It would be nice if my girlfriend could have the app installed and do things like control lights and get notifications for things she cares about while I have my own set of controls and notifications. This has been mentioned in some other threads, but I didn’t see an official feature request anywhere.
Ideally, it would be cool to have the ability to make some people admins and non-admins have a restricted set of “things” they can access. I don’t know if it needs to be as granular as “you can see it, but not receive notifications” or anything. For my purposes, a simple list of users on the account and a list of “things” with checkboxes as to whether they’re visible or not would work fine.
Right now I have all kinds of notifications going to my phone as I figure out what I’m using or not using and I know she doesn’t want all that stuff going to her phone as well.
I guess you could have groups of things as well… so you could give someone access to light switches but not the “security” group. I could see her wanting access to dimmers and light switches, door locks, thermostat, etc… but not caring about the door/window open/close sensor notifications.
BUMP - I agree I would like different access, because I need to give the kids access to control different lights etc, but not give them access to thermostat or other things.
This would be a great feature, and allow them to have it organized different would be great so they can just get the switches that are working not some of the virtual on/off switches used to work around different issues.
I agree with you guys. I think it could also come in handy if you want to add a friend to your account for location stuff (mobile presence), but don’t want to give them access to any other devices.
Adding my vote too, again. There was another thread discussing this. http://build.smartthings.com/forums/topic/additional-users/
And as I stated in that thread, the users need to have individual preferences (for UI) and different level of previlleges (admin, standard, guest…).
Thanks Defcon… I searched and found like 6 other threads that were similar, but not quite the same. They sort of mentioned the idea, but it wasn’t the main thread so I thought it was worth posting a dedicated thread about this. Mods feel free to merge these if you feel they’re duplicate.
I agree with much of this and we have wanted it since we have first begun modeling the account and user schemas. Some of the things are much easier than others, of course and we could go into why this has stayed on the backlog versus having development against this. The simple fact is it is a big effort and we have chosen to focus on other things. I think this will start to be prioritized higher in the coming months. Your feedback helps a lot.
I think it breaks down to the following:
User levels like admin, regular, and guest - most straight forward and possible in shorter term. This could be more like admins can do everything, regular users can do everything except account changes like inviting people, deleting things, or hub changes (as examples), and guest users could only actuate things and view.
Modifying notifications and alerts so they only go to specific users - I think this is next in line in terms of ease to implement, potentially could be tackled before user levels
Restricting access to specific groups, devices, SmartApps - more difficult and has a lot of implications that cascade and get complicated rather quickly
On the note of notifications going to all users on an account - one workaround is to use SMS but I know that isn’t ideal either.
Excited for the new forum so that I can just find all the posts and move them together
Have you thought of abstracting the notification process where an object or device like object gets notified of events, and then users can then subscribe to that object depending on their rights?
+1 to this thread which I think is the official one now! This feature set is pretty important I think for the product as a whole especially where you have different users with different levels of understanding of how things work…(I am trying not to offend my wife incase she see’s this…).
Notifications would be a great start to this but moving forward as a product I think the ability to limit who can control what from within the app (such as adding/deleting tiles, etc) is pretty important. If you can lock it down at the very least that say ‘Users’ can’t alter settings that would help!
+1 My use would be for renters. I’d love to offer use of the switches, etc. but I still want to handle administration myself and get notifications when, for example, a leak is detected. Ideally an admin could add users to groups and assign access to different “things” and notifications to each group. Then from a user standpoint they could decide which of the available “things” to see and what notifications of those set by the admin they actually want to receive.
I assume you are the landlord. I also have rentals that I would like to monitor the Smoke/CO alarms. Every tenant but one has taken out the batteries instead of replacing them when dead. I’m appalled at such disregard to safety. I now am more proactive replacing them myself when I have a chance.
It would be nice to manage this through SmartThings.
However, I wonder how this would be perceived by a tenant. I would think the administrator role would be the tenant who would give access to the landlord only certain devices. As a landlord, I would not want access to the tenant dropcam by accident.
In this case a “hardened” SmartThings that ONLY allows the landlord access to smoke and moisture sensors is needed. It would have to be failsafe so the tenant doesn’t accidentally give the landlord access to devices that violate privacy.
That’s a good point, although I would also like to be able to grant new permissions to devices like the locks for when the handyman needs access, the weekly cleaners need to get in, or the electric company needs to read the meter. I would also like the tenant to be able to do the same, maintaining their own list of who can use what devices.
Wow, that is correct. You increase security not compromising copying of traditional keys. And for the landlord, this reduces key management.
As a tenant, I would at least want to be notified. I understand a landlord has access rights at any time, however, again you want to respect tenant privacy.
There are definitely quite a lot of needs that can be addressed in the rental management market.
I would love this too, not only for giving guests the ability to control certain lights/fans/etc. But also so that family members don’t have to all get the same notifications. There are a lot of things that I want to get Push notifications on that others here don’t.
I agree. For now, I removed all push notifications and only use SMS. If anyone in the family needs notification, I use IFTTT. However, low battery and a couple other notifications are still push since SmartThings doesn’t let you control this.
Absolutely. I give tenants a minimum of 24 hours notice before accessing the premises. I believe that here in Chicago it is required by city ordinance. In any case, it is stipulated in the leases.
