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Recipe - Notify Someone Who Isn't a Home Assistant User

Purpose

Keep someone in the loop who has no Home Assistant account, like a relative, a neighbour keeping an eye on the house, or a cleaner. Notify them by e-mail and Telegram, without repeating their address and chat id in every automation.

Implementation

A Recipient added by name in the integration, with their e-mail address, and their Telegram chat id as a custom target. No YAML is needed.

Supernotify gives them a recipient id, user. followed by their name in lower case with underscores, and a Notify Entity, notify.recipient_ followed by the same. Either can be used as a target, and stands in for everything set up for them - the e-mail delivery gets their e-mail address, and the Telegram delivery gets their chat id.

Prerequisites

  • The email transport with a mail server connection, of its own or reused from the SMTP integration
  • The Telegram Bot integration, with the recipient's chat id allowed. The telegram transport is set up automatically once it is there
  • Their Telegram chat id - one way to find it is to have them message the bot, and look at the telegram_text event in Developer Tools → Events

Adding the Recipient

Go to Settings → Devices & services → Supernotify → Add recipient.

  1. Give their Name, such as Granny Smith, leaving Person and User empty
  2. Fill in:
    • E-mail address - granny@example.com
    • Custom targets - telegram_chat_id:215678938

That's it. They're listed under the integration as Recipient - Granny Smith, with notify.recipient_granny_smith and switch.supernotify_recipient_granny_smith entities.

Sending Notifications

Address them by their recipient id:

action: supernotify.notify
data:
  title: Sunday lunch
  message: Roast at 1pm
  target: user.granny_smith

or their notify entity, from anything that takes a standard Home Assistant notify target:

action: notify.send_message
target:
  entity_id: notify.recipient_granny_smith
data:
  title: Sunday lunch
  message: Roast at 1pm

Either sends an e-mail to granny@example.com, and a Telegram message to chat 215678938. Their recipient id can also be mixed in with other targets, such as person.bob.

Only the deliveries that are selected

A recipient is only sent to by the deliveries selected for the notification. If the e-mail or Telegram delivery is only used when asked for - its Inclusion is explicit or scenario, or Default Inclusion is explicit in the integration's Delivery Control options - nothing is sent to them unless the notification names the delivery, or a scenario switches it on. That can mean nothing at all for someone with no mobile devices, and the archived notification lists them under unassigned_targets.

To always use a delivery for them, change their recipient, and under Advanced - Delivery Overrides set Deliveries to:

email:
  enabled: true
telegram:
  enabled: true

See Enabling a Delivery Just for One Recipient.

A notification with no target goes to every recipient, so they get those too. To keep them off one delivery, use Advanced - Delivery Overrides on their recipient - see Disabling a Delivery for One Recipient. To pause them altogether for a while, turn off their switch.

Variations

  • Add a Phone number too, for an SMS delivery
  • Other custom targets work the same way, such as a discord_channel: for the discord transport

See Also