I don’t know exactly what the sequence option in the rules API does. If someone knows, could you please explain it to me?
The sequence key can appear in two different places.
Every if action has a sequence object. This has then and else properties which you can set to Serial or Parallel. That controls whether the actions in the then and else action arrays are executed one after the other in the order they appear in the Rule, or if they are executed at the same time. I can’t remember what the default is.
At the top level (i.e. at the same level as name and actions) there is also a sequence object with a single actions property. That allows you to choose Serial or Parallel execution for the actions array. If you use the Advanced Web App to create Rules you may notice you can’t control this because you can only edit the contents of the actions array.
Even if I set it to Parallel, I don’t feel like the automation execution speed is any faster than Serial. Is that what I felt?
Clearly if you are using the sleep action then Serial is going to be needed otherwise you won’t be delaying anything. I don’t know how great a difference it will make to execution speed otherwise.