A few general questions

[JDRoberts]

This might be of help:

Old thread: please delete

IFTTT is the simplest and most straightforward of rule designs, so if it’s not something you’re interested in, I’m not sure what would be. Most of the other options are more complex. The most comprehensive rule management that does not require using third-party options: rule machine If your concern is that you don’t want to go outside the SmartThings system, however, then rule machine, which is custom code, is a good rules engine which works entirely within SmartThings. It Does assume that you understand Boolean logic and can construct your own if/then statements, so it’s not for everyone. But if you are used to that kind of approach, it’s very powerful. For that, you need to visit two forum topics. The first one is just the FAQ on how custom code is used. If after reading that you …

As far as the routine not working, you might have run into this common issue:

FAQ: Routine Only Seems to Work for First Person Who Comes Home

Updated 12 November 2015 At some point, there was a change and now routines WILL run even if the house is in the mode you’re going to change into. That’s good, it’s just confusing because it’s unclear if this is now always true or only sometimes. Until there’s some official documentation, I’ll leave the rest of this in place as it’s one of those “can’t hurt, might help” things. Possibly this is a mode issue. It did exist as a problem with v one, but only with hello home actions, not with shortcut groups. It’s pretty simple once you understand what’s going on, it’s just there’s nothing anywhere that tells you that this is what’s going to happen with routines. OK if you have a routine that changes the mode, then nothing in that routine will run if the house is already in that mode. That’…

Or it might have been another presence detection issue. (There are several.) But it’s good to know about the mode anyway.