Hi all - apologies for the delayed reply. I wanted to read through all 400+ responses that you’ve provided (thank you all for the direct feedback) before responding. Below is a long post, so:
TL;DR: we’re using all of the feedback you’re providing; many issues are already being worked on, others will be discussed by the team this week. We’re not forcing anyone to move to the new app without providing the needed resources so it’s a good experience. We love the ST community and are grateful for your feedback.
The long version:
Below are some of the common issues I’ve seen throughout this thread. Many of these are already being worked on or have active tickets. I will be discussing these personally with the app migration core team this week:
- Ecobee devices - phantom devices during transition from EcobeeInit SmartApp to Ecobee C2C integration
- Automations - Devices/modes as both trigger and action
- Notifications with timer offsets
- Better app/device history
- Parent/child devices stuck in incomplete status
- Accessibility - proper image captions
- Accessibility - proper galaxy voice assistant integration
- 20 room limit needs to be increased
- Hue room/zone/scene support improvements
- DTH support:
-Rachio
-Simplisafe
-Neato Botvac
-Sonoff/Switchbot/Ewelink/Everspring
A few overarching thoughts on the feedback being provided:
On why not to freak out: We are announcing the app transition now so that everyone has as long of notice as reasonably practical. Please notice we have not set a deprecation date for the Classic app. We have not rolled the migration tool out to most of the users in this thread. Almost all parity functionality has been built out but there are a few key pieces that some users will need. We don’t intend to push anyone to the new app before that work is done.
Support teams: CS teams have already been trained on this in advance of the announcement last week. I will follow up with the teams again to ensure they’re clear on available resources and when to elevate. Thanks for your patience.
Custom DTH support: As I’ve mentioned in a few other comments - the resources needed to refactor custom DTHs to work in the new app will be provided before we ask you to move to the new app full time. Most of this functionality hinges on being able to generate custom capabilities and associated UI metadata: this is how the new app renders capabilities. This work is already in progress and will be coming with plenty of time to allow for refactoring where needed.
A personal note on the SmartThings team: A number of comments speculated on the team not caring or having “gone corporate.” That couldn’t be farther from the truth. I chose to leave an industrial IoT job at a company I loved to come work for SmartThings because I’m passionate about IoT and think that SmartThings has the best offering and most potential in the marketplace. There are MANY more stories just like mine at our offices. Most all of us are dedicated users, some with extensive setups (I’m running 90+ devices at home, the engineering manager across from me has over 200). We live our work every day in the office and at home: trying to find bugs, dreaming up new functionality, polling (read: annoying) our spouses about how new automations are working. When we make changes to SmartThings, we have to live with those changes personally, but more importantly, we understand the impact those changes will have on our users and don’t take that responsibility lightly. At the end of the day, we believe in the vision of every home being a smart home and are working hard to make that happen.
Most of all though, we’re honored by this community of passionate users and extremely grateful for your feedback and desire to work with us to build a great product. Thank you and please keep the feedback coming.