Quick UX Survey

[atomic turret]

❓ Quick question - we are trying to figure out the design of some of our UI and would like some answers.

In your own words, can you describe what "blueprint" means in Home Assistant?

[void citrus]

For me that refers to an automation "template/framework" you can plug you entities into, so you don't have to write your own automation from scratch

[calm orchid]

Pre-made automation (template) with customizable options

[desert shoal]

Annoying question when I want to create my automation
Premade automations from the community you can tweak a little

[ripe brook]

Like a pre-made pancake mix for automations. Just add milk

[desert shoal]

I would like the future to be shaped around this explanation

[candid frost]

easy to make automations

[sand talon]

All of above

but seriously; template with specific goal making it both easy and predictable by just adding own entities

[rancid wind]

It's some sort of magic

[vale juniper]

It's a shareable stencil used to quickly sketch on your instance what others have offered - automations, scripts etc.

[vale juniper]

A blueprint is like the Ikea instructions when the product is Åutomatión or Scrÿptt 😅

[desert shoal]

Bløprint

[topaz plover]

It's a blueprint for the final product (automation)

[cursive root]

boilerplate for automations

(though I must admit that I found the terminology behind Home Assistant at bit obscure at first ... e.g. lovelace or core vs supervised, etc)

[atomic turret]

Yes, that's exactly what we are trying to fix here 😄

[cursive root]

ehehe wonderful! maybe even creating a glossary somewhere on the docs/website would go a long way!

[atomic turret]

We have that 😄 https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/glossary/

[cursive root]

shame on me for missing it then 🤣

[atomic turret]

maybe our links are unclear. We'll see

[hallow nexus]

personally speaking the word should speak for itself without a glossary.....the word blueprint to most people will immediately think about real estate and the over layout of the building but its very technical for something thats more of a "shell of an automation" to a normal HA user

the closest thing I can think of is like a pre-installed automatoin....sorta like how smartthings gives you a list of things to do....turn something on when something opens for example

[cursive root]

you have a very hard job there, it's just a lot of documentation! hopefully some sort of GPT system will eventually make it bulletproof in terms of consumption

[cursive root]

I'd also argue that if you aren't a native speaker, maybe that's not the most obvious term

[atomic turret]

In IFTTT they call them "Recipe". But that's pretty bad. 🙂

[hallow nexus]

i love documentation but i fully understand majority of people simply wont read it...even our tech writer at my job says that lol

[hallow nexus]

yup needs something generic...i dont think we need to stick to one word here either

[atomic turret]

Automation templates? Oh wait, the word Template is taken 😅

[cursive root]

eh it's just that documentation is always hard to consume, we aren't used anymore to sit down and read manuals, more like: make me understand now - and this, I feel only a system like ChatGpt can get you there

[hallow nexus]

default automations?

[hallow nexus]

you forgot "i dont like to read show me a video"

[cursive root]

true true

naming stuff is damn hard

[hallow nexus]

it really is

[cursive root]

Automations schemas ?

[hallow nexus]

i think the word should derive itself from "automation" blueprint/skeleton is the right way to think about its purpose

how about

pre-configured automations?

[vale juniper]

I think blueprint is the perfect word, but you have to be a certain age to know what that is

[hallow nexus]

is that an actual word in every other language though? gotta think about words like "kindergarten" which are borrowed from other languages

[hallow nexus]

scratch that.....Configurable automations

thats what it really is

plug and play automatoins?

[cursive root]

I feel that's too much somehow?!

[cursive root]

but they are pre-defined, I liked where you were going with skeleton

Automations scaffolds?

[hallow nexus]

i was thinking configurable automations because in reality all the user does is input their devices....the automation itself is already written so user doesnt need to worry about the logic....just inputting device A or whatever else is required

[plain shadow]

automation recipe , just add ingredients

[vale juniper]

I don't know, but i mean in English

[cursive root]

but then they are just schemas essentially, aren't they?

[hallow nexus]

yes but i dont expect my mom to know what a schema is, but she will understand a word like recipe or configurable

[devout python]

its a declarative approach to the result of an automation. A proven pattern/logic with definable elements.

[cursive root]

fair enough

[topaz plover]

sounds like we need to all ask our spouses what they think blueprint means in the home automation world

[devout python]

heh

[cursive root]

why do you feel this is pretty bad btw?

