[FEATURE] Allow setting monitored status of movies added to radarr

[adherzog]

Feature Description

In addition to the existing radarr options (Search on Add, Bypass Ignored, etc), please add another option to allow setting the monitored status of the movie.

Use Case

I often have movies in radarr that have not been downloaded and are not monitored. When a user adds one of these movies to their watchlist, it's properly tagged in radarr but it won't get searched because it is unmonitored. I want pulsarr to mark the movie as monitored and then search.

My full workflow is that kometa will add movies to radarr based on a number of existing charts, eg. TMDb Trending. I have those movies added to radarr as unmonitored, since I'll never watch most of them and don't want to waste the space.

I have a separate, custom tool that creates dummy media files for those unmonitored movies, so they show up in Plex, and kometa adds overlays to those movies' posters to indicate that a request is needed and they don't actually exist yet. (This is similar to what UMTK (https://github.com/netplexflix/Upcoming-Movies-TV-Shows-for-Kometa/) does.) This allows the plex collection to show the entire chart, even though not all of the movies have been downloaded.

When a user adds a movie to their watchlist, I want radarr to start monitoring it and start searching for it.

Proposed Solution

Add another radarr config option to allow setting the monitored status of the movie when it is added to radarr. (The same should be done for sonarr, in addition to the existing rolling monitoring option, if it doesn't already. I haven't gotten to test that yet.)

I don't know why, but somebody might want to add movies to radarr but have them be unmonitored. This would give them that option.

It might make sense to just always enable monitoring if 'Search on Add' is selected, as it won't search without it, but I think it'd be better to make it an explicit option.

Alternatives Considered

I might be able to make kometa do this for me, but it'd be delayed since kometa can't monitor the changes and would have to run periodically and poll radarr. I might do this in the meantime, since the current solution is to manually check radarr and make the necessary change myself.

If kometa isn't able to do it for me, I'll end up writing a custom script to do it for me. But it'd make a lot more sense for pulsarr to handle it when the movie is added and tagged in radarr.

Additional Context

This is somewhat similar to #570

[jamcalli]

Hi @adherzog

I can take a look into this.

Essentially what you're asking for is when checking for contents existence, you want an additional option to also check monitoring, and if unmonitored / no file, set monitoring and trigger a search?

[adherzog]

Hi @jamcalli

Yes, that sounds correct. Thank you.

[jamcalli]

How would this work for sonarr?

What if things are partially monitored / available already? What happens if something is added as rolling monitored and the user has this setting enabled? Revert to original rolling monitor and add or?

[adherzog]

The question of whether the series is monitored is somewhat separate from which specific seasons/episodes are monitored.

Essentially, when I look at the 'Edit Movie' dialog in Radarr or the 'Edit Series' dialog in Sonarr, Pulsarr already has options that correspond to most of the options in Radarr/Sonarr.

For Radarr, that includes 'Quality Profile', 'Root Folder', and 'Minimum Availability'.

For Sonarr, that includes the 'Quality Profile', 'Root Folder', 'Use Season Folder', 'Monitor New Seasons', and 'Series Type'.

In both cases, what's missing is the 'Monitored' option. (Labeled 'Download movie if available' in Radarr and 'Download monitored episodes in this series' in Sonarr.) I want an equivalent option in Pulsarr so that Pulsarr will check the corresponding box in Radarr/Sonarr when a movie/show is watchlisted.

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I'll note that I just tried this out - I had a TV show in Sonarr that was completely unmonitored - series, seasons, episodes, and 'Monitor New Seasons' set to 'No New Seasons'.

In Pulsarr, I have my Sonarr instance configured with 'Monitor New Items' enabled, and 'Season Monitoring' set to 'All Seasons'.

Pulsarr did add the user tag to the show in Sonarr, but it's otherwise still completely unmonitored.

So I'm guessing that Pulsarr checks if a show exists in Sonarr, and if so it doesn't make any changes to the series at all? If so, that's not what I'm asking for - I want Pulsarr to make the series monitored, set the seasons/episode monitoring to the option I've selected in Pulsarr, and to set the 'Monitor New Items/Seasons' option as I've selected.

