Better handling of an empty body in a custom notification

[tjkintz]

This is probably somewhere in the forums but I couldn't find it. Apologies if it is.

 

I found out the hard way that ISY will not email a custom notification if the body is empty. I wasted a fair amount of time trying to figure out why I didn't receive the notifications and found the answer in another support forum. My suggestion is to allow empty bodies or at least do not fail to send without some indication of why. Another option would be to issue a warning when an empty body customization is saved. An additional option would be to create a new customization with a default body containing something like "The body cannot be left empty". In any case failing silently is always a bad design choice.

[paulbates]

I'm pretty sure that its certain email providers (e.g. gmail) that reject empty email bodies and/or subject lines, and not the ISY refusing to send it. 

 

To your point, a pop up when editing a notification saying "A subject line AND body are recommended for email notifications" would help.

 

Paul

[tjkintz]

No, email providers don't care which is why it was so confusing. Some email clients may give a warning but they won't prevent messages with missing subjects or bodies either. I frequently send emails without subjects or bodies.

 

I also tried 3 different smtp servers; Comcast, TurboSMTP, and the smtp server where my domain is hosted. With some I can look at a log and nothing ever got to the smtp servers. This behavior was confirmed in the following post 

 

http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/24989-how-to-get-notifications-from-leak-sensor-via-isy/ 

[larryllix]

This was stated a while back that ISY won't send it with an empty body.

 

I agree an error should be generated. Not that one would see it at normal run time but during development (admin console connected) for sure. At save time would work also.

[apostolakisl]

This was stated a while back that ISY won't send it with an empty body.

 

I agree an error should be generated. Not that one would see it at normal run time but during development (admin console connected) for sure. At save time would work also.

 

Kind of like leaving org unit empty on a self-signed ssl certificate.  No error message, just hard to figure out behavior after the fact.  These seem like simple fixes to the gui that would save a lot of time and frustration and improve user experience.