Petition for Then-cards with tokens to be available in standard flows

Flows
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Dear fellow homey users and developers,

I know this message should be and could be directed at Athom, and i intend to, but i thought, lets make this a kind of petition before sending it to them. Although i am linking @Doekse in it already.

The “issue”

When you (as a developer) create a Then-flowcard with tokens, it will automaticly be a Advanced Flow only flowcard, not usuable (or visible) for standard flows.
While i do understand that way of working from a marketing point, back when Advanced Flows just becaume available, at this point (where most users who want it will have bought AF for there old Homeys and in the ones sold right now its already included), technacly i dont see why those flowcards are not available in standard flows.

In multiple apps (ill use my Google Service app as example right now) i have “copied” the standard flowcards and created them as AF with tokens. In standard flows thats no issue, because it will ony show the non-AF flowcards.
But in AF it looks like a duplicate:
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I have request from quite some users for multiple apps, like the Advanced Triggers app, to make the Then-cards available in Standard flows. (I havent done that yet, because it will create a huge lists of useless flowcards in AF).

Possible solutions

I see to solutions to this issue:

1. Just make Then-cards with tokens available in standard flows.

Technicly this should be very hard (and after these years i dont think its bad marketing anymore).

2. Have the option to set the flowcard to “Standard flows” only

Just like you can set a flowcard to “Advanced Flows” only, wew should be able to set it to Standard flows only.
However, in most cases this would mean to just duplicate the exact flowcards and its purpose, but without returning tokens.
So, option 1 would be a far better solution imho.

Before submitting this request to Athom, im curious how other developers (and users) look at this issue. I would love to hear from you.

And if you agree and wanna see flowcards with tokens be available in Standard Flows, please hit the like button and lets show Athom what we want!

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The reason why they are only available in Advanced Flows is because you can’t add anything linked to the first Then in a normal Flow, so you couldn’t even do anything with it :sweat_smile:

In an Advanced Flow you can simply add another Then card linked to the first one.

What would be the intended use case?

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I understand that, but it isnt always needed. Then-flowcards can return tokens which arent always used.

Okay, truthfully, i could give about 40 examples of flowcards i currently have in apps, which right now do not have tokens, but which i would like to give tokens, but i dont, because then those flowcards will not be useable in standard flows.

But ill keep it to just one concreet example:
The Advanced Triggers App.
This app lets you create When cards with multiple arguments, up to 10 text, 10 numbers and 10 yes/no arguments (but also 1x, and 3x and 5 times those arguments). Very usefull for building “methods” that you use a lott and need default bouncing or “sequential execution”, like for playing sounds and TTS in the house.

There are even Return cards which can be linked through a “flow-execution-id” which is suplied with each When card, which will be returned to the Then-card which executed the When card, making it trully a way of creating methods with (overloadable) arguments and returning values.

Extremly handy for large complecated flows which are repeatedly used.

However, because of the Return cards, the Then-cards have tokens. Now, sometimes you use those returning tokens, but sometimes you dont.
But because of those tokens, the Thencards are not available in standard flows.

For me personally: i have a rather complicated flow(s) for announcement throughout my house.
But, if i now want to add a cery simple flow, like: when the Oven is done, send a Speech through the house, i cannot just make a simple flow on my phone on my couch in the evening, but need to go sit behind my computer to make a very simple AF. It would be so nice if i can just use those flowcards in a flow i can create on my phone.

(Also, i have soooo many request for multiple apps from a lot of users about making certain flowcards available for standard flows, because its just sometimes easier to make a standaard flow on the phone).

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Al these cards are not available.
If i would duplicate them, just for standard flows, you would see a exact duplicated flowcardlist in AF, which would be a great UX for AF. Plus, “useless” extra flowcards, extra memory, etc.

And(!) If i could add tokens to Thencard without them becoming unusable in Standard Flows, there are many flowcards that i would give extra tokens.
For example, the Google Services app, in my mainpost. Before AF it required that you used an Then card, and the results/tokens would be given in a When card (the url to play, the duration etc).
However, because of AF, those results can now be given as tokens. Meaning, you wouldn’t need a separate flow to handle all results/tokens anymore. But again, duplicating all flowcards will create a huge (duplicated) list of Thencards in AF, which creates a mess.

