Frustrations Building ST is So up and Down

Yes it is great that they let people vent and share their views and they should.
However a couple of targeted responses would settle things down. now it seems to be snowballing into a ranting mess.
True there is a lot of issues to resolve but just some reassurance that they are working on it would go a long way.
Cheers

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Although you may not be referring to the level of detail as I am I thinking, it seems to be a reality that published “Product Roadmaps” from Consumer Product companies are very rare. Apple (being a very particular example, though I wouldn’t say they are unique…) is always very secretive until official announcement dates.

This forum, and the Community Office Hours, helps give us a little more insight than the non-observing public, but a fully published and updated “SmartThings / Samsung Roadmap” is not likely. There are valid strategic reasons for this: (a) Staying ahead of the competition, (b) Maximize flexibility to respond and/or pivot according to market and business conditions, and (c) Avoid publishing promises that might not be kept due to any number of forces (time constraints, business changes, technical issues, …).

Business-to-Business (B2B) companies, though, tend to be a little more open to sharing their plans, particularly with bigger customers and partners, but often under non-disclosure agreements. Actually, it’s quite likely there are a significant number of SmartThings’s “partnerships” in progress, and each of these is getting more future and “internal” information than we will ever get.

Perhaps there could be some formal (?) way for smaller SmartThings developers/integrators to organize so that we could have a bit more clout and justify a bit more insider knowledge. Doubt this would make a big difference though. SmartThings is a for-profit business, not an open consortium or other sort of organization. Nurturing and retaining their developer community through engagement here is only a very small part of their business model.

If this were my company, my focus would be on mass market consumers (not long tail) and high-value efficient partnerships (retail and integration). I’m pretty sure this is the approach ST is taking.

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So I was starting to think I shouldnt of started this thread but on reflection I am glad I did.

Firstly it wasn’t a ‘rant’ about SmartThings. I am not entirely sure how people expressing their frustrations about a platform that promotes itself as a Smart Home solution that includes well established products such as Hue and Sonos, and indeed lauds their integration via blog posts on their site, is a rant.

For some of us it isnt reliable and integrations dont work all the time. Then there are those of us that have not just us invested in it (i.e the techy types) but who have convinced our partners and families that this is a great system that will improve our homes both from a usability aspect and a security aspect.

I prefaced my original post with a success story. I then detailed my frustrations with ST.

I agree this forum is a great place but its not unusual for forums to be used as a place to express issues with a product. We have every right (even if we are a vocal few which honestly I don’t think we are) to post here on a company sanctioned and created forum about our frustrations.

You can’t create a product and then promote it does this and that when a lot of the time it doesnt.

Sadly some of the comments on this thread and elsewhere make me think your dammed if you do your dammed if you don’t and thats not something I expected to encounter here.

As I have said before I love ST but it has issues that absolutely have to be raised by us the users and we have every right to do so.

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Agreed. But that gives @pstuart and I the right to raise other points as well. Generally we are both very positive people and when we bring positive thoughts into a negative thread we are berated. I know I am just looking good a positive debate.

You are one of the few that is fair and brings up both sides and that is very refreshing but creating a thread like this generally starts a gripe fest over the same issues. Yes I understand it’s been a while. But STs has said many times there are fixes coming. At this point you need to decide if you believe them or not. If you don’t, leave. If you do, stay. They have been talked about many times on the forum and don’t need a new thread every week. If I were STs I would of stopped responding around this time as well. Why waste your time when the people that normally are vocal on these issues obviously aren’t going to change. When they have an update they will let us know.

I thank you @jonallsebrook for being a fair man.

God bless you all. You are my brothers in arms.

Actually, I don’t see a lot of negativity in this thread, except maybe for @pstuart’s labeling those who dare to vent their frustrations as ‘haters’. Questioning status quo and pondering the future is simply human nature. Deal with it.

