[User Feedback Request] Quick Actions (formerly Global ON/OFF)

Jurian

Hi everyone,

We just launched the "Quick actions" feature via my.tado.com (web app)

We currently are looking to receive some user feedback before we also release this to the iOS and Android mobile apps in the next weeks.

The question for the poll:

How understandable was the Quick Actions feature for you when you first used it?

Please comment with your general feedback, we will look into all comments next week.

Jacopo2

Fully understandable

Fully working, nice feature!

zarko

Fully understandable

This is excellent!!! Thanks tado!

rorschar

Fully understandable

It works well, perfect

jcwacky

Mostly understandable

This is ace! Thanks Jurian.

The only reason I didn't select "Fully understandable" is because when I first used the "Boost" option, I had to work out myself what this was actually doing. I initially wondered whether it would set each room to something like 2ºC above the current temp, and had to look at the tiles and then click on them to discover that it was setting them all to 25ºC for 30 mins. A very minor point, I think the feature is ace, but perhaps a small improvement could be to add a little notice the first time "Boost" is used to say "Boost sets all rooms to heat for 30 mins".

Another refinement could be to "disable" or change the state of the buttons when they are not relevant / already active, this would help to re-affirm the state of the system at a glance and draw your eye to the buttons that are possible next actions. e.g. after clicking "Turn Off" the "Turn Off" button could fade out, and if all rooms are already set to use the schedule, fade out the "Resume Schedule" button as it's not relevant.

But otherwise, I'm very impressed with the design of this.

what_a_tado

Fully understandable

More clutter which is of no use to me personally. Is there any way that these non-smart features can be disabled from showing in the app?

jcwacky

Mostly understandable

@what_a_tado Good point. Can I suggest these would be better to place at the bottom of the screen, below the room tiles? Then they don't get in the way for those that don't need them.

Also, a possible bug: When viewing on a narrow screen the "Boost" button vanishes:

cbd20

@jcwacky if you press and drag those two buttons to the left the boost button slides into view. It's not obvious though as there's no scroll bar.

Does the boost always default to 25 degrees? Is that customisable?

GrilledCheese2

Fully understandable

I like the implementation, it covers a lot of ground. The Resume Schedule button appears to work even if you have not used the Boost button, allowing your own manual changes to individual rooms to also be reset. I also note that the Boost feature can be restarted by the user before the original 30 mins has expired. It might be good to have some sort of top level indicator to confirm the boost has been restarted.

Jurian

@what_a_tado @jcwacky What about we keep it at the top, but we have a button to fold these quick actions out of sight ? This was one of the ideas we had for the next improvement. Would that also work?

Regarding the boost vanishing: We knew this could happen during the MVP, thanks for the report in any case!

jcwacky

Mostly understandable

@Jurian A toggle to show/hide sounds good to me!

HaanZ

I just played around with the new buttons, but now my system is malfunctioning. First I noticed that one of the rooms was requesting 100% heat, while it was set to OFF in the schedule.

But even worse, now all my rooms are not requesting heat but still the central heating is working at full power and I can't do anything to stop it! So now it's warming up until it goes into error mode, cools down and starts over again. So now my only option is to turn it off..

Please fix this ASAP

update: I manually changed all rooms to a low temperature setting and after that it stopped. But it seems this new feature is definatey not ready for production yet, I'm lucky that my central heating is next to my home office so I can easily see what it's doing, but image would could happen if you don't notice this..

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Jurian

@Gray Thanks for your feedback. Our point of view for the boost only lasts 30 minutes, hence the 25 degrees won't be reached for the vast majority of homes. In 30 minutes, normally you can only raise the temperature in your home by 1-2 degrees (just as your suggestion).

Could you test the boost feature for your home to see if you actually reach the set 25 degrees?

It is our goal to also have configurable quick actions in the future, if demand for it is high enough. So thank you for letting us know the direction we should look at next!

what_a_tado

Fully understandable

@Jurian a button to fold these quick actions out of sight works for me!

Unknown

This content has been removed.

MarkC

Fully understandable

Nice one, a long awaited feature seems to work well.

techlec

love it, the button we always needed. now they need to be on iOS

WilfH

Fully understandable

Love this. A worthwhile addition.

I appreciate the comments above about additional flexibility BUT I would prefer that the basic functionality is left as is. The problem with making a feature all things to all men as is being requested by others or will become a compromise and less than perfect. Leave these buttons as is at the top.

