Open Can't send by sendername or deviceid to shared devices

Hi everyone,
(I thought I posted this thread, but I can't find it for the life of me -- even under my profile where it lists all my content. apologies if I'm making a noob mistake and posting again.)

I can't tell you how much I love join. It makes me feel like a badass computer geek even though I'm nothing of the sort.

I'm having an issue and I'm hoping to understand more about it. I have been using join for some time now (2 years?), but recently, I used a new gmail account to sign up for a Google account so I could set up an old tablet for general use around the house. I don't want to use my own account on the device for privacy reasons. This tablet will be used by the kids, visitors, etc to play tunes, manage the home automation (turn lights on/off, etc).

Anyway, I was able to shared this tablet with my own devices and vice versa. I can send messages back and forth without issue. However, if I try to use variables on the receiver like "%sendername", or "%deviceid", the messages never get sent. I have to specify the remote device name.

is this by design? if so, any workaround? I'd love my tasks to be dynamic in a nice, clean way. I have a workaround, which is to include the sender's name in the join message. This works well enough, but it's a bit cludgy....

Anyone have any ideas?

thanks,

Joel

 

Ah, that would be useful info, wouldn't it?

They appear to be unset, for example, %joinsendername = '%joinsendername'