Hubitat really works hard to provide what everyone wants. Support works super hard sometimes beyond extended hours. But something is off. Work is done on new features while current ones have problems. Then new features have problems, repeat process. There are too many versions of apps, Some users get left behind with no option to upgrade, you must re-write. etc.
I know I will be attacked. But this process would never be allowed where I work. Hubitat needs to slow down and get things locked down. SmartThings was too slow to respond, Hubitat maybe too fast. Why add hub variables w/o connectors to dashboard and then have to refresh the dashboard to see an updated value? Why do you have to use css for color for them? No templates for color? It seems half implemented. I hope this is not working as designed. This is just an example.
Pin issues/workaround bugs list online. Don't make everyone search for a known issue. There can be variations of problems. Everyone's setup is different trying different rules/features (a benefit of Hubitat). Not everyone looks here or feels comfortable to comment.
My hub is now working for what I need. I am not finding this process beneficial for me. I know it does for vast majority. Take care.. Signing off. Hubitat is best...
Well there isn't a good way to respond to a post that is mostly about "feelings".
That said -
For RM - yes it would be nice if you could convert to newer versions. That said, you never need to re-write a rule unless you want to add features only in new versions (but why do that if your rule was already working?). I still have RM 2.0 rules floating around that work fine, so have never re-written them.
I can't comment on dashboards, as I don't use Hubitat dashboards.
For anything else, if you have issues make sure you are posting them and/or submitting tickets to support.
In term of a known issues thread, I don't see that useful at all. People tend to never read long lists of items, and resort to search. If they are going to search anyway, then it doesn't matter if the issue is in a consolidated list or individual posts.
A good passive aggressive response. I could have listed all the things the corporate world would not allow, procedures etc. But your response would be the same. Try having some feelings.. they are good for you.
Have you never heard of a work in progress? No one forces you to upgrade to new versions, to try out new and evolving features. That is a choice you evidently made, and you don't like it. So roll back to a prior release, and don't use any new features until they are fully baked.
We are a dynamic company, moving forward as best we can. You won't find any other company in this space as responsive as we are, both to bug reports and feature requests. Sorry, but we aren't really interesting in slowing down, despite your impatience with our imperfection.
Hello? What does this mean? Either you want a dialog about your concerns or you want to lob your criticisms without allowing any discussion. Which is it?
No, I have never heard of a work in progress in business. In my world there are deadlines, procedures, regulations and consequences.
If I didn't meet a deadline or sent something incorrect to CMS or anyone, the company would suffer and most likely me as I was responsible.
There are many types of users. With varied experiences. You have alot of passionate users like Joel. Very knowledgeable. But to defend Hubitat like he does is not helping Hubitat. It actually hurts it. In real life and corporate world there is nothing but criticism. It is what makes things improve. I am not intimidated by Joel or you. I am not trying to make anyone mad. Better to listen to those not speaking than the few that do. There are people that feel like I do and will just keep quiet to not deal with pushback. You built a great company, I said so in all my previous posts. But I am not a yes person. Take care.
Oh, what a sad place to be stuck. We are having fun, each one of us. Our company is profitable and most of our customers like the product, and like our approach to it. But, can't please everyone!
There is no "corporate world" that has the CEO responding daily "directly" to the everyday consumer. Your expectations of a corporate world environment are unrealistic in a non corporate world company.
For most products I would agree, however in my mind this product benefits significantly from the advancements and increased functionality.
I personally don't look at what the group mostly does as support, I think a lot of their time is adding features, capability and refinement to the Hub as a system.
It is my "guess" that if the Hubitat folks operated as you suggest the Hub:
Might not even exist as to my knowledge the monitory stream supports the development of the product.
Would be at least 1/2 of what it is (can do) today.
More to lighten the mood than criticize your post but I can't get the comparison to Goldilocks out of my head.
1 Go with the updates and features and some bugs they may bring.
2 Stay on previous releases
3 Go to a different platform
All is your choice. The majority of us while wanting certain things are quite happy with the path @bravenel and other have laid out for their company and Hubitat themselves. Sorry it's so unpopular for you. Perhaps you want to go with a more stable company such as Wink where there hardware and firmware are currently working as they say it should. In the end that may be a better fit for you. Sorry to see you leave but Wink will be more stable for you. Good luck...
First of all, I get where you are coming from but each company has it's own strategy to differentiate their product. There are many companies on the market that promise things that "matter" to them and keep pushing them to next year because they cannot get it right. You say SmartThings is too slow, I can name many others that are slower. We thought hard on what we want Hubitat experience to be to the users and while some may not enjoy rapid development, most do. For those who like to "play safe", we put the power in users' hands to decide when to update, unlike most players in this market. The choice is yours, why would you punish those who enjoy fast pace enhancements, regardless how small, when you can set your own schedule and update once a year for a full feature set that has less imperfections?
