Hi all, I am new to HE and trying to implement some rules with Rule Machine and encountering some odd behaviors with triggers not setting the correct event subscriptions.
It looks like the UI allows you to modify/change triggers but will not update event subscriptions until the "Done" button is pressed.
Hubitat Elevation® Platform Version 2.2.3.135
Hardware Version Rev C-7
Rule-4.0
For example,
Create a rule with a trigger when a switch is turned on
Observe expected event subscription for switch.on
Edit trigger to when switch is changed. Do not click "Done"
Reload rule, observe trigger for switch changed but event subscription still says switch.on
Click "Done"
Reload rule, observe update to event subscription to be switch
Is this by design? At the very least it would be nice if RM told you when you had changes that hadn't been applied/processed yet?
Yes, you will need to click either "Done" or "Update Rule" to update the rule with these changes. They are similar except that the latter will not close the rule/app. "Done" is a standard Hubitat feature; "Update Rule" is something they added specifically to RM, though I suppose any app could implement something similar.
This is typical behavior in nearly any Hubitat app. In the most basic of app without any "dynamic" pages, nothing gets saved until you hit "Done." Even for apps like RM that are quite dynamic, it is typical for things like event subscriptions and scheduled jobs to not get added/removed/updated until "Done" is pressed. It's basically a "Save" button for the app, and I've heard someone here joke that "If you see a 'Done' button in Hubitat, you should probably click it." They aren't wrong. (It should be noted that RM is perfectly happy to let you edit actions, conditions, and some other things without clicking either of these buttons, but those don't result in schedules or subscriptions off the bat, so I suppose that's different. Unless you're in the middle of running actions with sensitive repeats, schedules, or similar that you'd break by doing this--they'll all get un-scheduled and things re-scheduled as if the rule were new--I'd hit "Done" anyway to be sure.)
Yeah, that makes sense and is consistent with my findings. My main point though was that it would be nice if RM could tell you/indicate that there were pending changes which hadn't be applied. You literally have no way to know otherwise and for new people who don't understand event subscriptions or the complexity of RM they may assume WYSIWYG semantics.
I'll survive but a simple message could've improved my starting experience significantly and avoided a bit of frustration.
(It should be noted that RM is perfectly happy to let you edit actions, conditions, and some other things without clicking either of these buttons, but those don't result in schedules or subscriptions off the bat, so I suppose that's different. Unless you're in the middle of running actions with sensitive repeats, schedules, or similar that you'd break by doing this--they'll all get un-scheduled and things re-scheduled as if the rule were new--I'd hit "Done" anyway to be sure.)
