Deliveries¶

Delivery is a pre-set configuration for a specific Transport - it controls the configuration and can set values that would otherwise have to be repeated in every notification.

The simplest case though is that you never know or worry about them - if you add an email address as a target for a notification, the email delivery is used, or a phone number for SMS, and if you add a big list of random targets, Supernotify will work out the right delivery for each. See Targets for more information.

If you need, Deliveries can be manually selected on a notification, for example sending some to Telegram and others to email, or having a siren fire also for some. They can also be automatically selected using conditions or Scenarios.

Standard Delivery¶

A Delivery gets configured automatically for every usable transport, it will check the underlying integration, like Ntfy or Telegram, has been set up in Home Assistant, and if it needs entities like Media Players, whether these exist.

For example, if there is an SMTP Integration an email Delivery will be set up, with the SMTP action.

Whether a standard delivery counts as default (auto-selected) or explicit (only fires when named) depends on whether its transport can definitively claim something in the notification. email, sms, mobile_push, discord, matrix, mqtt, telegram, html5, alexa_devices and the generic notify-entity delivery are all default: each has its own dedicated target category (an email address, a phone number, a discord_channel:/matrix_room:/topic:/telegram_chat_id:-qualified value, a matching notify.* entity), so they only actually fire once a notification's target or an available recipient's own details give them something to claim - a bare message, with nothing for any of them to match, reaches none of them. Transports without a dedicated category of their own - kodi, tts, the generic media transport, alexa_media_player, chime, persistent, generic, ntfy, gotify, lametric, pushover - stay explicit always, since there's no way to tell from the target alone that a notification was meant for them (a bare media_player.x entity, for instance, doesn't say whether the intent was an image, a sound, speech, or Kodi's own playback).

In any case, the inclusion key can be used, either in the Transport or Delivery configuration, to override any of the automatic choices. See Delivery Inclusion for more on how that works.

Customizing Delivery¶

You may want to create multiple Deliveries for the same channel, for example a plain email and html_email delivery, or different custom notification platforms using the generic transport. Be careful to have constraints, like priority, occupancy or conditions, if there are multiple deliveries so you don't get duplicate notifications.

Or more simply, you can customize the standard delivery created for each transport, here's an example, which refines the standard sms delivery, created because the home already has a working SMS integration, and switches on the delivery only if notification priority is critical or high

If the conditions were more complex than this, a condition block could be applied.

delivery:
    sms: # same name as transport
        priority:
        - critical
        - high

If the name text_message had been chosen here, then there would now be two deliveries, sms ( the automatic standard one ) and text_message (my new custom one) defined.

If you only have one delivery, this is the same thing as:

transports:
    sms:
      delivery_defaults:
        occupancy: only_out
        priority:
        - critical
        - high

Other Reasons to Use Delivery¶

• Make sure critical notifications are heard. Fire up the sirens, push to mobile apps and send off email or SMS
• If you're paying for SMS, keep it only for critical notifications
• Adapt messaging style to occupancy
• Reduce notification noise by using sounds, like dings or bells, on chime devices or voice assistants

There are more examples in the Recipes section.

Simplifying Deliveries¶

• If you only have one delivery config, don't bother with the delivery: config, just update the delivery_defaults for the transport, so the standard delivery is set up the way you like it
• If you have multiple deliveries for the same Transport, then set common defaults at Transport level, using delivery_defaults
• Use Scenarios to apply common chunks of config
• Move to a scenario-only configuration (recommended)
• From v2.10.0 this is a simple change in the Delivery Control settings
• In older versions, it requires a YAML change, setting inclusion to scenario (or explicit, which is also offered in the action editor's Delivery list) for every delivery, or all at once with Delivery Control
• This makes Deliveries more of an opt-in model than opt-out, since all Deliveries are now inactive unless explicitly selected

In this snippet, all Delivery configurations for alexa_devices will use the defined target group.

    alexa_devices:
      delivery_defaults:
        target:
          - group.alexa_announcements

Overriding Message and Title¶

If your downstream transport has specific needs for the message and/or title then these can be overridden or amended for only the deliveries that need them.

delivery:
  custom_notify:
    transport: generic
    action: notify.very_custom
    message: HOME ASSISTANT NOTIFICATION

For this delivery, whatever the message on the notification, it will be replaced by "HOME ASSISTANT NOTIFICATION" when delivered to the custom notification.

For amending rather than overriding, see the Alexa Whisper Recipe for an example of using message_template in a Scenario.

