Home hub, work hub, and my employees

I’m trying to find a solution to my multiple locations problem. I know you can’t set permissions so that people can only see one location so I have a solution, I think, that I wanted to get some feedback on.

Could I release my office hub from my account, set up one of my employees as the primary account for that hub. Then, have them add me as a user to their hub. If I did this would I then be able to attach my account to both my work and home hub but limit everyone from accessing my home hub because I’m a secondary user on my work hub instead of the primary?

Better solution is to create multiple e-mail aliases that you have control of. I recommend this because only the master account associated with the hub can remotely issue a reboot. This means you will need 1 alias for each hub, and 1 for the account that is a master that combines all of your locations.

If you use gmail, you can create an unlimited number of unique gmail addresses that will go to your account by using a + at the end of your standard e-mail (eg. jw+home@gmail.com and jw+office@gmail.com all go to jw@gmail.com). I suspect that other e-mail services may have something similar available, or you can create additional free e-mail accounts and not used them for anything else.

I’m not sure of the specifics of releasing the hub from the primary account and transferring to a new account, but once you figure that out, use the above advice to setup additional SmartThings accounts.

I should add that I know this works because I have SmartThings at home, but also manage 4 other SmartThings installations for people that aren’t tech savvy. The first hub that I helped setup I made the mistake of using someone else’s e-mail account that I didn’t have direct access/control of.

What SmartThings still lacks is a distinction between authorized users that can control the system, and administrators that can make changes to the automations, components, etc. This is especially important for a larger office environment where you may want users to have different permissions.

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So if I understand correctly.

  1. Setup a master account email. Connect all hubs to this email as the owner.
  2. Invite myself back to all of thmn as a secondary user.
  3. Only invite my employees to the work hub.

This will.

  1. Make sure I get alerts for all locations.
  2. Make sure my employees only get access to the one hub.
  3. Employees won’t get my personal alerts at my house.

If all of this is the case then it will work great. So another question. I have about 40 devices on home hub. Is there any easy way to transfer account ownership to this new master account without redoing everything?

ActionTiles rolled out secure dashboard Panel Sharing (ie, sharing at the granularity of a set of Tiles which each is only a specific Capability of Thing…), to our Beta participants recently.

We believe this is a significant step towards solving this type of requirement.

(Release date announcements coming soon. Unfortunately the Beta Program is full.)

Not quite correct.

  1. Create a unique account for each hub (HH, HW). Use these account to share access with the appropriate individuals.
  2. Create (or use existing) a master account (M) that is not the primary account for any of the hubs.
  3. Using HH, share access to your home hub with M account. Then repeat with HW.
  4. use HW account to share with anyone you want access to the work hub.

If you follow these instructions then your concerns will be met.

You should contact SmartThings support for help changing the primary account.

I’m all set on this. Creating the multiple accounts worked like a champ. I appreciate the quick response and helpful answers on here!

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I wish there was a better solution for this. I have to login and logout to separate accounts every time I go to work. I have a hub at home and a hub at work. It would be great if they made it easier to switch accounts.

I would love to see touch id incorporated into the app as well.

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I agree… This is a feature that we hope SmartThings improves in their App.

Meanwhile, I would like to please encourage you send me an email to let me know how closely ActionTiles meets or does not meet your needs: Support@ActionTiles.com

We’re very interested in filling in gaps and giving options to SmartThings customers.

I don’t have to log out but I have to select a different location. Are you
sure you set it up correctly?

Also, I use the widget on my phone so I can setup multiple locations to
change status without even opening the app. This makes it way easier when I
arrive/leave places.

Jeremy Whittaker

https://www.facebook.com/CouncilmanWhittaker/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremywhittaker/
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