I can’t speak to the ‘why’ for Google and Alexa, but I was simplifying things a bit in that there’s a few more things other than just scopes. From what I gather, there are different eventing strategies that are used for Google/Alexa and USER_LEVEL. We piloted a version of eventing that piggybacked on some of that USER_LEVEL eventing stack but layered in some event filtering and it was too slow for our use-case which is why we ended up getting switched over to a LOCATION scope to piggyback on the existing webhook eventing (which was much more performant but also has it’s own tradeoffs that we manage internally).
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That’s interesting to know. The angle I am really coming from is that at the time of the introduction of the replacement integrations for Google and Alexa it did seem to be the case that a user level integration was all that was available. ST didn’t seem to claim otherwise while on the uncomfortable end of a kicking. That was either not true at the time or it has changed since, and I’ve lost track of how long it has been, but either way the perception of a lack of progress and it all being down to ST doesn’t really seem to have changed much at the community end which is a shame.
It comes down to communication right? When there’s a lack of it people speculate. Human nature.
At the time of the change, it affected pretty much any third-party integration using oauth2, including Google, Alexa, and IFTTT.
About six months after that, Google started allowing finer controls, but Alexa didn’t. So then there was this impression that maybe it was an Amazon issue.
However, then, in mid 2022, Amazon definitely made it possible for smart home skills to be more selective. hubitat is probably the clearest example. Their current skill now allows you to select first the hub and then specific individual devices to make available for Alexa control, very similar to the first generation of the smartthings skill.
I don’t know exactly what changes hubitat made to enable this, but clearly it’s doable from the Amazon side.
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Certainly. In my case though the other Location level integrations have always been legacy ones or Schemas, and they have always had the Location level access. So that is why I fact checked the one ‘API Only’ app I have in that section to make sure what I was seeing meant what I thought it did.
I still don’t get why the Linked Services menu is so tucked away. I don’t really look at it except when sometimes when the app updates to see if anything has changed so it can be several weeks between visits.
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It seems weird that Alexa is able to control devices in other locations other than ones you own. My parents gave me access to their SmartThings location so I could add devices for them and unlock their doors when needed but now I’m accidentally turning their lights on and off from my house when I use alexa.
I guess so. I avoid the issue by maintaining accounts just to use in linking that only have access to a single Location, or to a group of Locations that could safely be combined.
I also find some merit in using those accounts as the Location owners. I’ve never looked to see what happens when you use accounts without full access for linking. Then again I find such accounts generally more trouble than they are worth.
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