Julia Ross Posts

With Total connect 2.0's December update, Honeywell continues to take both end-user and dealer feedback seriously to improve the platform. In this release, there are improvements in loading speed, multiple changes to the way panel and Total Connect users are handled, as well as the reintroduction of the Night Stay Arming option in both Lyric and Lynx panels, and the addition of Custom Arming in the Lyric panels.

Here's the splash screen for the December update. It outlines all the updates and improvements included with this release. This screen will come up when you first log in to the website after the update, but you can always access it from the About Screen in TC2 by following the "What's New in this app" link. This is also where you can provide feedback directly to Honeywell regarding the page.

The user administration section is now more streamlined, allowing you to view current or all location's users, as well as add users to any or all locations, for multi-location accounts, from a single screen. The process of adding a user is now menu driven, making it much simpler

In the security screen, on Lyric and Lynx Touch panels, you now have the option to Arm Night Stay, if there are any interior zones on your system programmed with Night Stay enabled. On Lyric panels, you also have the option to choose Arm custom. When you do, you'll be presented with a screen showing all available zones. Any zones you select with a check mark will automatically be bypassed, with the rest being armed.
You can choose whether or not you want the system to provide you with an Entry Delay, once armed. The panel will always provide an Exit Delay. Keep in mind that even though you may be bypassing all motion detectors, the panel considers this an "Away" arming, and will sound the Exit Delay beeps, if enabled. The panel does know the difference between arming via Total Connect 2.0, and arming via the keypad, so Auto Stay arming logic will not apply in this situation, as it would if you custom armed through the Lyric panel itself.

Notification edits are now much easier to perform, and can be done directly from the Notification List page. You can still toggle a notification on or off quickly and easily, but you can also add a new notification Group from a drop down menu, and you can click on the name of the Notification Event to access an Edit screen, where you can change the name of the notification, shown as the subject of the notification message when it's received, add additional groups, then set those groups to also receive this notification, and so on. The Save option will only be available if information is changed on this screen.

I'm glad to see Honeywell is taking input from both dealers and end-users seriously, and I look forward to seeing more improvements in the future. What do you think about the new features and improvements to Total Connect 2.0? What other changes would you like to see? Let us know in the comments section!

Recently, Honeywell re-launched Total Connect 2.0 with a new, sleeker user interface. The new site, which leaves Flash behind, and uses HTML5 instead, has a more modern look and is, somewhat uncharacteristically, a truly collaborative undertaking on Honeywell's part.

As TC2 is updated, Honeywell provides an "About" screen showing version information, and a "What's New in Total Connect 2.0" link. When you click the link, you get a list of recent additions and fixes, as well as a link to provide feedback directly to Honeywell. They seem to be taking this feedback to heart, and continually make improvements based on customer suggestions.

The new user interface is much cleaner than the original. Gone is the dark blue background, with the cartoonish icons. One of the great things about HTML5 is that you can access the TC2 site from just about any browser, on any device, including Windows mobile devices. This wasn't possible on the flash based site, and since there was no app for Windows phones or tablets, users with these devices couldn't take advantage of all that Total Connect 2.0 has to offer.

Another improvement is the fact that both the web page, and the iOS app, offer the same capabilities. You can admin users from both the web page, and the app. You can sync zones and automation devices from either location. The Android app does seem to lag a bit behind the iOS version. There are a few things you can't do on it that you can do from the web site. The good news is, you can log into the web site from the browser on your phone, making it a non-issue.