Where did you hear/find this information? I know two years ago, the AT and Hubitat teams could not come to an agreement. Has there been some recent development?
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Ridiculous. Seems like rule number one if I was re-writting an app: ensure that existing functionality continues to exist, even if it operates differently. But, nopeā¦
The old app has been neglected for years and it is stil 50x better than the joke that the new app is.
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Iāve recently seen the nag in the classic app to migrate and went ahead. Although on the surface the migration took place I had to revisit every setting, automation, smartapp and scene. This was prob because Iām using the phone as a presence indicator as the presence fob died sometime ago.
The phone presence current status and the home/away state are missing / hard to find in the app.
The migration moved mode/state changes partly into scenes and partly into automations so I reworked it to change state/mode only inside automations. There were various other fields not properly populated in smartapps so I fixed these too as I went through everything manually.
Some time ago the Alexa integration dropped access to routines but allows scenes, but removing state etc changes from scenes is necessary for the scene to be usable by Alexa.
The phone presence seems to be a different ādeviceā name than in the classic app - so this was handled inconsistently by the migration. The old phone device name now no longer appears in the device list (web interface) after I deleted it from the classic app but its name does still appear on one screen on the new app.
The classic app was fine. No doubt an expert would have dealt with the migration better, but then again someone unwilling to check everything through would have been left with a non-working set-up after migration.
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JWSG your On Spot
I too used the phone as a presence sensorā¦and after the migration the automation / scene settings arenāt working properly.
I am going on day 4 trying to figure it out on Back Home and Awayā¦settings
My Rachio is doing something funky
Every night I have a scheduled run at midnight
The New app shows the Rachio sprinkler never turned Off and is continually running
I am making changes on the Back Home and Away automation and monitoring daily
Annoying
Has anyone else noticed that the ability to selectively expose devices to Alexa in the new Alexa integration skill has gone?
In the past, I always excluded WiFi devices that I could discover through cloud-based connectors in ST if they could also be discovered natively by Alexa. This way, I could use native Alexa skills to control most devices, but still put all of my automation in ST Routines and Scenes, save for the handful of devices that ST couldnāt discover but Alexa could. With ST Classic, I could invoke a ST Routine directly from Alexa, but even without that, I could still use the Simulated Alexa Switch as a proxy trigger for either ST Classic Routines or ST New Automations. So it made sense to keep all devices discovered natively in each platform. Basically, I just had to expose Z-Wave and non-Hue Zigbee devices from ST into Alexa via the Skill integration, and exclude all the others, otherwise you end up with duplicates in Alexa, (e.g., a TP-Link device named āFloor Lampā gets an Alexa-derived device from the TP-Link Kasa skill, and a second device with the same name from the ST integration skill.)
In my case, that meant excluding devices from Arlo, August, (I donāt have the Z-Wave version), Ecobee, Globe Suite/Smart Life/Tuya, Harmony, Hue, LIFX, Meross, Netatmo, Rachio, Ring, Sonos, TP-Link Kasa, and Wemo. After noticing this morning that the Alexa ST skill was now āSmartThings Classicā, I figured I should disable the old skill and enable the new one. And now I have 129 duplicate devices in Alexa. What a mess!
Not sure if Iām going to try to clean this up, or just try a couple of alternatives like HomeSeer HS4 (it appears to have finally made it out of beta) and Home Assistant, since both can be software-only solutions that integrate with ST for the Z-Wave and Zigbee connectivity.
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Just a few:
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Argh, thanks for the pointer. Wish I had seen this earlier!
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Okā¦so a lot to unpack here, but Iām going to go out on a limb and give this a shot. Hope itās helpful.
For background, Iām a SmartThings Sr. Product Manager whoās directly working on the migration efforts and Iām also a long-time SmartThings user with a few locations and 120+ devices at my home including LAN-connected, Zigbee, Z-wave, OCF and BLE. Iāve got devices from a variety of well-known and lesser known manufacturers and I also use WebCore, community DTHs and SmartApps extensively, so Iām definitely invested in this on a few fronts.