Controlling Targets¶

For fine-grained control over how any targets pre-defined in a delivery are treated, for example when explicit targets provided in a notification action call, Delivery has an optional target_usage key, taking values of:

• no_action - Only uses the Delivery target if there's no target on the notification action call
• no_delivery - Only uses the Delivery target if there's no target applicable to this delivery
• merge_delivery- Combines the targets in the Delivery with any on the action call, only where delivery already has a target
• merge_always - Combines the targets in the Delivery with any on the action call, or if there's no target on the notification, it defaults to the Delivery target
• fixed - Only ever delivers to the targets in the Delivery config, ignoring any direct or indirect (for example person_id) in the action call

Additionally, target_required defines if this delivery needs targets to work, and should be skipped if no targets are resolved as specific to it, for example based on the target_categories option to select by category. This has values:

• always - Targets are mandatory, skip this delivery if no targets identified for it
• never - Don't require targets, and don't even waste time computing them and don't supply them to the transport adaptor
• optional - Don't require targets but still compute them and make them available for the notification

Home Assistant area_id, floor_id and label_id targets are resolved to the entities they reference before anything else looks at them, using the same core logic as a Home Assistant entity action, so groups are expanded and an entity inherits the area of its device. The delivery's target_categories and target_select options then apply to those entities, exactly as they would to an entity named in the notification.

See Targets for more info on how to use them.

Delivery Inclusion¶

A list of inclusion options controls how deliveries are included, each delivery can have multiple options included, though some of them are mutually impossible, like default and explicit

explicit and scenario work the same way when a notification is sent. The difference is in the supernotify.notify action editor, whose Delivery list offers default and explicit deliveries, but not ones only a scenario, or a fallback, should use.

Fallback for one delivery¶

A delivery can name other deliveries to try, in order, when it fails and sends nothing - for example an Alexa announcement that falls back to Google, then to the phones, when Alexa Media Player has lost its login:

delivery:
  alexa_announce:
    transport: alexa_media_player
    fallback:
      - tts_google
      - mobile_push
  tts_google:
    transport: tts
    inclusion: fallback   # used only as a fallback, never offered in the action editor

• The fallbacks are tried after the other deliveries, one at a time, stopping at the first one that sends.
• A delivery that has already been tried for this notification is not tried again, so nothing is sent twice.
• A fallback that would make exactly the same call as another delivery that already sent - the same transport, action, targets, text and data - is skipped as a DUPE, so the person isn't sent the same thing twice. A fallback with other targets, or its own data, still sends.
• Only one level: a fallback's own fallback: isn't followed, the order of the list is the chain.
• A fallback that is switched off, or skipped by its own conditions, priority or occupancy, is passed over.
• The fallback shows in the archive with delivery_provenance enabled_by: fallback:alexa_announce.
• The delivery's switch has a fallback attribute with the list, so a dashboard can show it.
• A delivery with a fallback:, and one used as a fallback, waits for its action to finish, so an error from the service is seen. Without that, only a missing action or invalid data would count as a failure. It does not cover a delivery the service accepted but that never arrived - a phone switched off, for example.

Implicit Deliveries¶

The primary purpose of the default (or "implicit") deliveries is to provide a means of handling known targets. For example, if an email address is in the list of targets, it implies that an email delivery is used for it, even if email is not on the list. If there are no email addresses the email delivery does nothing. Likewise for discord_channel:xxx or topic:my_mqtt_queue type target addresses.

Delivery Control¶

A delivery without its own inclusion takes its transport's, which is default for email, SMS, mobile push, notify entities, Alexa Devices, HTML5, Discord, Matrix, MQTT and Telegram, and explicit for the rest - see Standard Delivery above for why. These are default despite some of their targets (a channel/user ID, a room ID/alias, a topic, a chat ID) being opaque values, because each has its own dedicated target category (discord_channel/matrix_room/topic/telegram_chat_id) no other transport uses - a target explicitly qualified with one reaches its delivery automatically, and the delivery is simply skipped otherwise. MQTT's topic can also come from a data: keyword instead of a target - unlike Discord/Matrix/Telegram, that alone wouldn't tell it whether a given notification is even relevant - so its standard delivery only counts as truly asked-for, and allowed to rely on a data:-only topic, when the call names mqtt explicitly; swept in implicitly with no topic: target, it's simply skipped instead of attempting every notification. See Suppression Reasons and the Target-Driven Implicit Selection roadmap item for the fuller picture. To give every delivery the same default instead, go to Settings > Devices & services > Supernotify > Configure > Delivery Control and set Default inclusion. A transport's own delivery_defaults in YAML still override it, as does a delivery's own inclusion.

The same page has Spoken delivery occupancy, a default occupancy for spoken deliveries, such as Alexa and TTS announcements, for example only_in so a spoken delivery only happens when someone's home. For a delivery with its own fixed target - the Alexa Devices _announce_all/_speak_all deliveries, for example - occupancy decides whether the whole delivery fires at all, since there's no per-recipient list for it to narrow; for a delivery that resolves its targets from recipients, it also narrows which recipients it reaches, same as for any other delivery. Recipients without a Person are never in or out, so only_in and only_out always leave them out - see Users without Person entries. Left as Not controlled, and Each transport's own default for inclusion, nothing changes.

Entities¶

Each delivery has a switch.supernotify_delivery_XXXX entity, on the SuperNotify device, that is the delivery enabled flag, with the delivery configuration as attributes. Turning it off ( by main UI, Developer Tools, automations, API or whatever ) disables the delivery, and turning it on enables it again, for run-time control of notifications. Each transport also has a switch, switch.supernotify_transport_XXXX, which allows all deliveries for that transport to be quickly disabled, without changing the delivery switches themselves. Only a transport that is loaded, and so usable, has a switch, as do only its deliveries. A switch left from a transport or delivery that is no longer loaded shows as unavailable, and can be deleted from its entity settings.