[hallow nexus]

i can already picture the confused look I will get

[topaz plover]

I just text my wife, i'm betting on "floorplan" of some sort

repsonse

[cursive root]

cause if IFTTT also calls them recipes, that feels like an advantage in a way, so you do not have an extra term for the same thing

[devout python]

mine would probably call it a protocol

[topaz plover]

in the software that I used to write, they called them recipes

and templates

[devout python]

ask 15 engineers , get 15 different answers that all mean the same thing

maybe 16 answers

[cursive root]

of course ehehe

[hallow nexus]

you know templates still isnt bad because we use them in 2 different ways already.....we have domain templates and we have jinja templates...i dont see why we cant have automation templates to follow the same pattern? users of HA already need to differentiate between the 2 based on the conversation

[pale spruce]

An automation template that is hosted on the web somewhere

[cursive root]

and after all.. it's a template

[hallow nexus]

its actually fairly common to use the word template with office products like word, excel, powerpoint

[topaz plover]

Yep, template is used everywhere

[hallow nexus]

"Building plan of said thing you are working on"

[desert shoal]

Let them cook

[hallow nexus]

thats my wifes response lol

[calm orchid]

They are roasting themselves

[desert shoal]

Action reaction

[topaz plover]

mine is ignoring my text

[desert shoal]

Or

if this then that

[desert shoal]

Ouch

[topaz plover]

she's probably in a meeting

[hallow nexus]

for comparison sake....heres what MS word looks like for creating a document...compared to HA creating a automation

notice any similarities?

first item, blank document/automation.....next few items actual templates.....followed by finally discover more templates/blueprints

[topaz plover]

Here’s a non technical persons opinion.

She's a CMO for a large company here, so she might be the right person to ask. I can go into further details w/ her if anyone is interested in her marketing spin

[atomic turret]

Fascinating. Template is indeed the word most other software use.

But then it's taken in HA 😱

In that case, what would our current "Templates" be called instead?

In your own words, what does the current "Templates" mean?

[hallow nexus]

by current templates do you mean domain templates? because jinja templates i dont think we can change or call it something else lol

[vale juniper]

Dynamic text or (rarely) other objects

[dusk crow]

How about "automation package"?

Some blueprints are much more than a template - it's pretty amazing how much functionality can be contained in a blueprint

[atomic turret]

Yeah I mean Jinja templates

[topaz plover]

the template integration? Is virtual entities.
The jinja used across HA? A language. Personally, I'd call them "variables". We did this at my last company and it was a "big hit". Even though it was basically it's own coding language.

[ripe brook]

Jinja templates are just Jinja templates I think. I see them everywhere outside HA, they're always called templates. I personally avoid them like the plague because I find the syntax horrible but that's just me

[topaz plover]

pretty much everywhere outside HA is ansible

which is slightly different than jinja

cut from the same cloth for sure

using the word templates everywhere does confuse the shit out of people

teh #templates-archived channel gets non-template questions all the time

I'm not sure tehre will be a 1 size fits all word that will fix that

[hallow nexus]

their own documentation refers to it as a template though doesnt it? https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/3.1.x/

[topaz plover]

Yah for sure, IIRC the language was built to render HTML easily as a static "template"

[hallow nexus]

its kinda more used like conditional logic isnt it?

[ripe brook]

not sure I understand what you mean?

[topaz plover]

Jinja is not widely used

Ansible is

which is a different language built on jinja

[devout python]

ansible playbooks can use jinja and quite often do for varaibles

terraform is big too

crossplane is another i think

[flat cosmos]

return question really is, talking about the UI design, why the exegese of the term Blueprint? (personally I've never used/made BP's because they either never fit the bill, or are more trouble then a simple automation is for taking care of the job to do, but thats besides the question probably). in other words, what are you after @atomic turret , how can we help best

[topaz plover]

I'd use blueprints if we had a way to organize automations

[flat cosmos]

my own description would be a 'generic automation design, ready to tailor to your own needs'

[topaz plover]

without that, I'm just using parallel automations to keep my automations to a minimum

[vale juniper]

I have a few "groups" of automations that fit the blueprint concept like a glove and i love the idea behind it. For example, i use this (quite hefty) blueprint for turning down heat when windows are open, with overrides and stuff https://gist.github.com/tetele/0e9b8720fac4bc08edd894e12d7976a2 Then i just instantiate an automation from it for each room

[vale juniper]

How does the lack of automation grouping prevent you from using them?

[flat cosmos]

dont get me wrong, but that video illustrates perfectly why using a BP as hefty as that, is not what the original idea (or so I believe) was, namely a sort of automation guide 'for dummies' . No need to truly understand the inner workings, and have some 'ready made recipe' only require some personal ingredients or finishing touches.

it is already so detailed in its options, we need to study its capabilities before even beginning to suspect we could use it

[topaz plover]

Well, I don’t want to search for an hour in that list. So I make 1 automation that solves the current problem. Using templates to aggregate the current parallel run

Makes it so I have 1 automation. Defeating the need for a blueprint

[vale juniper]

My point was that blueprints are a great way to multiply automations for related contexts (like rooms) and you don't need grouping for that

[vale juniper]

That's because that particulat blueprint allows some external scripts. If i could have used some actions that i could insert in it, that need would have been gone

[topaz plover]

It makes a huge difference, if I had my automations broken out into blueprints, I'd have over 250

right now I'm sitting at 50 or less 61

[topaz plover]

@atomic turret my wife’s comments