On and off doesn’t make sense for a scene.
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“First off, we want our most dedicated users on the community to know…”
This message is recreated throughout this thread – community members are valued. Heavy users, not so much. I only came here to read up based on the email - it was the only one I received.
Somewhere you mentioned reaching out… To what segments of users!?
You keep mentioning 90% = 100%… Show us the stats.
This is a slap in the face to those of us who had contributed to the community while we were figuring things out over years, have tons of devices and automations and a system that just runs, and have not been active in the community for some time. I have contributed many suggestions, some made it in like the smart lighting checking a switch, others like basic UX list sorting or the ability to create an automation from a device have not made it into either app.
Functional Parity is required. A complete survey of users would have identified core, extended and esoteric requirements.
My first line of trouble shooting is to go to the device, Recent tab and see which automation acted on/due to the device. Completely missing from the new app. Is there an intent to provide this basic functionality in the new app?
What else is purposefully omitted? Was actual usage statistics by segment taken into account?
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Hubitat is cheaper than a new app compatible phone so that is the way I will go
What if the lights were already on when the scene was turned ‘on’, or they were a different colour or dimmer level? Would you want them to just turn off, would you want to restore them to the state they were in just before the scene was turned on, or would you like to define what values to use when the scene is ‘off’ regardless? That is what I am getting at. If activating an existing ST scene is to turn it on, how precisely is turning it off defined, and how do we define if it is on or off to start with?
I can actually see an argument for being able to activate a second scene in a restorative fashion, I just find the concept of ‘on’ and ‘off’ to be rather ambiguous as Scenes really represent a snapshot of device states at a point in time.
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Automation history is listed on the History menu of the new app. not quite as nice as Classic since it’s all mixed together with all other device state history unless you unselect devices from the menu, but it does exist.
Yes. It exists to show what was activated on the device.
It does not show why/which automation if any activated that.
"My first line of trouble shooting is to go to the device, Recent tab and see which automation acted on/due to the device. "
Sure, you are right. But, it all depends on your mindset. Turning on a switch vs a scene most often brings people to a different mindset and questions like you raised. It does not have to do that, and in fact, the opposite is possible. Why just turn off a set of switches? Why not turn others on or dim them or change colors? Because off is a simple functionality that applies in many, many scenarios and does not preclude turning another scene on in a separate automation.
A scene is just a snapshot of a moment in time when specific devices are at specific settings. They can be “activated,” but they are not turned on and off.
If you want the devices at different settings, you just activate a different scene, or control them individually.
This is true for all the home automation systems I’m aware of, including Philips Hue, Insteon, Control4, HomeKit, and even the Zwave protocol.
Zwave describes scenes as “to do Lists” for the individual devices. 
When a scene is activated, each individual device in the scene is sent an instruction of what to do. It might be go to 75% brightness, change a thermostat to 68 degrees, change color, or turn off. Or turn on.
But there’s no “undo list” because the concept of scene doesn’t say what that would be. If it’s “go back to the previous state” it would mean that every time you touch the button on a scene controller you might get a different result, because who know what states the devices were in before the scene started? That’s not only confusing, it’s dangerous.
If instead you mean you want every device to turn on together and then turn off together, that’s not a scene: that’s a zone. But SmartThings has not implemented those. They have implemented groups for lighting in the new app.
If you mean you want every device to be set to a different setting than the one when Scene A was activated, then that’s just a new scene. You start with the Evening scene, then activate Bedtime. Or you start with just some random device states and activate I’m Leaving.
Again, this is how almost all home automation systems work, regardless of brand.
Scenes don’t get turned off. A scene is activated, sending the to do list instruction to each of the devices in the scene. The scene remains activated until another scene is chosen or individual devices receive other instructions. 
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Remember way back when? There was a SmartApp to save the current settings of a set of devices so that we could restore them later. THAT was advanced. And, disappeared.
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Yes it does. Here you can see the kids bathroom fan reporting humidity triggered the automation “kids exhaust fan - off”
JD, You are describing Scenes, not automations. And, you are using a very strict definition. Would you prefer I requested unActivate? Today, if we want ‘Off’ we put many different switches in a Smart Lighting Automation, but we cannot set those switches differently. We did have this functionality in a SmartApp way back years ago before Smart Lighting or Scenes - I mentioned in a separate reply. And, I mentioned one of a hundred scenarios where this would be helpful. Your suggestion would work, of course, but with today’s canned automation logic, that would require two automations – one for activating a scene and one for activating a subsequent scene after a time - a great option if it was put into the canned automation like the off option is for switches! I like it.
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Yes, good point—the ability to activate a different scene after a time delay would be a nice feature.
I think you could do it now by adding a virtual switch to the automation that would act as a countdown timer so that when it turned itself off, a different scene would be activated. But that would take 3 automations, so setup and maintenance would be a Bear.
Last I heard (this may have changed), WebCore couldn’t activate scenes created in the new V3 app either. So that’s no help.
I wonder if the new “rules API” (essentially an official version of Webcore for the new platform) could do this more elegantly? I don’t want to hijack this topic, but it might be worth a new thread to ask.
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I just checked again in several different device types – I do not get that at all! Hmm… Wonder why not… This is critical.
But even that could cause unwanted situations. Supposing the lights were all off, and I activated the scene that makes them all dark blue. Then my partner wants to do some knitting or writing so turns one of the lights bright white. He or she says "can we get rid of all this depressing blue? So I turn off the scene and all the bulbs are restored to their saved state - which was “off”. The person knitting or writing is not going to be happy.
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I can’t switch until I’m allowed to use location mode for “if” AND “then” in automations.
My post about my workflow is here: https://community.smartthings.com/t/ugh-custom-location-modes-in-new-app/184422
Until then, me and my 100 or so devices will be on the classic app—no ifs ands or buts.
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One can always find situations that might occur. Can you see the scenarios where it would be useful?
I see my Automations in the Messages section and not in History
It isn’t on the device page. It is on the History menu from the home page.
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I did have a situation where it would have been useful, nightlight setting on my hallway light which was an exact colour and dimness. If someone needed to turn the light bright for a moment, say they might have dropped something, I wanted it to revert to the night light setting afterwards. In fact I ended up making virtual switches to switch between bright white and nightlight (so they could be controlled from google home)
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Okay, There I can see signs of life in Messages for the few Automations I created in the new App only, not Device-History, nor Menu-History.
I will assume when Smart Lighting is ported, these automatic messages will appear.
I cannot for the life of me fathom why I would want to go to two different places to see related information while debugging Device issues. I am open if someone can tell me how this will help?
