Can someone explain how to add a time triggered automation using the configuration option in HA web interface without having to edit the configuration.yaml file. Specifically, when I try to set a trigger time at 6:45am, I get the following error:
Message malformed: Invalid time specified: 6:45am for dictionary value @ data[‘trigger’][0][‘at’]
It doesn’t tell me how the time is supposed to be formatted and I can’t find it anywhere in the documentation to tell me that.
This is one of the frustrating things I see in HA. It gives you an option to do things from the web interface, but doesn’t provide any documentation for using the web interface; everything documentation I have found talks about editing the yaml file. That seems to negate the purpose of the web interface configuration.
The web interface is still in it’s infancy for editing anything. It hasn’t been there long and it’s honestly a terrible interface. Just edit the yaml. It’s not hard.
I know the yaml editor isn’t hard, I have been doing it that way for other things. But that is beside the point. Why deploy a feature that isn’t usable? So users can write forum post about how the feature is not usable?
I don’t want the to be a back and forth about this, but the fact that HA and its components are still in beta supports my point. If you have a functionality in beta, then you need people to test it to work out the bugs. Either the automation web interface is’t unusable, doesn’t haven enough documentation for it to be usable, or bypassed by editing yaml files. If I can’t use it, then how can it be tested so that it can be removed from beta?
[quote=“another_tphan3, post:1, topic:45604”]It doesn’t tell me how the time is supposed to be formatted and I can’t find it anywhere in the documentation to tell me that.
[/quote]
You are right, the current documentation does not mention the ‘at’ format any more, but an alternative is provided.
In general, the “visual” automation editor works well unless you need
and/or or nested conditions
data_template or service_template in the action section
complex computed conditions or actions using Jinja templating engine.
I thought I’d give the editor a go, just to try it out. Found it more difficult to use than manually creating automations and It deleted all the commments in my automations.yaml file. Gee thanks.
Just as well I had a backup.