It seems everything is a work in progress, else we would all be driving Model T's. The difference is the process is so slow one cannot see that it is moving.
Lets look at automotive emissions implementation in the 1970's. Certainly one can see that was a work in progress. Its the same a Hubitat but moving so slow you can't see the movement.
One can see the same thing in earlier tire development. The difference being folks die then there is a recall.
Oh and I must say I agree with the frustration of minimal documentation. However in this case it is the nature of the beast. I'll guess in 5 years or so some kind soul with write "Hubitat for Dummies'". However I'm not willing to wait.
Three hours ago a user asked us to add Carbon Dioxide Sensor to Notifier.
I'm between two difficult debugging tasks, the second one I know is going to be painful. Now, I suppose had we taken more months to bring out Export/Import/Clone I wouldn't be facing this right now with the urgency I feel, because no user would have the code. But, we missed something in our testing, and our beta testers didn't uncover it, a real user did. So that's up next.
Meanwhile, seeing this request of CO2 in Notifier, and knowing that's a 10 minute undertaking with epsilon chance of failing, I took that on. That feature will be in the next release, early this week. Now, why would you want in any world for that sort of thing not to happen? Where else does it happen? That's how we roll...
And repeatedly at that. And yet, consumers don't seem to buy into the adage that past history is the best indicator of future performance.
Google/Nest shut down the Revolv hub.
Samsung shut down the earliest iteration multiple iterations of the SmartThings hub.
Wink has killed any hub whose firmware was not updated to use their new pricing model.
Numerous lighting hubs have gone by the wayside (or are restricted to a fraction of their original function - eg. Lightify, Philips Hue*).
And here's non-corporate Hubitat: responding rapidly to user needs, and still supporting their earliest hub model - the C-3.
* For what its worth, the first generation (round) Hue hub that is no longer supported on the Hue cloud, still works with Hubitat. How's that for being responsive to customer needs!
The only part of the OP that I agree with are the potential benefits of formally assigning bug reports to a Mantis-style system. Reasons are legion. But I won't be a nag about it, cuz things are moving along great around here, and it's not like the folks in charge are unaware of what's happening.
Let's not forget Iris. Being somewhat an insider the upper level corporate could write a book on how to muck up a good product. The programmers were very aggressive and most had a passion for the project but were throttled and restrained at every turn from the boys in the glass tower.
I know that customer facing roadmapping is generally held close to the vest in software and I know companies HATE to put timelines on anything because somebody will inevitably come back and say "you said it would be done in x timeframe". So the tightrope walking of this fine line can be challenging.
One thing that helped my software company was providing a ROUGH and GENERIC roadmap that we can share/discuss with end users (it can be as simple as a few PP slides).
It's usually laid out in terms of quarters/area of the product and is planned at least 1 year in advance. Knowing the overarching projects that are expected to be worked on/released in 1mo/3mo/6mo/1yr has been crucial in educating our customers and setting appropriate expectations.
I think this can provide value to all users but I know it comes with an administrative cost. Maybe throwing 2-3 slides together for your next youtube livestream showing a rough outline of the next year of roadmap will increase confidence, visibility, and understanding. We do it quarterly for customers on a "coffeetalk" zoom meeting and it's just a couple slides to show tech debt and features that we have in the pipeline. It's also not meant to be a 100% inclusive list and it's always prefaced with "timelines are subject to change".
The reality is that you're always working on multiple projects at once and they all have varying timelines, and some are pre-requisites of others. So it's easy for an outsider to say "why are you releasing so much when there's defects?". I hear this comment literally every day from customers. Sacrificing the development pipeline to try to catch every single bug is unrealistic and would slow velocity and burn.
I believe this would help with customer clarity but I know it comes with an administrative cost and not every company is comfortable having pieces of their roadmap out there for competitors to see. We actually go to great lengths to protect our roadmap and prevent it from landing in our competitor's hands, but in the end it's been worth it.
And for what it's worth, my company resisted printing a roadmap for nearly a decade. We had one, it was just under lock and key. It took a change in CEO to change this practice.
I’m going to put in my 2¢ and then walk away from this one. From what I’ve seen Hubitat is essentially using a pure Agile methodology deliverying a viable set of patches and additional functionality with every release. In doing so the actual makeup of a release isn’t defined until shortly before the sprint begins and may change slightly during the sprint as long as the sprint’s goals are met. Unfortunately for anyone looking for a long range map, there really isn’t one, it’s more a vague set of goals.
Personally I’m good with this approach, as we get viable functionality sooner, with the polish coming later.
