Actions for helper group

Can the helper groups support the action of old style helper group? Particularly action set is critical for my usage.

Scenario:
I have created some automations to notify on events of devices abnormalities like offline, unavailable, temperature, etc. Most of the time, they may recover themselves in a minute or 2. Therefore the triggers include an extended period before activation to avoid too many false alarms.

Similarly, a recovery notification is sent when an abnormality is recovered. The problem is a recovery notification can be sent without the corresponding abnormality notification since the abnormality may be recovered before the tolerance was due. In order to keep the notifications consistent, a list of notified abnormal entities has to be kept. The entity triggered the notification is added to the list when an abnormality notification is sent and the entity is removed when a recovery notification is sent. The list is checked to avoid duplication notifications as well.

I find the old style helper group being the perfect candidate for this purpose because it can be manipulated by automations. As it is called old style helper group, I would like to migrate to the new helper group but it can be done only if an action set similar to the old style helper group is supported on the new helper group.

Besides notifications, I am using the old style helper group to keep track of power cycle, statistics and other usages.

Have you considered just using Labels. If you install Frenck’s custom integration, Spook, you can create, apply, and remove labels via script action.

Labels are target-able in actions, can be used in templating, and are visible in the Entities, Devices, and Helpers information views.

1 Like

@Didgeridrew

Thanks for your suggestion. The combination of Labels and Spook works for my usage!