Value mapping is a neat, little feature in Zabbix that allows to see what a numeric code actually means. Well, what did that mean? For example, a UPS device might return “2”, which means “all is OK”, and “3”, which means “battery low”. There will be many different devices with different numeric codes, so remembering what they all mean is nearly impossible. Value mapping will show a human readable description, but the raw value will still follow in the parentheses – for example, Normal (2).
Until Zabbix 2.2, this was only supported for integers. Zabbix 2.2 will allow to configure value mapping also for decimal and string values.