Controlling asset messages

A method for monitoring assets comprising:

• generating event signals based on signals from monitors that are sensing parameters of assets, each event signal including information corresponding to an asset instance, an event type and an event description;
• transmitting the event signals to a messaging application;
• that identify messages by send criteria and identify users that should receive messages based on the send criteria;
• storing message suppression rules that identify messages by suppression criteria, the suppression rules including a time interval suppression rule for suppressing messages from an asset instance when the number of event signals from the asset instance in a specified time interval exceeds a specified number limit;
• providing a user input for accessing and modifying the send rules and suppression rules based on user input so that a user can select messages that will be transmitted to the user according to the send criteria and a user can select messages that will be suppressed and not sent to the user according to the suppression criteria;
• storing a particular set of send rules and a particular set of suppression rules for each user;
• generating messages corresponding to the event signals;
• identifying a set of users who should receive each message based on the particular sets of send rules and the particular sets of suppression rules, a particular user being included in the set of users if the message satisfies the particular set of send rules for the particular user and does not satisfy the particular set of suppression rules for the particular user;
• and
• transmitting each message to the set of users that were identified in the identifying step.