How to stop an alert with an actionable notification

Configuration
1

I am at my wit’s end trying to understand the Alert, let alone to get it to do what I ultimately want it to.

I have 3 doors, I want the alert to go off when each door is opened and remind me every 1 minute that the doors have been left opened until I “acknowledge” this to make it shut up. My ultimate goal is that this send a notification to my android phone as an actionable notification, but that’s friggin pie int he sky since the alert makes no sense.

Firstly, I can only have 1 “alert” heading in the configuration.yaml, then create each alert as a sub of that heading. Not ideal, but ok, whatever.

Secondly, i MUST have an alert named “garage_door” because if I don’t I get an error on my front panel, even though I don’t have a garage door… it HAS to be named as such and I can’t figure out why.:
image

Then when I do name something “garage_door” and it works, I get the notification though the official app (not an actionable notification, even though I set each of my alerts to be can_acknowledge) so I have to manually open the app interface and scroll to the Alert area, but then only one of the three alerts ever appears on my front panel for me to acknowledge.

This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. Why isn’t it set such that can_acknowledge is set and it sends an actionable notification to the phone by default? This is obviously what 90% of people want to do when they select can_acknowledge…

Anyway Can anyone shed some light on why I need a “garage_door” alert and why does only one of my 3 alerts show up on the front panel?

#alert when the front door is opened for more than 1 minute
#alert when the front door is opened for more than 1 minute
alert:
  front_door_ajar:
    name: Front Door left open
    message: Please close the Front door
    done_message: Thank you for closing the Front door 
    entity_id: binary_sensor.ecolink_door_window_sensor_sensor
    state: 'on'
    repeat: 1
    can_acknowledge: True
    skip_first: True
    notifiers:
      - mobile_app_apixel
      - mobile_app_pixel_3a
      - lannouncernote4
#alert when the kitchen door is opened for more than 1 minute
  #kitchen_door_ajar:
  garage_door: # i get an error unless I have an alert named "garage_door" 
  #since I started with example code and it puts this in some list somewhere 
  #else I can't find.  I'll just add a garage door sensor eventually when 
  #I can afford another sensor.
    name: Kitchen Door left open
    message: Please close the Kitchen door
    done_message: Thank you for closing the Kitchen door 
    entity_id: binary_sensor.elexa_consumer_products_inc_dome_door_window_sensor_sensor_2
    state: 'on'
    repeat: 1
    can_acknowledge: True
    skip_first: True
    notifiers:
      - mobile_app_apixel
      - mobile_app_pixel_3a
      - lannouncernote4
#alert when the Sliding Glass door is opened for more than 1 minute
  sliding_door_ajar:
    name: Sliding Glass Door left open
    message: Please close the Sliding Glass door
    done_message: Thank you for closing the Sliding Glass door 
    entity_id: binary_sensor.elexa_consumer_products_inc_dome_door_window_sensor_sensor
    state: 'on'
    repeat: 1
    can_acknowledge: True
    skip_first: True
    notifiers:
      - mobile_app_apixel
      - mobile_app_pixel_3a
      - lannouncernote4
2

You can split up your configuration using packages and then have an alert section in each package.

Alerts can only be acknowledged from the frontend, you’d need an automation/script for an actionable notification.

Only alerts that are currently triggered show up,because the entity is onls created once the alert has been triggered as described in the docs.

can_acknowledge is True by default and can be used so that an alert can not be acknowledged from the frontend.

I read somewhere that devs are working on improving the alert integration with better notification support etc, too lazy to search github right now.

3

Thanks for the reply. I had seen someone mention to use an automation, but I’m not sure if that would mean to trigger a variable somehow in the alert, then read that as part of the automation to send the notification or just write an automation to completely replace the alert I currently have. The reason I’m using alerts is to continually bug me that the door is left opened until I either close the door or acknowledge it. So triggering an automation can’t do that from what I know. Also, it says “thank you for closing the kitchen door” when it is finally closed, which I like a lot.

I’m not sure what you mean by this statement. Literally only the “kitchen door” ever shows up on the front panel when that particular alert is triggered. I will get notifications and alerts from all doors, but only the kitchen door is on the front panel. IT only responds to the kitchen door sensor. Do you see anything in my code that would make that so?

I know the android notifications is new and still developing. They aren’t even many good examples compared to the iOS versions. I do hope this is added because I think it just makes sense. Maybe I’ll put in the feature request.