The purpose of this discussion is not to solicit comments, rebuttals or revelations of future plans from SmartThings. I believe they shared with us whatever they could and if they don’t say more, there’s probably a good reason for it. It’s not a question of believing in what they’ve promised and patiently waiting for it to be delivered. I believe there’s nothing wrong with doing independent analysis based on available information and industry trends. I’d rather be ahead of the curve than be left high and dry like former Revolv users.

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I actually thought pstuart’s use of hater was intended to be funny.

Most of these frustrations could be resolved with information and firm dates for fixes to be released. Right now we have to keep checking back which is a waste of time and kind of frustrating. I’m thinking of posts like this one that suggest we check back tomorrow, four days ago. Actions not showing in Harmony Hub Control

Or the Android 1.6.8 release that said it finally fixed the Jawbone Up24 brokenness. It didn’t. As the thread asks me to do, I’ve been staying tuned since Nov 13. Emailing support didn’t give any ETAs, rather just a “Unfortunately that fix didn’t quite make it into the latest Android release – that release note is mistake. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, and sorry for the inconvenience.”

Simply a list of known issues with dates to have fixes released would solve a lot of the frustration in the community as folks keep returning to see what works and what doesn’t. And I would suggest removing blog posts and marketing which promote functionality that has not worked for a long time, Harmony and Jawbone come to mind. Harmony ain’t cheap. It’s not a good welcome experience for a new SmartThings user to buy one and find out that it does not integrate as advertised with ability for SmartThings to control Harmony Actions.

Just the facts, please!

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Where was anybody (other than perhaps SmartThings) berated???

At least someone realizes the humor in words…

Yeah, I should have known better not to take anything that Patrick says seriously :wink:

MORE…

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This plus known issues list will go a long way. As will sharing a broad roadmap. However, what you have to understand, as soon as we start to put dates on “fixes” and feature additions we lose one of the largest assets we have a startup. And before you say — but you’re not a start up now — you should save it, because you’re wrong. We are small and agile and we can flex this way or bend that way towards where we need to go to continue to be the most innovative platform for the internet of things.

But you’ll “understand if we miss a deadline or two” — will you?

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All I’m trying to do is use the product you sell. Right now it doesn’t do what you advertise it to do. I get mixed messages in this forum and from support about what works or when it will be fixed. I have no where to go to find out what works and what doesn’t. That leaves me not knowing what I can or cannot do with the product each day. Which leads to me wasting time. Which is in direct conflict with what SmartThings is intended to do.

http://status.smartthings.com/ is limited in scope and lacks any of the details about things that are not working and have not been working for several months. A “Known Issues” list on that page alone (including released Labs smartapps and itegrations) would help me to use the product you are selling more efficiently. That kind of transparency would also show that SmartThings is tracking what is broken and mitigate the need for us to raise and discuss issues. It’s not that things are breaking and you have higher priorities. It’s the lack of information about what works or not and setting expectations to minimize the impact to my user experience.

If you sent me the product for free I wouldn’t care if you never fixed anything and called me names. And I have been a strong supporter and very patient for months. Sent useful information to support and helped other users. I’m not your enemy, rather I am a consumer of the product you sold to me and asking for your help to allow me use it more efficiently.

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Your STs setup doesn’t turn off and on lights? Or provide you with feedback on the status of your house? Or alert you of things that happen while you’re gone? Crazy… That is an issue then. :wink:

The products you are saying don’t work that are “advertised” are also clearly advertised as a beta or “labs” product. STs has not been quiet on the matter that labs products are still in development. You should not EXPECT them to work as a fully integrated product. It should be treated as any other beta would.

Unfortunately the more we complain about beta/labs projects they put out for us that arent “fully” working the less they will feel the need to give us early access to more cool things.

Basically if you can’t handle using beta iterations of an integration… Don’t…

I have a hard time feeing bad for someone that can’t do research on a product before they buy it. poor planning does not constitute an emergency on anyones part.

This is included in every single Labs blog post:

What is SmartThings Labs?

SmartThings Labs gives customers access to a curated group of popular third-party devices and services that can work together with SmartThings while they’re still in development. These new product solutions are created by our in-house team, as well as by our growing community of developers. Together, they make it easier than ever to control all of the connected devices in your home with the SmartThings iOS and Android apps.

