The community is integral part of our support structure. Because with Hubitat ElevationÂŽ, youâre limited only by your imagination, the ingeniosity of our members is unmatched.
We are constantly amazed by the creativity that this community generates and there is nothing more rewarding for our developers to see how the product is utilized in the real world.
Although our principle is to keep things simple when building rules, we have seen countless examples of creative ways in which the product is used, that far exceed our expectations.
Here is the perfect example. A complex rule revealed a problem with Rule Machine, and the problem was fixed within 45 minutes! This is the kind of support we pride ourselves in offering.
The person who posted has gotten responses in now three different threads for this issue, including me above recreating and successfully testing nearly exactly what I had previously suggested as a solution to the problem.
And for this, everyone is greatful for sure. I just find it crazy and likely unsustainable that there is only one support person; as is evidenced by people often complaining that they haven't got a response from support with an issue. I've been in the same boat. The community is great and has helped me out a lot but there are some things you need to go to support on and only having one guy doing the support for all of the countries hubitat is sold into is crazy!
I would like to add an alternative explanation to what many here are saying. I would guess that Hubitat has probably had a huge influx of new users with the Wink issues, Hubitat hub price reductions during the holidays, and for various other reasons, You also have a new CEO and to go along with that there are likely lots of meetings and brainstorming sessions.
They were likely aware there would be a large increase in support tickets with huge sales numbers, but with a lean company you probably cannot preemptively hire more staff. It is a tricky situation, and part of the growing pains of many companies.
With a limited staff, some trouble tickets are prioritized over others. Things like "my hub slows down, but I can't repeat it or tell you what device or driver causes it" are probably very low priority compared to login issues, dead hubs, and so on. I don't know how else people expect support to operate? If you did first come first served, you might spend lots of time on something you cannot immediately fix while pising off people with more critical (and easy to fix!) issues.
The only thing I would say apparently could be improved is the communication aspect of trouble tickets. That is tough to do, and requires more work to give daily/weekly updates to users who have submitted trouble tickets. That time you spend sending updates could have been spent fixing issues.
I just hope everyone can be patient while Hubitat works this out. I bet it will settle out soon enough. I don't have any inside info, nor do I work for Hubitat, but I have seen this many times in my lifetime. It may seem like they are ignoring users, but they can only do so much.
I just checked and Hubitat' FAQ are about the community, not about the usual problems. And the How to's are not answers to problems, they are advices for playing with the hub.
Also found this:
FAQ takes some times to write, but it's also fairly different than doc. Reading doc is a long task, even with search tools. FAQ is a quick answer to common probs. Ok, I know you know that...
FAQ is the solution for obvious, newbies and common problems with always (almost) the same answers. Reading them will avoid posting a ticket or ask again the same question to everybody, including @bobbyD . If you put a direct link to the FAQ at the begin of those pages (Documentation - FAQ - Support), I'm sure people will read them at first (RTFM).
Q1: what are the steps IF my hub is slow ? A: look at the log, disable rules (=> Q2), reboot your hub
Q2: how can disable rules to see if hub speed is faster ? A: go to rules, clic on the right top cross, etc
Q3: etc...
So, real problems with real baby steps to solve them, with some screen captures to help people.
Thinking of that, I'm sure (without emphasis) that a lot of people here (including me) are ready to write a little "quick solution for a common problem" to help the community (and Bobby at the same time).
This forum is fun , valuable and for the most part for the enthusiast. However for the general punter who is looking for support it really isnât optimal and in some cases may not representative of the brand... I would see the way forward thru support avoidance and simplification of key elements of the product such that 90 % of the users are satisfied by 10% of the functionality, that functionality is rock solid and so easy to use and setup there are no support calls ( or very few )
First off ... seems that some of you aren't going to agree with anyone's opinion on the quality of service and just prefer to argue about it. And if I'm not mistaken, the search button will assist a ton of new users with their problems. All you have to do is search and do some reading. The problem is that no one wants to figure things out on their own. They want someone to do it for them. I think there should be a section in FAQ on how to use this forum to achieve maximum results. I've solved so many problems with just a simple search. I've also made friends here that I can bounce issues off of when I need to. The friends I've made here are priceless. So, my point is to be empowered to solve some of these issues on your own and reach out to the community before you try and lean on support. Looks like the community solved the original issue in this post.
A thing Iâve learned in 15 years of consulting is that the smallest customers will be the hardest to satisfy.
A customer spending 6 or 7 figures on a custom system is doing it because they see the value in the result. They have skin in the game. Theyâll respect my time and pay the well-documented invoices we send.
The customer who only has a couple thousand and âjust need a little thing, it shouldnât take much at all...â That customer is far more likely to ask me for free work, even months after project completion. And theyâll be the slowest to pay the invoices.
Itâs not that theyâre bad people or have malicious intent. Itâs just the natural result of their position and resources. If you donât have much to spend and are trying to maximize results... well, I would do it too.
Weâre all doing the best we can with the limited resources weâve got. Iâm so thankful for the great resource that this community is, and the cheerful help that so many have provided. It has helped me get far more results than my budget would otherwise have allowed.
What I donât understand is how Hubitat says its because of not needing to spend money on cloud servers like competitors, buy why does a company like Homeseer charge as much. Clearly their model has kept them in business for 20 plus years.
So, my point is to be empowered to solve some of these issues on your own and reach out to the community before you try and lean on support. Looks like the community solved the original issue in this post.
