Enhancement Request: Rules grouping

Rule engine is so useful and number of rules is growing fast.

Browsing and maintaining these many rules would be easier if possible to group the rules, maybe presenting them in ‘tree view’, so I can expand/collapse a group of rules.

A possible grouping method could be group by SmartThings rooms/areas, another option is to let the users create their own groups and assign the rules to these groups respectively.

Thanks!

@Roy_Kfir, thanks for the feedback. @Justin_Newbury has suggested this related rule grouping concept by allowing users to set the rule’s color/icon so they are visually grouped in the rule list. So your feedback is important in helping us design the grouping feature. I’ve noted your feedback to this item in my list. Let’s see if anyone else wants to share their thoughts here too. :smiley:

4 Likes

Grouping sounds like a great idea to me. I would want the ability to collapse/expand rather than organize by color or icon. I want to reduce visual clutter and make it easier to find a rule quickly.

I could also see some sort of filtering capability. For example, I know my rule involves a particular device… show rules that involve this device.

One question I have (slightly off topic). Most of my rules are setup as automations in ST. Is there a good reason to convert my automations over to SharpTools rules? I haven’t actually looked into whether my automations run on my hub or not, but I figured I had the greatest chance of running them locally if I used automations.

1 Like

10 posts were merged into an existing topic: Local Execution Question

I’d love rule organization as well. Expand and collapse as well as room groupings would be my preference.

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@Roy_Kfir, @Aaron_Drysdale, and @Alex_Burrows, thanks for the feedback here. We just rolled out the search feature yesterday, which is our first step in better organizing rules. Please see the release notes below for more details, and hope you guys find the search feature helpful. :wink:

4 Likes

It would be really useful if we had the ability to create folders in the Rules Engine, simply for sorting out all of our rules. I have been using the platform for only a few days, yet find myself getting confused when trying to find a specific rule within my ever growing list.

Basically a simple organisation system that would allow users to sort their rules as they see fit.

Sorry if this has been mentioned already, I did check, but couldn’t see anything. Hope you find this suggestion useful and take it into consideration :slight_smile:

Welcome to the community and thanks for posting! I think this would fit into the existing: Enhancement Request: Rules grouping

If you agree, I’ll go ahead and merge your post into that topic and you can cast your vote over there.

I would also note that we recently added search features to make it easier to find your rules. It searches both the rule name and description which gives you some additional flexibility in adding keywords into the description.

Can you help us better understand the use case for folders / grouping over search? We built an internal proof of concept for ‘tagging’ that would enable you to add tags to rules and either filter or group by tags (much like a folder), but we felt that the search ultimately covered most of the core cases we found ourselves using tags for.

I was just having a read over that existing topic and I agree that this fits!

The search tool is very useful and does a great job at locating the specific rule I am after, but I am not the only one who creates Rules in my household. Therefore, I don’t always know the name of the Rule I am after, plus I am quite forgetful and sometimes I can’t actually remember the name of the rule I am looking for, even if I created it. So I am usually doing a lot of scrolling until I find what I am after.

If we had the ability to group rules, we could have all of our security rules in one specific area, then all of our lighting rules in another etc… Making it easier during those forgetful moments.

It’s also my OCD talking, as I like to have a neatly organised work area :laughing:

3 Likes

Thanks for the update and the details - I’ve merged the topics together. Don’t forget to scroll up to the top and cast your vote!

Same goes for @Roy_Kfir, @Aaron_Drysdale, and @Alex_Burrows. I’ve moved the original request for rule grouping into the new Feature Requests category. If you’re still interested in this feature, be sure to scroll up to the top post and cast your vote for it. :smiley:

I just voted for this. How many votes will be needed to proceed?

Hi Lucas-
Welcome to the community and thanks for posting. Here’s a relevant reply from another thread…