capacity
- A certificate or worksheet
- The same thing as a monitoring arrangement (the per-site record of the ARC, account number, and response instruction)
Key Benefits
- •Keeps monitoring off the planner: Office work stays office work — no phantom visits or capacity clutter
- •One place for ARC detail: Account number, signalling path, and standing response instruction live with the site, not in someone's notebook
- •NPCC-aware keyholder tracking: Warns when a site doesn't have enough cover within the expected response time
- •False alarm counters with real thresholds: Warn and withdrawal levels match NPCC policy, with a 90-day reinstatement clock
- •Escalation without losing history: Turning a case into a job links the two — the case stays open, nothing is overwritten
- •Bills as a recurring fee: Monitoring charges ride the service contract alongside visit pricing, reported separately
Common Use Cases
- •ARC phones about a recurring intruder signal on a site under contract
- •A fire panel reports an intermittent fault the customer wants tracked, not immediately visited
- •A customer calls in an emergency-light self-test failure that needs chasing before it becomes a job
- •Recording a false alarm against NPCC counters after an ARC call
- •Escalating a case that turns out to need a site visit into a proper job, without losing the case history
- •Reviewing keyholder cover for a site ahead of an ARC audit
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