Zone Followers

[mkilkie]

As of last night (June 25) I stopped receiving email alerts for the zones I had set to follow. Just logged on and under "manage my device" my zone followers are set to none. When I try to reset them I can now only set a single zone to be followed. Are we now only able to follow one zone?

Thanks.

[GrandWizard]

You've always only been allowed to select one zone follower. Are you an Envisalerts Plus customer? They can select more than one.

[mkilkie]

You've always only been allowed to select one zone follower. Are you an Envisalerts Plus customer? They can select more than one.

That's weird because I definitely had it set to cover my front and back doors and consistently received alerts for both until last night when they abruptly stopped and seem to have been reset to the "none" option.

I don't recall subscribing to any extra fee service and I don't show as subscribed in my account.

[Pestus]

Confirmed. Something has changed. Instead of check boxes where you could select multiples, it has changed to bullets, as in the circular objects that let you choose only one. To be clear, these are not Plus accounts, but regular ones.

I have multiple clients complaining that even despite this change, the zone follower for the single allowed zone is not working anymore.

I'd suggest someone get on the phone with whoever manages the cloud service, and to sort this out. Left hand, right hand, I think.

I'd also suggest that it's one thing to ask for a premium payment for certain features. That's fair game. To roll back features people have already become accustomed to will only draw immense ire from the community at large, not bring in more revenue.

Regardless, I have to say thank you for a top notch and affordable service. You guys have liberated the end users and small business people from the large companies. It's appreciated.

[charbin]

Agreed - something has changed. I had been getting emails from all 16 zones - for each open or close event - ever since I first installed and set up the EVL3 interface with its free EnvisAlerts service (I have never subscribed to any of the premium paid services). My last email was on the morning of 25-June at 6:12am when I closed the back door and headed off to work. When I returned home at 3:45pm, I did not receive an email when I opened the back door. Now, two days later, I have not received any further emails from eyezon. When I logged in and checked my recent activity log, the last update shown is the one on the morning of 25-June. However, when I look at the details in the status window (which only shows zone details from the latest event for each zone), I do see updated information (e.g., my wife went to work this morning, and closed the back door 91 minutes ago). Thus, I know that my EVL3 is still correctly reporting events to the eyezon server. It is the eyezon server which is no longer sending emails nor updating the recent activity log.

[GrandWizard]

Ok, I think I have an answer. The admins switched to a new database replicator on Tuesday which required a re-sync of all databases. When we moved to only allowing 1 zone per Envisalink back in 2012, there was bug on the portal side that allowed some customers to get unlimited zone followers. The bug was fixed earlier this year but I guess the database wasn't updated. Now it has.

We're not trying to make money off of zone followers BTW. It is a serious problem for us and we consider it abuse when people turn on all their zones for no good reason. It is supposed to be for zones that are critical. In 2012, Eyezon alert traffic was blocked by AT&T because about 5 users had every zone followed and were sending alerts to their cell phones. The same thing happened with Yahoo the year before.

Please read FAQ on zone followers for more information.

http://forum.eyez-on.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=463

[DaveSin]

I am very disappointed in this turn of events. Is it possible we can follow at least three zones instead of one? I have three exterior doors and would like to monitor these on a consistent basis without resorting to the paid service.

Ok, I think I have an answer. The admins switched to a new database replicator on Tuesday which required a re-sync of all databases. When we moved to only allowing 1 zone per Envisalink back in 2012, there was bug on the portal side that allowed some customers to get unlimited zone followers. The bug was fixed earlier this year but I guess the database wasn't updated. Now it has.

We're not trying to make money off of zone followers BTW. It is a serious problem for us and we consider it abuse when people turn on all their zones for no good reason. It is supposed to be for zones that are critical. In 2012, Eyezon alert traffic was blocked by AT&T because about 5 users had every zone followed and were sending alerts to their cell phones. The same thing happened with Yahoo the year before.

Please read FAQ on zone followers for more information.

http://forum.eyez-on.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=463

[GrandWizard]

I am very disappointed in this turn of events. Is it possible we can follow at least three zones instead of one? I have three exterior doors and would like to monitor these on a consistent basis without resorting to the paid service.

One zone has been the norm since late 2012. Nothing has changed although we realise now that some people had the ability to follow multiple zones. Regardless, the purpose of zone followers is to follow important zones, not doors and windows. If you read the FAQ you will understand why we have to limt the use of zone followers.

http://forum.eyez-on.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=463

If you want to log all zone activity in your home just use the TPI. It provides realtime zone information without any delay, limitation, or cost. You can even enable timestamping so you will know the exact second your cat came home.

[Bill D]

Ok, I think I have an answer. The admins switched to a new database replicator on Tuesday which required a re-sync of all databases. When we moved to only allowing 1 zone per Envisalink back in 2012, there was bug on the portal side that allowed some customers to get unlimited zone followers. The bug was fixed earlier this year but I guess the database wasn't updated. Now it has.

We're not trying to make money off of zone followers BTW. It is a serious problem for us and we consider it abuse when people turn on all their zones for no good reason. It is supposed to be for zones that are critical. In 2012, Eyezon alert traffic was blocked by AT&T because about 5 users had every zone followed and were sending alerts to their cell phones. The same thing happened with Yahoo the year before.

On my vacation home, I've had 7 followers set to email me, but I only generated an average of 2 emails per week. My traffic has never been a burden to Eyez-On. Now I'm screwed.

Since excessive messages are the actual problem for Eyez-On and not excessive followers, why punish loyal customers that use multiple followers judiciously.

Many monitored items are critical, but rarely occur. Followers are terrific for these items.

I'm sure your smart programmers could come up with an even better algorithm to punish the people you describe that "turn on all their zones for no good reason", but yet respect your careful customers.

Paying the $5/month premium if all I need is more rarely-used followers is way too much, but it might be palatable to have something like a prepaid account with a fee per follower message deducted beyond a monthly allowance. This would thwart the abusers.

[digitalarch]

The excuse of excessive messages is no longer valid. They fixed that issue after it occurred when a number of us offered suggestions on how to solve the problem. That is why the zone followers only send out email alerts every 5-10 minutes so that any excessive flooding gets blocked in between the 1 message per time rule. I think at first they had it at 10 minutes, then they found a way to improve their algorithm even more so reduced it to 5 minutes.

I also use multiple zones and have been relying on this feature since it was introduced so am pretty upset that we have now lost functionality. It is especially troubling that our followers were reset to "None" without any notification going out that this would or did happen. I missed a critical zone follower alert since the system was disabled on me and I wasn't aware it had been turned off. Luckily I had surveillance footage that I was able to go through and figure out when the incident happened.

Considering flooding is no longer a problem since they have a way to mitigate that issue, restricting it to 1 is very limiting. People use these for many different reasons. The basic plan should offer the ability to use more than 1 zone follower,even if it isn't set to unlimited like the premium plan.