So Rules engine has a lot of promise but its also very frustrating to use sometime.
Here are 4 changes that I think would be a God sent:
-
Save As
Save a Copy of the Current Rule with a different name. This would be Seriously helpful especially when a rule that needs to be applied to multiple controls but they don't share the same outcome. IE the Virtual to Real Fan Rule. I don't know how you implemented your system but on nearly every system I have worked on adding a save as only involved passing in a different Id to the Database with the Upsert. -
Device Base Context Filtering
Start the Rule with List of controls it has access too. Take the Same list that is in the "Amazon Echo Skill" and tack in on the top. It would default to all devices for backwards compatibility. This list is then used to filter all list presented to the user to see of the item in the list applies to the current devices. So in this example below I have added only a Dimmer and a Fan Control.
Note: I'm using this as a basis for the rest of the examples
So in the List for conditions That has for every possible action even for devices I don't have on the system now becomes a list that is much more manageable.
So from this:
to this:
A Contact Condition does not make sense for a fan or dimmer so it does not show up.
And that Action List would go from this:
to this:
The effect for this list would be more dramatic if the Action Type was more split up.
And this list
To this:
I would also recommend checkboxes to filter out Time, Date, Custom Actions, scenes, ect and have an even greater effect of reducing the length of those lists. (I thought of this after making those examples)
The reason for this should be self apparent. When working on a rule this will drastically reduce the time it takes to create rules as the only options in the dialogs are ones that make sense.
The system already limits a list of devices based on the context IE for when a condition for Contact Condition You only show contact sensor a switch would make no sense there. So There is already code that makes that association this would use the same one and just flip it. Again I don't know how your system is implemented but I can't imagine this being difficult. It is just filtering what is being pushed down to the select and eliminating the list items on the render. -
Text Base Import Export.
Everyone likes cool UIs to set things up but when writing code they just get in the way. even with Webcore which is one of the better implementations I've seen, it took a while with hunt a peck searching.
So it would be great if the Rules Machine allowed exporting of the current rule to some format even a confusing Json forma tand with a warning saying this is subject to drastic changes would be greatly valuable. This would even take care of number 1 in this list.
If you have some form of serialization for the rules this should be super easy. -
Templates
So a way to generate a rule from a template would be super useful. This would be another button in the "Create New Rule" page called "Create From Template". When clicked it would bring up a dialog. This dialog that would consist of a list of templates and parameters. The Templates would be a list of predefined rules Have a list of predefined rules like "Turn on/off when closed", "in the morning turn on", "When I leave Turn off" and so on. The parameters would be Devices. So the Turn off when closed they would have one parameter for Whats closing and one parameter for Whats being turned off. This would be great to generate a simple rule quickly. It would also make it easier for the uninitiated to learn your rules engine.
I'll admit the Difficulty on this one is must higher then the rest you now need to store a list of templates and maintain it and a new dialog but it still should not be that difficult. And the parameters would have to be filtered to make sense in that location. To added even more complexity and much for functionality it would be great if this template list was editable by the end user.
I would love to see any and all of these ideas implemented. I truly believe they will increase the value of your product dramatically. The more flexible it is the greater the power users will sing your praises and the more usable it is the more likely you will have the less tech enlightened to buy this.
). It's getting better with each version, but I suspect they'll reach a point at which the existing constraints limit further improvements. Your suggestion is certainly one that looks like it would fits within this system and could be used to filter the lists a bit, but it seems like it adds more clicks up front in order to just save a bit of scrolling later, so I could understand if they don't see the value in adding something like it. Once you use RM a lot, you get used to where things are in the lists, so if you're new to it, hopefully that will come soon enough!
