Looking for a bit more "getting started"...

[dstrohl]

OK, I know this is really mainly me being confused, so I apologize for being dense. but... I just downloaded and installed this, and am trying to get it running... but the getting started section basically just says "install" then "send a message". with all of the in-between steps either being "will be automatically detected", or "will be discussed somewhere else".

(NOTE: This thread is focused on my not really understanding the getting started docs, I'll add another thread with specific questions I have on how to do things. For this one, I'm not sure if I'm suggesting changes to the getting started page, or if something else is needed, or if perhaps everyone else is getting things well enough, then this can probably be ignored )

I read the pages for core concepts, and many of the other ones, but I'm now just overwhelmed with the complexities of how many things can be configured, but still not very clear on how things actually work together. (again, I suspect its all there, possibly I'm just not smart enough to puzzle it out). Some things that I seem to be missing are:

• In the how it fits together diagram, it has "who to notify", "delivery", and "notifications", then under that is "target", "recipient", "transport", "delivery", "scenario", "priority", but those don't directly map to the diagram... (the diagram in the developer docs is a bit better, but still doen't cover all of the sections).
• how targets and recipients work together... (are they the same thing? or is a recipient a sub-type of target? or is a recipient one of the things that a target can point to?
• similarly, transport and delivery... feel very similar, the transport is the technical means to actually notify, and the delivery defines the notification channel to use... (notification channel wasn't defined though... is that supposed to be "transport"?)
• Scenarios... modify transport? or delivery? or ???
• and priority? doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere else that I saw.

I think what I was kind of looking for was something like some tutorial steps in the getting started with examples that show how things link together.. for example:

1. install and setup
2. "this will now send to everyone, but that's probably not what you want"
3. define specific users to get their notifications:

• open the config file and create the recipient and target sections
• add a user to get an email
• add a user to get a text
• add a user to get notification via mobile device.
• use this by referencing the names in the send_notification action. (example)

5. now, lets say we want to use tts to announce that someone's at the door.

• add x, and y to the config
• setup this other stuff.
• use this by adding y to the send_notification
• you can combine this with the above by creating a group...

6. now, lets send an alert to the users defined in step 3 with images from the porch camera.

• ???

Yes... I know these are all in the examples (or I assume so at least), but the examples don't really seem to explain themselves all the time.

[jeyrb]

Thanks for the feedback.

There's been some doc improvements in progress, and more of those will be visible with next point release, including a recipe that has your example, since its such an obvious thing to want. The changes also make it easier for agents to help, and already Claude can give decent advice and rewrite YAML config.

Supernotify started as very much a power tool for fussy experts, and the focus for a while now has been to make it as useful as possible out of the box and for people who'll never touch YAML.