Yeah, thatās just not the case. As our VP of engineering mentioned a few weeks ago, weāve always been an open platform and we have no intention of changing that. What weāre trying to do is balance improving our architecture with supporting a community of advanced users and devs, some of whom have very specialized use cases. At the same time, we know our product can be confusing and hard to adopt for newbies to home automation and IoT. Our motto is āmake every home a smart homeā and thatās exactly what weāre trying to do. Regardless of what level youāre at we want you to be able to enjoy the platform and grow with it.
WebCore seems to work just fine for me. I just went into WebCore through the new ST app, added a previously un-added device and then included it in a piston. There appears to be a UI bug that makes it look like devices are not being saved as youāre exiting screens (shows up as a āDo you want to āDiscardā or āCancelāā pop-up) but theyāre actually saved. For reference Iām using ST version 1.7.50-21 on Android 10.
Iāve got a few ActionTiles dashboards that I use for testing - they all seem to be working fine. They need a little love from me with some changes Iāve made to my location, but theyāre still working.
Yes, we absolutely are, which is one of the reasons Iām on the community frequently and in close touch with our CS and DevRel teams. The community is one of our most valuable resources as a platform and EVERYONE at SmartThings agrees that itās important we listen and provide features the community wants.
Not really sure where heās getting this as nobody that youāre talking to in CS is at any of the release planning meetingsā¦
Yes, the IDE will eventually go away, but not before we provide an alternative that provides similar functionality. Weāve previously confirmed this.
I meanā¦I think all of our personal hygiene has suffered a little through this Covid mess, but āreekā may be a bit of an overreach. And for what itās worth, Wozniak deserves WAY more credit than he gets.
Seriously though, weāre not trying to dumb the platform down, weāre trying to make it faster, more stable, and cooler than it is today. In doing that, weāre going to have to make some compromises because keeping things the way they are for every single use case on the platform just doesnāt work from an architectural standpoint. Weāre trying to simplify and standardize the stuff we can while providing the flexibility needed to accomplish the outcomes the community is most looking for. Itās a balancing act and we know that weāre probably going to lose some peopleā¦which frankly really saddens and stresses a lot of us out - we like our users and we want you all to like the platform we work so hard on. But we have to make some changes to keep the platform advancing and keep creating the next cool thing in IoT.
@MaxVonEvil, it sounds like your mind is made up, so all I can say is that Iām sorry we didnāt live up to your expectations, but I hope that youāll keep us in mind in the future because with some of the stuff we have planned, the next few years are going to be really fun. If you have any questions or want to talk more - feel free to reach out to me via DM.
EDIT: Clearing up two other questions from earlier posts: 1) Virtual switches can still be created through the IDE. Iām a huge fan of these personally and we at ST acknowledge they have a lot of good applications for our more advanced users and 2) migration was rolled out in a few tiers based on specific features that still needed to be brought up to parity in the new app. We looked at which specific locations had those features (while respecting everyoneās PII of course) and held off on migration until they were ready. We know that not everything will be identical to the Classic app and there were some difficult decisions made regarding what were considered as parity features, but we sought community feedback on this and tried to address the vast majority of use cases.
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This was very encouraging to read. As a former Wink user I realize how it feels to get left out in the dust, so itās nice to see that you guys are doing your best to try and navigate the changes. I mean, Wink set the bar low and Iām not looking to get another hub again, so it isnāt like Iām going anywhere now. Iām really glad Webcore will still work because I just setup a ton of automatons over there. I think the new app will work well with some tweaks, I think the developers just need some time to catch up. Above I commented about some issues with locks using a custom DTH and the new app. In this instance the new app was slower and harder to use. Hopefully you guys will get most of the kinks worked out.
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Nez!
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@blake.arnold, that was awesome! Thanks for the clarifications.
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This is exactly what this community needs reassurance, clarity and showing how invested you are in the SmartThings platform so thank you.
