🎥 Flows 3: Get Smart About Delay Steps

Delay Steps in AVA OS ensure that a Flow takes the time it needs to automate. Learn how and when you can modify Delays in this quick training.

Transcript

Opening

Wait…what’s this Delay step doing in my Flow?

Introduction

You can boost your AVA OS game a bit by understanding how Delays and Smart Delays work in Flows.

And you can read the full story for this video in the AVA knowledgebase.

Why Delay? (First Example)

Examine any Flow that was generated by AVA OS.

Go to Settings and then Flows.

Tap on the Flow and then tap Edit Launch.

Right here there is a Delay step.

It comes after the power on commands here…

And before any other commands get sent to these devices.

The Delay gives the devices the time they need to power on.

How Long?

But how did AVA OS determine to set this Delay step to 5 seconds?

When you first launch the Flow for a source like this Apple TV, it kicks off the wiring process.

This is where the system learns which devices are used for that source.

So whichever device needs the longest time before it’s ready for more commands…

…that’s the value that goes into the Delay step.

And, while Edit allows you to change the length of the Delay, shortening the Delay can result in commands getting missed because a device might not be ready yet.

You need that Delay…or, the devices do…and AVA OS knows when it can skip a Delay.

Getting Smart

The Smart Delay option here is turned on for a Delay that was added by AVA OS.

It’s “smart” because, if AVA OS knows that all the non-source devices here are already on,

the devices are ready to take commands, so it skips the Delay step.

An easy way to show this is, if you have two Flows for TV apps that are both running from the Apple TV.

When you start one of them while everything is turned off, it takes the full time of the Delay.

But when you switch to the other, it’s instantaneous because there’s no need to wait for those devices to turn on.

They are already on.

That makes the system even faster to use for your clients.

Auto-generated Flows always use the Smart Delay option.

But if you ever add a Delay step to a Flow…

….and you need it to happen every time…make sure this option is turned off.

Changing a Delay

So what’s an example for when you might want to change a delay?

Let’s say you’re using the ARC input on an AVR with a Smart TV.

AVA OS doesn’t do the wiring for you automatically in this setup.

We show you how to do that in the Flows 2 video.

But what happens with the Delay when you do this?

Go to Settings, then Flows and tap the TV flow.

Take a look at the Launch.

The “Wait for 2 seconds” Delay was set before I manually added this Power On for the NAD AVR…

…and before I added this Input switching command here.

So it might not be the right length.

You can check if that value works by going to the Launch for NAD AVR’s Flow.

We have to unhide it first.

And now you can see that the NAD AVR needs 5 seconds

So, if we go back to the TV flow’s launch…

We should edit the Delay step

and increase it to 5 seconds.

Remember, AVA OS gets the timing right in the original wiring for a Flow.

It’s only because I manually added the NAD AVR to this Flow that we needed to make sure the Delay is long enough.

Summary

And that’s your quick overview of Delays and Smart Delays.

For more detail and examples, check out the full article in the AVA knowledgbase.