As our engineering team works to fine-tune these integrated products and solutions with our platform, they may move from SmartThings Labs into more prominent sections of the SmartThings Dashboard to make way for new integrations and features in Labs. While we work to polish the edges of the different products and solutions in Labs, customers may experience a few performance issues (hence, the name “Labs”).

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Hell yes @Ben. I was just in the middle of typing a brief rant about the absurd expectation of “firm release dates”, but you said it much friendlier. Don’t let these gripe-fest threads get you down. Just keep kicking ass with building the best consumer IoT platform there is.

But seriously, to those that are outraged by the lack of product perfection… point me at one company/product that even comes close to doing as much as ST already does. Seriously. Name one.

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+1000000000000000000000000000

+1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Give me one company that does this effectively. Either a company will try and fail continually to meet consumer demand or… in the case of MANY companies they forgo solid release dates and just provide updates when they are ready. One of those companies is quite large (largest cash value company in the world) and it works out rather well for them cough cough :wink:

Also, how about the absurd expectation that “beta” products should be “production” quality.

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No, it didn’t a couple of Sundays ago after I reconfigured some outlets. I had to do a z-wave exclude and start over. It didn’t give accurate status either. That and unusual Mobile app slowness at the time made setting up xmas lights an unnecessarily painful experience. Later I saw a post from someone else saying support told them it was a known issue. If I had known the issue, I would have avoided making those changes at that time.

That’s just one of about a half dozen or so similar experiences I’ve had in the past couple months that could have been avoided or had expectations calibrated through publishing a basic known issue status to check each time before starting a new project on SmartThings. It’s not only about Labs stuff. But really known issues on beta stuff is pretty common not an unreasonable attempt in my experience.

Why wouldn’t you just reach out to support first before taking such drastic measures?

Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.

Tim, I am not angry, upset, or outraged. I am simply expressing experiences of frustrations I had recently along with suggestions to improve. I have been a hard core and very patient and often helpful user of SmartThings since last June or so. I am very busy so not a lot of time to contribute here, but I try. I am making observations on the increasing lack of much of anything coming from SmartThings for existing users recently and highlighting conflicting or erroneous information I get sometimes from SmartThings people which causes additional frustration or missed expectations. I am also suggesting some very basic things to improve the experience going forward.

I make suggestions to improve and raise the conflicting and sometimes erroneous guidance I am receiving between support and community posts because I think it can help. Disagreement and debate are great IMHO. You and others have made some good points. And I think I have too. I think we have a common goal, just different experiences thus far.

I do not open support tickets for every issue I have. I can often work around or find info in this community to resolve or understand. In that case I mentioned, I had to do a bunch of xmas lighting stuff quickly before going out to a big dinner followed by a couple very busy days. I didn’t get my new and reconfigured outlets fully sorted for a couple days after attempting to do it all that night. I did spend about 45 minutes staring at spinning circles in the mobile app and tile icons going crazy, but I ran out of time. I had to go. If I had known about the issues at the time I would simply not have started that very simple project at that time. Or at least I would have ignored certain things that consumed my limited time. Just an example of value of known issues.

Just happened to see this post.

Regarding your GE Link bulb state issue – try this community-written device type for the Link bulbs + the Pollster app. So far, it has been working well for me.

I know the Ceo and I went back and forth after he announced purchase by Samsung, and what I claimed would happen seems to be happening…slower support, slower iterations, muddled priorities and users holding the bag.

I have been supportive, quiet for the most part, but performance has gotten so poor it is maddening. And now, every week, one hard wired zwave switch stops responding via smart things. Need to exclude/include. Never had to before. The external zzwave GE appliance plugins, suddenly the same way. It’s taken a stark nose dive this fall and they haven’t pulled out of it yet and no real guidance for when this will actually be fixed.

I’ve got 65 devices now, and I technically am not done in my house, but I sure have stopped buying stuff. Maybe people with lots of devices tend to be the ones with performance issues and the normal consumer doesn’t. I don’t know.