All I will say though is get the whole team at ST to be just as forthcoming as yourself, make us feel like we are part of the productā¦
Give us clear guidance on what you expect to happen and whenā¦
Let us know when something we have is going to disappear along with why and how we can achieve the same/similar results in the new world.
Again thank you very much for this and thank you to all of your teamās also of coarse this community whom Iām sure you will agree have shaped alot of what ST is today.
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Blake, will the new app UI get a more pleasant and useful look, it has been commented over and over how bad it looks, it really is a screen load of wasted space, personally I would like to have an option for a pro or standard look, pro taking on the appearance of the old app with a modern polish, standard being the current look
Regardless of how it is done, please ask the UI guys to improve the apps appearance, I dread being moved over to it full time as it is so ugly
Ps
Oddity, wonāt call it a bug, Gear S3 , when the relevant rectangular area is selected to view the device particulars, the top left return arrow and back button on an Android phone both close the inew St app nstead of returning the user to the device selection screen
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Ughā¦ I made the āswitch" and after about 7 years of decent performance in smartthings. Iāve lost nearly everything. Iāve lost so much functionality in my system. Why did we do this?!
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Beyond how clunky it looks, after you spend hours re-customizing the order of devices, rooms, and favorites, your preferences arenāt even stored to the cloud, so if you ever have to reinstall the app or want to install on another device, all that work is wiped away. This app is so far from being ready for prime time, itās shocking that ST is choosing this moment to force the last of us hold overs to migrate. Despite years of ups and downs Iāve kept with ST, but this may be the final straw.
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And often, when opening a support ticket and dealing with the 3 days of back and forth emails trying to prove to the support person there really is a problem, uninstalling and re-installing (or logging out and logging back in)is one of the things they suggest you do before they consider escalating the problem to someone who can really fix it. Either way, you lose the settings.
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Blake,
Really appreciate the transparency however, right now id say you guys have a HUGE miss at least in my case I have 4 smartapps with known compatibility issues and Im being offered the banner. Dont know what failed, the detection or???
Also add to it that the apparent mass migration leading directly into a ānewā experience that is unstable (missing devices, offline devices and the unfortunate timing of yesterdays outage)
Speaking as a long time fan and community member - you guys have a GIANT perception issue here. A pause and a few very public statements about what you just said would go a long way because right now the experiences of the vocal minority are spreading the message like wildfire (Both here and the few FB communities I participate and moderate)
Add to it a very poor experience when dealing with the support desk (my own experience included-ask me in PM and Ill get you the ticket ID) and weāre just not getting a warm fuzzy out here on the user side of the screen.
Help please.
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I think they just posted the banner to everyone, regardless of their setup. I have android running the classic app version 2.20.0 just released 7/20/20. I tried downgrading to the prior version 2.19.1, and the one before that, but the banner is still there so seems like it is just pulling in regardless of what version I use or not. I setup everything in the new app first when I got my hub a couple months ago, and didnāt even know about the old app until I started looking up the more advanced features and seeing they didnāt work in the new app. So for me, I donāt even know what would happen if I click the banner and am afraid to find out. How can I āmigrateā to the new app, when I started in the new app and āmigratedā to the old one? I told my wife donāt click it under any circumstances, but read an instance where someoneās daughter clicked it and it screwed up everything. I posted above Blakeās comments were great to hear, but also fear that there are many companies out there where the dedicated employees like Blake are ignored and the disconnected managers who think they know better just push forward with their own agenda. Clearly that has happened already with them putting this notification out before figuring everything out, and as you pointed out, that is a huge miss. It looks like the ānew appā was released two years ago so you think they would have figured it out by now. Or maybe they just canāt figure it out and are throwing their hands up and saying just move everyone over and see what happens? At my job we are still running some legacy systems built in the 90ās because they canāt figure out how to integrate them with the new ones. I guess weāll have to wait and see what happens. Thanks again for your help with things Nathan and pointing me over to this thread to stay updated.
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If you donāt want the migration banner, you need to use Classic version 2.17, a lot of users stayed on that version because of the introduced bugs on following versions.
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Is there a link to downgrade?
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