It is not unreasonable however to consider the addition of custom buttons to the UI to perform one of a a list of customisable actions. This would make for a very flexible system for those that want that level of customisability whilst the standard UI would have the standard quick action buttons which would be satisfactory for a large number of users.

Wilf

tadouser1000

Mostly understandable

Very happy to see these features finally implemented! Well done Tado.

As mentioned by others it would be good to choose individual rooms or a pre-defined group of rooms that I would like to boost.

Again others have mentioned this already.. went with mostly understandable as I had to check temperatures and schedules to figure out how the boost feature works. Dismissable popup for first time users would be useful to understand how it works.

mperedim

Fully understandable

Fully understandable for me as well. That said, please allow for configurability of individual rooms and timer (i.e. allow this to go up to 60'); Tado's main selling feature is supposedly "cost savings" this is really important for multi-floor setups.

UI wise it should be something as simple as "Boost selected rooms" with a simple checkbox of sorts added to each room.

• all rooms could be selected by default, so that the default behavior matches the current one
• UI could remember previous setting.

For bonus points I'd say make boost + rooms configuration a smart schedule action. I.e. I can boost the whole house 30' before everyone wakes up.

Pete

Not so understandable

When I saw it I did not understand immediately that 'boost' was the opposite of 'resume schedule.
I would suggest that these two options should be represented as a 2 position switch. Default position is 'auto schedule'

Jurian

@Pete This was considered, but we did not want to go to a "state driven" button.

Because what would your proposed slider show when 1 of the rooms was still on BOOST but other rooms you already moved back to schedule manually?

Hence the whole idea is "quick actions" meaning a shortcut to activate manual modes or remove manual modes. And the buttons are not affected by the current state of your rooms.

Does that make sense ?

If you have a different solution, I would be happy to hear it!

Ditsy

Mostly understandable

I found "Turn OFF All Rooms" and "Resume Schedule All rooms" very clear. It's great that these will now be available directly in the tado UI. Will there be Android widgets for these when the app is updated?

The "Boost" button I think relies on people knowing how tado's boost works. Most heating boosts I've used in the past allow me to set the boost parameters so I was frankly alarmed to see all rooms go a shade of bright orange that I rarely if ever see during normal use of the app. I went looking in the Settings area, assuming I'd find some explanation of what the system was doing, then I tried looking at the individual room schedules thinking that perhaps tado had supplied the option to set boost settings per room, which is when I noted that it was set for 30 minutes.

I'm happy if this works for others, but in it's current state I don't see why I'd ever use Boost. What I'd prefer to see, is a configurable Boost that can be set up for rooms where I'd find it useful.

Adrian (tado°)

Hello All,

a small announcement: iOS Beta with Quick Actions support is coming later Today, Android Beta will follow later this week.

Thanks a lot for all the feedback!

rorschar

Fully understandable

Hello

How could I try the IOS Beta?

BR

Alex

chris_m

Fully understandable

Will this be possible to instruct over voice command to a google home or via the screen on a nest device or will it be limited to the app and web interface? voice control for this would be great so i can just ask it to resume schedule after a manual adjustment or to stop the boost before the 30 mins. At the moment a voice command to call for heat somewhere just overrides the scheduled settings until the next scheduled change but there is no way to undo this and revert to the tado schedule by voice command.

thanks Chris.

Ditsy

Mostly understandable

@chris_m currently you can use "turn off all manual control" to return to schedule, I've added it to the Google Assistant Bedtime routine to ensure that all overrides are discontinued when we run the routine. I've also set up a number of custom triggers along the lines of "return to schedule" so that the other household members can easily trigger it on an ad-hoc basis.

Looking at the tado help article "Ok Google, turn on the schedule in the [room name]" is supposed to work as well, but I'm pretty sure when I tried that quite some time back it didn't seem to be working.

chris_m

Fully understandable

thanks @Ditsy The 'turn off all manual control' works great. It wasn't on the voice command list tado help article so I didn't know this existed other than the room by room command.

I have tried the "Ok Google, turn on the schedule in the [room name]" as well but it worked intermittently so not a great solution for me. I found 'turn off manual control in [room name]' to work a bit more reliably.

Adrian (tado°)

@rorschar You can subscribe to the beta from within the tado app, the More section has a Beta menu entry. Just follow the instructions.

Adrian (tado°)

iOS Beta now available. Thanks for all the feedback!