Switching a delivery or transport on or off lasts across restarts and reloads, see Overrides.

A delivery switch also shows what the delivery last did, from live notifications only (a dry run leaves them alone):

So a delivery that has quietly stopped going out shows up without opening the archive, for example in a template:

{{ now() - as_datetime(state_attr('switch.supernotify_delivery_mobile_push', 'last_sent_at') or 0) > timedelta(days=3) }}

An error is only seen when the call to the action waits for its result, as with debug: true or a delivery with a fallback, the same as for the archive. These attributes start empty after a restart, and aren't kept in history.

Notify Entity¶

A delivery can also be given a notify entity of its own, so it can be used from anywhere Home Assistant asks for a notify entity. Add notify_entity with the name to go after notify.

delivery:
  family_chat:
    transport: telegram
    notify_entity: family_chat

Sending a message to notify.family_chat is like a supernotify.notify with only a message and title, and delivery set to this delivery. There is a notify.family_chat action too, which also takes target and data. If notify.family_chat already exists, the entity isn't created and a repair is raised. Scenarios can have one too, see Scenario Notify Entity for more, and for how to use one from the Alert integration.

Overrides¶

Switching a scenario, recipient, delivery or transport on or off with its switch overrides its configured enabled value. The override lasts across restarts and reloads, while its configured value - its own enabled, or for a delivery without one, its transport's - is unchanged. Changing that value in the configuration, and reloading, puts it back as configured. So does the supernotify.reset_overrides action, for everything or for one kind at a time.

Each switch has an overridden attribute, true while it has been changed at runtime and no longer matches the configured value, so a dashboard can mark what reset_overrides would put back, or a template sensor can count the overrides:

{{ states.switch | selectattr('attributes.overridden', 'eq', true) | list | count }}

• A scenario without conditions is driven by its Scenario Manual binary_sensor. That on/off state is not an override of the configuration, so supernotify.reset_overrides leaves it as it is, and only puts the scenario's switch back.
• An override belongs to its switch entity. While the switch is disabled in Home Assistant, its override is not applied and the configured value is used, and supernotify.reset_overrides can't clear it. Enabling the switch again brings the override back - turn it back with the switch, or use supernotify.reset_overrides once the switch is enabled again.
• A delivery with no enabled of its own follows its transport's configured enabled, so changing the transport's enabled in the configuration also ends that delivery's override.
• The override is saved by Home Assistant's own restore state mechanism, so it lasts as long as the switch exists: it's forgotten if the switch has been missing for about 7 days, and, as Home Assistant saves it every 15 minutes and on a clean shutdown, a change up to 15 minutes before a crash can be lost.

Removing¶

Its also possible to completely switch off transports, so that they don't show up anywhere in Home Assistant, and there's no Delivery option, and no ability to dynamically switch them back on.

transports:
  mobile_push:
    load: false

Extreme Example¶

Its unlikely any Delivery would ever look quite like this, with every configuration key used. The full choice can also be found in the Delivery Schema definition.

delivery:
    all_bells_and_whistles:
        # Alias does nothing, just a place for longer name
        alias: Make a fuss if alarm armed or high priority
        # Which of the built-in transports to use
        transport: generic
        # This defaults to true, quick way to switch off this delivery
        enabled: true
        # Which Home Assistant action (aka 'service') should be called
        action: script.my_alerter
        # These are fine-tuning options for the transport
        options:
            # only pass `entity_id` targets to the delivery
            target_categories:
              - entity_id
            # narrow down the entity ids selected
            target_include_re:
              - media_player\.chime_[A-Za-z0-9_]+
              - mqtt\.siren_[A-Za-z0-9_]+
            # don't deliver to a target already notified in this action
            unique_targets: true
        # bunch of data that only makes sense to the transport
        data:
            noise_level: scarey
            jitter: 23
        # standard targets to use
        target:
            entity_id:
                switch.hall_light
                switch.garage_buzzer
            person_id:
                person.joe_bob
        # use these targets always, whether or not the notification has explicit targets
        target_usage: merge_always
        # if there's no targets don't notify ( which always happen anyway because of the merge targets above )
        target_required: optional
        # Use this delivery only when explicitly selected by a scenario, or if all other deliveries fail with at least one error
        inclusion:
          - scenario
          - fallback_on_error
        # only deliver if notification is high or critical
        priority:
            - high
            - critical
        # only deliver if there's someone determined ( by mobile app tracker ) to be home
        occupancy: any_in
        # apply a further time and day of week condition
        conditions:
              alias: "Time 15~02"
              condition: time
              after: "15:00:00"
              before: "02:00:00"
              weekday:
                - mon
                - wed
                - fri
        # Send this delivery last ( this has affect on unique selection choice, so another delivery might hit a target first)
        selection_rank: last
        # fix the message and title, ignoring what's sent on notification
        message: ALERT!
        title: Overridden title