I just checked my automations and many are now missing but the actions are still working? Also I no longer see any ability to set a device to turn on or off from the device settings (not automations). For example I had a light set to turn off at 11pm (originally in device setting) and now it is no longer there but it is still working? The only timer options now available at the device level are minutes on/off. Has the recent app and hub upgrades changed all of this? So frustrating that things are being quite confusing again.
There have been some issues lately… but not that particular one.
https://status.smartthings.com/
You should contact ST support and report your issue.
If android, you may want to try clearing your app data cache
If they continue working for you, it is because they have not disappeared.
The quick controls are now in the Automations tab of the details view
Well I finally got all my missing automations back by having to set them back up again. I still do not know what happened. A few things that may have affected the situation though. First I had several devices go off line and I could not get them back until I deleted my ST app and then re-installed. About 6 months ago when I did that I lost all my automations but this time maybe just some of them? Secondly it took me a little while to notice that other than setting the specific time period you now need to select the Automations tab under each specific device if you want to set the time on/off. Previously this option was under the general device settings and there was no Automations tab listed on each device that I can recall. Also I do not understand why all the quick controls appear under the Automations page, it just clutters the page and makes it confusing as I do not use any of them. Is there a way to hide these as opposed to keep on deleting them when they appear?
If they weren’t listed somewhere, how would you know that they even existed without looking at the details of every device? Given they have to be listed somewhere, then surely the Automations tab/page is the best place for them. OK they could perhaps be grouped separately but otherwise it seems the right place for them.
They only appear there if you have created them so there shouldn’t be a need to delete them unless you no longer need them.
Thanks. I obviously do not understand what Quick Controls are or how they are created. So if I create a simple on/off action on a device they show up as a Quick Contol? What I really find confusing is I cannot identify them from any named action and have to open each to see what they control?
The various actions on the device details pages appeared unheralded quite a long time ago. No one really knew what to call them and no one seemed to think to tell the users they were known as Quick Controls. That was something that sort of crept out slowly and now seems to be disappearing again. It was also common to not know how to delete them once created because it wasn’t obvious that they would also appear at the bottom of the then Automations page and that they could be deleted from there.
If you take a ‘Switch’ for example, the one shot Timer is still displayed on the ‘Controls’ tab of the device details page. I’ve no idea why it hasn’t moved to the Automations tab like the ‘Power On’, ‘Power Off’ and the relatively new ‘Power on and off’ have. For me it is a welcome move. If you play around with those and then look at the Automations page in the app you will get up to four tiles saying:
- Device Label, Power on
- Device Label, Power off
- Device Label, Power on and off
- Device Label, Timer
The naming scheme is a lot better than it used to be.
These days Automations, Scenes and the Quick Controls are implemented in the Rules API. As far as I can tell, the ‘source’ is the Rule so the mobile apps are converting backwards from the Rule to what you see in the UI which strikes me as non-trivial. Unfortunately the apps aren’t very good at telling the user that they’ve tried to so something and it has gone wrong. So Automations can seemingly disappear even though they are still functional. Somewhere there is probably an error log saying what went wrong but the users don’t get to see it.
Having the Quick Controls, if indeed that is still the ‘official’ name, listed with the Automations is not just handy for knowing they are there. It is also handy for knowing there are more than there should be. For example, not so long ago it was common to see a ‘network error’ when saving a control. However as often as not the creation had worked fine but the error stopped the app realising all was well. If you then tried again, and again, and again, you could end up with multiple copies of the Quick Control.