So it would be nice if Thencards with tokens could just be used in Standard flows.
Or at least, give the ability for developers to add in the (flowcard)manifest the ability to set “advancedflow” to false so we could “duplicate” those flowcards but have them hidden from advanced flows.

Thanks for taking the time to participate!

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@Doekse

ill give you another example where it would be useful, and this example could be said for many flowcards i have:
In the Better Logic Library App i would want to add tokens to the Set variable flowcards (there are about 8 flowcards for it in different ways) in which i could add the “old” value of the variable thats being Set.
Right now, you can use the Global Tag of the variable to know the “old” value, but not after you set it. So right now, you would need to put the current value into a different variable or tag before using the Set variable card.

It would be so nice if i could freely add those tokens to the Set Variable card, so the “old value” would become available for the rest of the flow without creating new variables/tags/flowcards etc.

However, again, if i now would add the tokens to the Then-Set-Variable flowcards, they would become unavailable for Standard Flows, which isn’t a real option, it would massively break existing flows. And again, duplicating all flows would be kind of useless and a very bad UX for Advanced Flows because they will all be shown twice there.



So, right now, you kind of need to target AF (and not have those flowcards available in standard flows) or you are limited to not adding tokens to Then cards.

In my opinion, having flowcards with tokens still being available in standard flows would open up a world of possibilities for developers (and thus users). :partying_face:

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Thanks for the detailed explanation, that makes the intended use case much clearer.

I was looking at it from the perspective of using the returned tokens in a normal Flow, which isn’t possible. But what you’re asking is to still be able to use the Then card itself in a normal Flow and simply ignore its tokens there.

That said, some of the examples you describe; creating reusable “methods,” passing multiple arguments, linking executions through an ID and returning values, are quite advanced use cases. The average user probably wouldn’t build or use Flows like that, which is also why this functionality currently fits within Advanced Flow. Normal Flows are intended to keep things relatively simple and understandable.

However, I do see the distinction you’re making with the oven example. The user may only want to execute a simple announcement and not care about any of the returned values, but the card is still unavailable in normal Flows just because it can return them.

I also understand why creating token-free duplicates isn’t a great solution, as that would clutter the card list in Advanced Flow and create additional work for app developers.

So essentially, the request is to allow a Then card to expose tokens when used in an Advanced Flow, while still making the same card available as a regular action in a normal Flow, without those tokens. Alternatively, being able to hide a duplicated card from Advanced Flow would at least prevent the duplicated card list.

That’s a clear use case. I’ll pass it along internally so that the right people can look into whether this distinction can be supported without affecting existing Flows, but I understand the request now. Thanks for taking the time to explain it!

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Good to hear!

I do get your point and mostly agree. However, users can get help with setting up one advanced flow for f.i. Announcements (i have some topics for helping users with this).
After that, executing that specific flow should (or at least could) be very simple, which fits perfectly for Standard Flows.

Indeed. Many users mostly won’t use that return functionality (in most cases). However, because the option is there, the Then cards need those tokens, i cannot make it optional based on how the When cards are used in the flows.

Yes indeed!

Indeed, its not the best practise in my opinion.
However, if for some reason, showing Thencards (that have tokens) in Standard Flows turns out not to be possible, then this would be the best alternative i can think of.
Flowcards already have a property advancedflow which currently can be set to true (which in practisch happends with Then-flowcards with tokens).
If we could set the property to false we would have the ability at least to specificly target Standard Flows and thus a way (workaround or not) to bive users all the options while still giving them a good UX.

Important remark (in case this turns out to be the only solution that could be implemented by Athom): when advancedflow:false existing/used flowcards should not be shown in the AF flowcardlist, but they should still keep functioning if they are already in use (kind of like deprecate them exclusively for AF. Because a lot of flowcards without tokens (the once i would duplicate for AF and give tokens) are already in use in AF and existing flows should keep working ofc.

Thats amazing to hear, thank you very much Abe!