Disappointing on all fronts.
do better @SmartThings @Brad_ST @guyot
there’s a reason your customers chose this platform and stuck with it. We know there’s a big shift in the way customers will use the platform planned, and a lot of staff turnover, and we still stick with ST because we like the platform and product. Try not to change the reasons we are part of this community and on this platform…
After doing that…I get:
Access to graph-na02-useast1.api.smartthings.com was denied
You don’t have authorization to view this page.
HTTP ERROR 403
After I do this, I get
Access Denied
We're sorry, but you are not authorized to perform the requested operation.
I’m changing the URL to https://graph.api.smartthings.com/contact/my-custom-guid-goes-here as instructed but I seem to be getting denied. FYI, I had a regular smartthings account, but about two weeks ago got the notification to migrate my account and now I am using a samsung account.
EDIT
Nevermind, I wasn’t on the right page (account/show) when I edited the URL. The directions are a little confusing - In step 3 I only have one location, but I still had to click Home under the Name column before I could perform step 4.
Terry: I don’t think that’s “myopic” at all. Since the beginning, it’s been one of their biggest (if not their biggest) selling point — open, flexible platform. Just because there are up to a million people who don’t necessarily know this as a fact, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re able to use non-ST sensors with their ST hub or products like yours that add excellent functionality to the ST platform.
So, I’m standing by my statement that the open, flexible platform is the biggest draw. After all, it’s certainly not the notification system. 
Or just take the time, do it right and come up with a better solution.
Data migration is a part of software development. Obviously you know this, but it seems like they don’t.
I regularly deal with this in my day-to-day and it’s inexcusable to simply take the lazy route and ignore the migration because it’s “hard”.
This is a really horrible decision… I’m very disappointed.
I knew this was an unfinished feature but I never thought it would be forcefully killed off before a new version was added to the new mobile app.
So basically now my wife has to either be blasted with notifications or I need to turn them off altogether.
Thanks again ST!
I converted over all of my stuff last night and am already getting complaints from the wife for notifications I didn’t send to her because I knew she wouldn’t care about them.
This is yet another reason I’m slowly moving off ST to Hubitat.
I know this is pathetic but this is kinda depressing to me.
I’ve obsessed over developing solutions for this platform for 2.5years, and this is just the start of the transition from an open developer-friendly platform.
Well, I just spent over 3 hours this morning changing all my customized smartApps that used the soon to be removed ST Contact Book feature. Here is my count below by type, but I’m guessing I’m not alone in this process with a robust home automation installation over the years like so many others:
You might think that I get quite a few SMS notifications per day from all these applications, but actually I have most of my SmartApps and WebCore Pistons ONLY send severe errors or infrequent status updates on a per day basis. So, the number of lines I had to change to resolve the contact book call are not related to the number of SMS notifications I receive.
I’m partly glad that SmartThings provided some last minute communication to their decision to depreciate this well used function. IMHO, it hard to understand their explanation for obsoleting this feature since IMHO it couldn’t be rocket code to port this same capability to one’s local SmartApp that gets called as a function in one’s list of SmartApps.
I’m betting that there is definitely something going on within the SamSung management that forced this controversial decision. Perhaps SamSung is getting ready to offer a Fee-Based developers offering and it will have many of the bells and whistles they are removing from their development platform. Just a guess based on revenue needs to run their growing platform.
Either way, I am still overall happy 
with SmartThings for allowing me {and so many others} to develop numerous home automation customizations for free, use of the outstanding WebCore platform for standardized development, and the integration with SMS for sending status alerts.
I’m doing the same. Just ordered my new hub and will be removing all apps I published and re-writing them for Hubitat. Enough is enough.
This bit here gets me. Some of the best parts of SmartThings is because of non-SmartThings individuals using their own personal time to develop custom software that integrates.
What happens when SmartSung (I hope I just created this, but I doubt it) decides to eliminate custom SmartApps because “the majority” of people don’t know they exist or use them so it’d just be easier to get rid of them?
For me, this is just as much about the deprecation of future features as it is the deprecation of this feature.
This is exactly what is stressing me out the most. This marks the beginning the of the changes we all knew where coming, and the end of the platform that opened up endless possibilities to aspiring developers.
Samsung management is going to ruin the product because they don’t care about it at all.
Usually platforms add features over time and don’t remove them without replacement.
This is certainly disappointing. I think something like contact book is is an essential function. If anyone at Samsung has really used SmartThings, they will have seen that turning this off is highly unpractical with multiple accounts for the same location.
Ha… love that new merged name SmartSung, it’s too late to grab the domain name and run with it. Perhaps SungThings.com?
Ok…good point…, but technology companies change their offerings with the wind and sometimes just because they merge. That’s always a possibility with any company, nothing is a guarantee (except for death and taxes?).
I have been around the block a few years and observed too many to name popular platforms/hardware/databases/application development environments/Lotus 1-2-3/Palm Pilot/Blackberry/etc disappear before their time, only to switch to something that is just plain different but the same.
I’m not saying that your prediction is not worthy of consideration, but it’s a known risk. Being in the game of using new technology assures one that every year brings daily enjoyment, pride of self development, and usually predictable frustration.
Fingers are crossed that SamSung/SmartThings recognizes the value of having this IDE and platform available as a key marketing advantage over other bigger Home Automation players who have less capabilities for we few home programmers.
Honestly, I’d be willing to bet real money that I’m 100% right. Specifically, 2 years from now, custom development on this platform is completely gone.
You’ll have to come find me though as I’ll be gone too.
That’s the issue. The company is no longer managed by someone who cares about home automation it’s managed by someone who only sees numbers and likely never used the stuff personally.
Before people started rambling about it being a business and they need to be profitable I get that.
They are going to lose what makes them what they are. The community developers are what helped to sustain ST for the last few years and that’s going away with the apps.
I agree 100% as well. And based on the history of ST and Samsung will not listen to the community and will run it into the ground.
I hope I’m wrong and will admit it if that ever happens.
Was contact book ever available to activate through the app? Or was it never publicly released and had to always be enabled through the IDE trickery?
Also… if Smartthings would be 100% reliable I would not need xtra notifications compared to the other accounts connected to my home… My wife does not care if the battery is low a devices, that the water heater turned off at night as long as it all works. But I have to make sure it does… if it doesn’t there will be no more HA system in the house soon
I am sure I am not the only one with this requirement, including many “non-advanced” users…
it was available for a very short window of time in the app.