@João, Clarification on the Tasker Notify action priority setting.

[Rich D]

Hi João, Would it be possible to add some documentation to the user guide for the Tasker Action ->  Notify . In regards to the Priority setting.  It currently has a slide bar from 1- 5.  Changing this setting does not seem to affect the notification at all. 

- Could you give some details on what is supposed to happen with the different levels of priority?

- I thought I used to be able to set this to 5 and it would show a Toast when the notification was set. I can not seem to get that behavior any more. 

Thanks,   Rich.. 

[João Dias]

Hi Rich!

Due to changes on how Android treats notifications, that setting will only impact notifications that you create with a different Category to the ones that already exist. It changes how far up in the notification panel the notification appears and also if a popup shows up, and other stuff.

As far as I know Tasker never showed a toast automatically with the Notify action regardless of the settings used there... 😅 Maybe you had a task that did that for you?

Hope this helps!

Thank you for your contact.

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João Dias

[Rich D]

Thanks for the Information.. :) The issue is the Priority setting is not even mentioned in the user guide or the help text so it is not clear that the priority number in the Tasker Action correlates to the Android notification settings who's classification name seems to change in every android version. In Android 8 they are classified as "Importance" and in  Android 9 they are classified as "Behavior". It is also not clear if the Priority setting in the tasker action is one of the settings that is included in the settings that can not be changed by Tasker after Category creation. 

The Android developers docs list 7 levels for these setting (apparently now called "IMPORTANCE" .  I assume the Tasker priority numbers correlate like so..

1- IMPORTANCE_MIN

2- IMPORTANCE_LOW

3- IMPORTANCE_DEFAULT

4- IMPORTANCE_HIGH

5- IMPORTANCE_HIGH

Would that be correct??

Hopefully you can put similar information in the guide and help text for the notification action. Maybe even the link to the android docs. 

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NotificationManager#IMPORTANCE_LOW

As far as I know Tasker never showed a toast automatically with the Notify action regardless of the settings used there... 😅 Maybe you had a task that did that for you?

I was just using the wrong terminology.. I meant showing a pop up. :)

Thanks,  Rich.. 

[João Dias]

It's actually a bit confusing, you're right :P

What happened was that on versions of Android where notification categories weren't present, there was the notification Priority. This used to be the main thing that controlled how the notification behaved.

With the introduction of Notification Categories Google deprecated Priority and now each category has its own Importance which is similar to the priority but a bit different in some ways.

I reused Tasker's existing setting and now "translate" the old priority to the new importance. I do the same in AutoNotification actually :)

They translate as follows:

Notification.PRIORITY_MAX, Notification.PRIORITY_HIGH -> NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_HIGH
Notification.PRIORITY_LOW -> NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_LOW
Notification.PRIORITY_MIN -> NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_MIN
else -> NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_DEFAULT

This is all super technical and I don't think users will generally care about all these details but I'll add a part about the priority in the help. Thanks for the feedback! :)

[João Dias]

Ok, added info about the priority in the help :) Hope it helps!

[Rich D]

I reused Tasker's existing setting and now "translate" the old priority to the new importance. I do the same in AutoNotification actually :)

They translate as follows:

Notification.PRIORITY_MAX, Notification.PRIORITY_HIGH -> NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_HIGH
Notification.PRIORITY_LOW -> NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_LOW
Notification.PRIORITY_MIN -> NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_MIN
else -> NotificationManager.IMPORTANCE_DEFAULT

This is all super technical

True..

and I don't think users will generally care about all these details

I would say not the technical part, However I do believe  it would be helpful for all if there was a reference that listed what the tasker priority numbers correlate to in the Android user settings. The mere fact that there are only 4 Android user settings and  5 Tasker settings is a point of confusion. 

 I did a test on my device running Android 9 and set 5 new categories using 5 tasker notify actions with priority settings from 1- 5 and these are the results.

1 =  Show silently and minimize 

2 = Show silently

3 = Make sound 

4 = Make sound and popup on screen 

5 = Make sound and popup on screen 

I believe a list like this would take a lot of the confusion out of a inherently confusing topic....  

Thanks....  Rich.. 

[João Dias]

I did add that list to the action's help file yesterday when I replied to you :) Are you able to see it?

[Rich D]

I did add that list to the action's help file yesterday when I replied to you :) Are you able to see it?

Doohhh.... I was wondering why you did not post one of your cool quick beta versions with the fix..... It's because the Help is available ONLINE...  🤣🤣.... 

That looks perfect as always....

Thanks for your time.....   :)

[João Dias]

Awesome! :) Thank you for checking!