I have added to new devices that I'd never used previously - Multi-channel Relays. This created a device - the parent, and in my case, 2 children.
Without any changes or customizations, opening the Devices list sorts alphabetically. But not really.
Since regardless of parent or child the device exists, my expectation was to find the child devices in their respective locations. Only by knowing that the device is a child of a parent, and then expanding that parent - allows me to dig out the device.
This to me is a GUI problem - Since Parent/Child relationship is not related to device names, it creates a flaw. Moving/adding the Parent/Child relationship as a secondary independent column, would fix this issue - it would still allow the relationship to be viewed if sorted this way, but not override the expected behavior.
I am not against making changes to the sort but only if we do have the option to have the children expanded under the parent. I really like the way that it currently works.
Also, note that you don't need to expand every parent device manually. The arrows in the top right of the UI, next to Add Device, will expand and collapse all of them. Further, I believe the default is expanded, so they'd only be hidden if some action was taken. This only applies to list view; grid view, default on mobile, always shows all.
Search will also find child devices (or, of course, all devices, by name or other criteria), expanded or not, along with the parent and sibling devices since they'll also be shown, presumably due to how the UI shows the relationship (though you'll still need to have the parent expanded actually see a matching child). This may be helpful if you're trying to find a specific device but don't know if it's a child device or what the parent might be called.
FWIW, I like the current display since there is a real-world relationship between the devices, though I understand the request. Perhaps they'll add other ways to organize the Devices list at some point (something they have hinted at for Apps, at least, though no guarantees on timing for this at this point or if they were thinking any similar for Devices at all).
This has been my experience too.
Not sure why OP’s would be different.
I have found the "Rooms" tab is helpful to get a better organized list of devices. I consider the Devices tab the master list, and the Rooms tab is great to get a device quickly granted you know what room you attached it to.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
