My initial concern when I saw this thread topic was...well what smart apps are next. But this does clarify it. ALL of them. So, I do completely understand how you can't support 3rd party apps...but you sell a system based on it's ability to support 3rd party apps. So it's difficult on both fronts to advertise and say the hub "supports" them but that support doesn't really support them.
WHAT IF. There was a way to "easily" disable ANY 3rd party (not hubitat) code for reasons of hub support. That way customers can use 3rd party software and not feel like they are in the dark or responsible for removing multiple 3rd party programs every time they need support. Also it would easily let the end user determine if their issue is related to 3rd party apps to begin with. Having a problem. Click the button to disable all 3rd party apps. Problem still exists? Contact support. Problem goes away...start enabling 3rd party apps 1 by 1.
Just a thought to truly say the hub supports 3rd party apps...but keep hubitat out the 3rd party code fixing business.
The other option is really not to advertise or allow 3rd party apps. Or make a clearing house of approved apps.
It's an interesting thought, but when you add custom apps, you have them intertwined with so many parts of your system typically. If you just disable them, you most likely will break the flow of things, so you need to substitute with virtual devices and built-in apps, not just disable. Can't see how just disabling would have the desired effect unfortunately.
Not advertising an openness to allowing users to load custom apps if they want to would just be handing business back to SmartThings. They never say you can't install custom apps, they just rarely talk to you, so it's hard for you to get an opinion from them one way or the other, or any help for that matter.
I'm not sure why this is so surprising or offensive to anyone. Try calling Dell support when your laptop locks up due to an issue with Chrome or Firefox and see what happens.
I think this is not a bad idea, something like a safe-mode like many other systems have (windows, android, etc.). This could help people troubleshoot and unload a burden from support by having an easy mechanism to move focus during troubleshooting away from the blaming others game, which is never well received even if 100% correct...
But it should definitely only be an option...not every time the hub is rebooted. Remember, every time the hub updates it reboots. I don't want to go through the trouble of reenabling all custom code every time I update. And other than those, I've only rebooted once since I got the thing 2 months ago (and I'm running webCoRE).
There's a world of difference between the system supporting the ability of people to run 3rd party apps, and our company providing customer/technical support for them!
Perhaps we could add a premium tier of technical support, where the customer pays what it costs to provide that support.
Some are testing, some are old, some I developed....
The point is that it is possible to build a system architecture that is independent of the "apps" so that you can enable/disable the apps and a single "app" can't wreck the whole system. Yet this is a architecture design and not something that can be "bolted" on after the fact.
Maybe just a "Certified Application Developer" support plan that helps the serious players test their apps with a bat-phone to you guys so they can push out tested apps that you and the developer can jointly support.
Easy question you guys field it, genuine bug or issue pass it off to the App developer.
I know, know we're barking up the monetized marketplace tree that ST never got to...
I'd pay for easy mode...
I'm not aware of any company that provides customer support for third party software they have no economic stake in. How could this possibly make sense for us as a business? This would be pure cost to us with no offsetting revenue. The only possible answer would be to charge both the developer and the customer. That's just not a practical or viable idea.
Just read the namespace info in the app/driver and show that to the user when they're in the app that the app/driver is not supported by Hubitat but by xxxxx (the developers name)
App status already shows User Created. How about click on that, and developer information for support comes up? Similar to the way hub details displays.
