Alexa routines no longer working. (past 3 days)

[EJones01]

This seems to have broken again, not sure on who's end. I can see the sensor/switch trigger in Alexa OK. I can manually run the routine from Alexa. But the routines will not work triggered by these sensors/switches. This hasn't worked for a few days so don't think this is related to the CrowdStrike stuff.

[n_sievers]

I just got home from a trip and found my routines that announce sensor change of state are no longer working.  I can’t be sure when they stopped for sure but was sometime between last Wednesday and today. I have tried disabling and rebuilding with no success.  I am running Polisy Pro on v 5.8.4

[EJones01]

I have been on to Amazon Customer Care this morning. The fix is to disable the ISY skill and re-log back into it.

[n_sievers]

3 hours ago, EJones01 said:

I have been on to Amazon Customer Care this morning. The fix is to disable the ISY skill and re-log back into it.

Just did this and resolved my issue as well, thank you for posting!

[tmorse305]

4 hours ago, EJones01 said:

The fix is to disable the ISY skill and re-log back into it.

Not working for me,  I've tried multiple times to enable/disable.  Also deleting and rediscovering the devices but still not working.  Any suggestions?

Thank you.

[larryllix]

Years back I found this had to be done quickly as the Alexa skill sees the devices missing and disables or removes all routines based on these pseudodevices. Knowing that they can be re-enabled but it can cause a lot of confusion until you find out why.

[tmorse305]

@larryllix, I've seen that before too.  I should have mentioned that I deleted the routines and devices before the disable/enable.  Still no luck.  I may try Amazon support tomorrow to see it they can see anything from their side.

[larryllix]

6 hours ago, tmorse305 said:

@larryllix, I've seen that before too.  I should have mentioned that I deleted the routines and devices before the disable/enable.  Still no luck.  I may try Amazon support tomorrow to see it they can see anything from their side.

Mostly I, and others, got denial, and blaming of UDI, but then routines started working again.

AS with others, we could see status points being activated and changing in the Alexa app but the routines would not trigger.

Best of luck.

Edited July 23 by larryllix

[bmercier]

Alexa routines should be working well as of now.

There was a bug in the recent code that would break Alexa routines. Relinking the skill was a good work-around, but should no longer be necessary.

[larryllix]

35 minutes ago, bmercier said:

Alexa routines should be working well as of now.

There was a bug in the recent code that would break Alexa routines. Relinking the skill was a good work-around, but should no longer be necessary.

However, when I, and others,  had problems a while back, pseudo devices would be operating inside the Alexa app despite Routines not triggering. There may have been some problems corrected in the Portal but this indicated the fault was inside Alexa server software IMHO.

Further when we complained to Amazon, after they totally denied any responsibility, the problem would go away and Routines would resume working unmodified.

 

[bmercier]

On 7/23/2024 at 10:20 AM, larryllix said:

However, when I, and others,  had problems a while back, pseudo devices would be operating inside the Alexa app despite Routines not triggering. There may have been some problems corrected in the Portal but this indicated the fault was inside Alexa server software IMHO.

No, this was indeed a problem in Portal infrastructure.

The way devices are queried and Routines gets triggered are 2 different things.

When you go to the Alexa app and look at a devices, the status comes this way: Amazon makes a request to portal, and Portal makes a request to your controller. For this to work, you just need the skill to be linked, and your controller to be online on portal.

Now in the case of routines, this requires a permanent "subscription" to your controller. Just like when you open the admin console, this creates a subscription and from now on, all devices changes are sent in real-time to the admin console, which updates.

The bug was with the subscriptions.
 

[larryllix]

16 hours ago, bmercier said:

No, this was indeed a problem in Portal infrastructure.

The way devices are queried and Routines gets triggered are 2 different things.

When you go to the Alexa app and look at a devices, the status comes this way: Amazon makes a request to portal, and Portal makes a request to your controller. For this to work, you just need the skill to be linked, and your controller to be online on portal.

Now in the case of routines, this requires a permanent "subscription" to your controller. Just like when you open the admin console, this creates a subscription and from now on, all devices changes are sent in real-time to the admin console, which updates.

The bug was with the subscriptions.
 

This doesn't sound correct for these cases.
If the subscription failed, how could the Alexa app still show the device's status as operating on and off, but the routine not obeying the status change? The app server knows the status changed so it appears all communications with the portal appear to be  functioning properly.

This problem is still happening. It just happened to my system again right before my posting about it.  I deleted the skill and reinstalled it. However, it took about 5 minutes to reconnect the routines to the status points this time. That delay didn't happen formerly.

EDIT:
OK. now it makes more sense. My bad!  Reading your post again, I believe you are saying there are two different comm channels/methods for this status. One for simple indication and one for Routines.

Edited July 27 by larryllix

[tmorse305]

17 hours ago, bmercier said:

Now in the case of routines, this requires a permanent "subscription" to your controller. Just like when you open the admin console, this creates a subscription and from now on, all devices changes are sent in real-time to the admin console, which updates.

@bmercier, thank you for the explanation that was really helpful.  Like @larryllix, this issue still occurs from time to time. Can you comment on these questions?

What do you think breaks down when the routines stop working?

If a routine is created, does the subscription happen immediately or when the routine is triggered?

You said the subscription is permanent, I imagine they can get messed up, does Alexa simply retry to create it?

Is the anything in the eisy logs that would indicate subscription problems if they occur?

Disable/Enabling the skill I'm guessing breaks the subscriptions.  Is there anything else we can try when the routines stop working?

Thank you for your support with Alexa!

 

[larryllix]

17 minutes ago, tmorse305 said:

@bmercier, thank you for the explanation that was really helpful.  Like @larryllix, this issue still occurs from time to time. Can you comment on these questions?

What do you think breaks down when the routines stop working?

If a routine is created, does the subscription happen immediately or when the routine is triggered?

You said the subscription is permanent, I imagine they can get messed up, does Alexa simply retry to create it?

Is the anything in the eisy logs that would indicate subscription problems if they occur?

Disable/Enabling the skill I'm guessing breaks the subscriptions.  Is there anything else we can try when the routines stop working?

Thank you for your support with Alexa!

 

This only happened to me (sometimes for months at a time) years back and hasn't happened, to me again, until a few days ago. I figured it was new software installed and would just need rebooting/relinking to "catch up". However it appeared to fail for 4-5 minutes and then finally reconnected.

[tmorse305]

For me, the most recent event occurred right after the portal maintenance.  It might have been coincidental, but both of my eisys failed communication with Alexa.  They are on different Amazon accounts.