Your Dashboard Ideas are Needed!

While we’re at it, I’m really annoyed that “Things” is now the default page when I open, not “Rooms”. It make a lot more sense to start from an organized list than a huge list of all “Things” at once.

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Thanks for your input!

If you had to choose between a dashboard that only showed device status or a dashboard which only allowed quick access to controlling devices, what would be more critical?

How do you define “critical lights”? Can you say more about that? What makes lights critical vs not as critical?

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Thanks for sharing the screenshots! It looks like you’ve organized items in a specific way. Can you tell us more about how you decided to organize items in the way you did?

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It depends on the user. I am going for full automation, so I’d prefer status. Others would like more control so they would want to control devices.

Due to the lack of ways to organize devices in groups, i used the Rooms feature to organize my devices by type.

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I’m a little confused as we were promised by numerous ST staff that this was already in the works, BACK IN 2015. Now it appears you guys are just starting this. How many more times are we going to be lied to?

Or did you guys throw out all the work that was done when Dave left?

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I don’t mind goi trough the existing rooms to get to devices to control. I’d just like a quick way to see device status. An iOS notification widget would be great too.

I loosely used the “critical” description. My point is just it’d be nice to put any choice of devices on one screen and see their attributes quickly on a flat UI. It could be my outdoor flood lights or a garage light, along with my door locks and any open/close sensors all on one screen.

Even a single indicator like an AND condition would be nice. E.g. If Bedroom Door & Front Door & Family Room Window & Kitchen Window are all closed, show “all closed” and a green light. If any of those are open, show “open” and red light. Etc.

@rjt246 thanks for sharing your work around! Extremely helpful to see. The team is also working on ways to improve overall usability by exploring grouping.

Can you tell us why grouping by device type is important and helpful?

What other grouping schemes would be important and helpful? and what would those grouping schemes help you accomplish?

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I imagine that it comes down to personal preference, but when I want to check the status of a device its easier for me to jump into a group of the same type (customized room in this case). Maybe ST could add another device attribute that’s assignable ie: Device Room and Device Type Group. That way, one could have the option to jump into a group to see all the lights on the platform or jump into a Room to see all device types that where assigned to it.

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I am going to go out on a limb and bet that David didn’t quit.

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As a relatively new customer and influential blogger who has literally brought dozens of followers over to SmartThings, I expect a member of the SmartThings staff to directly address your allegations here in the forum.

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Really, no response from SmartThings staff???

As a customer -> SmartThings employee -> No-longer SmartThings employee -> still a customer, with over 100 devices, I still want the same features in a dashboard that I’ve wanted since app v1:

  • Quick access to the devices I care most about
  • User specific dashboards for individual members of my family
  • Customizable alerts and information
  • Provide a sense of security to what’s happening at my house when I’m away

Things I care most about:

  • Is my door locked and if not, can I lock it?
  • What’s my thermostat set to and I change it?
  • It’s Movie Night, let me quickly run that Routine
  • There’s a noise in the baby’s room, let me fire up the camera so see how he’s doing
  • Did I leave my garage door open? If I did, let me close it

Everyone is different though and everyone has different use cases so it’s important it can be customizable. SmartTiles does a great job at this.

The dashboard should also be fast! For example, I have 2 cameras: 1 Nest and 1 Samsung connect to ST. I never use the ST camera because it takes to many clicks and is significantly slower than the Nest camera. Nest gets me to my camera in 5 seconds. ST takes 30.

Most of my use cases are supported in Apple Home. ST beats Apple Home in terms of device support. But Apple Home beats ST in term of user experience.

I’m optimistic the team at ST is actively working on this UX challenge.

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Totally agree. Default to Things is bad; I filed a feature request with them to make it configurable which I hope they do soon. For those of us with tons of devices, it really slows things down.

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This thread is depressing. I mean, I guess it’s good you are coming here to ask questions, but this means you are in the planning stages of the workflow and no where close to a release. If you are close to release, wtf are you doing here asking these general planning phase questions?

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How about if messages and notification feed worked on Android. Sometimes I can scroll back, most times here lately I get a few minutes. Guess I better look quick when I’m trying to track something.

I’m just curious… why do we have to choose between showing device status and quick access controls? Why not allow both? If some status shows up on the dashboard that you want to change, you should be able to tap the “Thing” with the bad status and have some action item… (if it’s a lock allow us to lock it, if a light, allow us to turn it off, etc)

I agree. Why didn’t they create this thread a year ago when they stopped supporting the old dashboard?

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The current dashboard should indicate the location, preferably by name.
It would be really good to have the ability to show multiple locations and overall status (with the ability to
select locations).

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2 are needed

First has to be sort the main app

Landscape mode is a must. And the SHM screen should allow key devices. Or functions on it.

Second is a universal dashboards. Many have mentioned smart tiles. It works. But does have some minor issues. It can be used on any thing and that’s what’s needed. 100% intergration in to smartthings while still leaving items like custom skinning.

Voice is a nice option but not one I need. Echo has covered a lot of that function.

What would be cool would be an actual wall tablet that is official too.

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