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I guess I expected Pulsarr to set those options for me, regardless of whether the show already existed in Sonarr/Radarr already.

If that is the current, intended behavior, and you might not want to change that for users who are already expecting it, this might require another option. A boolean option like 'Update existing series to match these settings' or something like that? Plus, maybe an option to specify a sonarr/radarr tag that specifies a movie/show not be modified by pulsarr.

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Does that make sense? What do you think?

[jamcalli]

Pulsarr only interacts with any of these options when routing new items. It doesn't interact with existing items at all. This is on purpose as to not interact with users existing configurations.

Regarding radarr, adding the initial monitoring option is simple enough.

Modifying the existing flow to check for items existence and also modify existing monitoring options and search would require some careful consideration, specifically for sonarr. What happens if the content exists for all seasons but the user has configured pulsarr monitoring options on adding when something already exists? Does it remove items and change all the monitoring, and trigger fresh searches?

What happens when user A adds something and it his a specific router rule with specific settings, then later user B adds something with different configurations?

Currently it treats existing content, as per routing rules (will check target instances for content), and does nothing if its pre existing.

[adherzog]

Okay - I misunderstood Pulsarr's behavior when a movie/series already exists in radarr/sonarr. And I see what you mean about the potential complexity these changes would add, given the number of possible scenarios at play here. Thanks for your patience. :)

Regarding radarr, adding the initial monitoring option is simple enough.

Could the same be done with sonarr? In both cases, what I want Pulsarr to do is just enable the movie or series monitoring if the series already exists in radarr/sonarr, and then initiate a search.

That's really all I'd need to make this workflow work the way I'd like.

(Edit: Accidentally mixed up Prowlarr and Pulsarr in my comment.)

[jamcalli]

I meant adding the option as it exists within radarr is simple, but is the opposite of what what you're asking for. Enabling as radarr does would allow a movie to be added but unmonitored (which is currently not supported).

What you're asking is the exact scenario I mentioned earlier. I will have to contemplate how this might work.

[jamcalli]

Reading through this request now that I've cleared out the docket.

Would you want Pulsarr to change all the settings as per the router rules / instance defaults when adding, or do you want it to respect existing settings and just configure the monitoring?

I envision a flow where it's a toggle, and when enabled, instead of doing a simple existence check, it can check the monitoring settings and modify them according to instance settings / router rule settings. I will likely treat ANY seasons as monitored as do nothing, to not interfere with peoples configurations, but if nothing is monitored, it would modify accordingly.

[adherzog]

Personally, I have a very simple setup with just one instance of radarr, with a single quality profile and a single root path. Likewise for sonarr, and I don't use any of pulsarr's rolling monitoring options. So for me, all I care about is toggling on the movie/series monitoring and initiating a search.

The overwhelming majority of shows in my sonarr are either monitored everything or nothing. But I do have a handful of shows where I only monitor the last X episodes, and a handful of shows where I only monitor episodes released in the last X days. I have a separate system for managing that, so I wouldn't want pulsarr to change the monitoring of a show that already exists in sonarr that is partially monitored.

I do like your idea of having a toggle option of syncing all the settings - that would give users some additional flexibility and might be easier for users to grok than any implementation that only syncs a subset of the settings.

Maybe it would make sense for there to be two toggle options for sonarr - one to sync the main settings (series monitoring, quality, root path) and one to sync the season monitoring setting.

I could imagine a scenario where a user has a show in sonarr with just the pilot monitored, and when somebody adds the show to their watchlist they want to change the season monitoring to everything, or enable a rolling monitoring option.

How would you handle situations where there are competing settings? I can imagine a scenario where pulsarr is configured such that user A requesting a show gets the first season rolling with a low quality profile, and user B requesting the same show gets the entire show with a high quality profile.

As I said, I don't personally do anything like that, but it's an issue you raised earlier in this thread.

[jamcalli]

I am just getting back to examining feature requests.

I have some clarifications regarding this one. How would cleanup work? Or is this only for requests and not something delete sync should interfere with? Toggling monitoring and initiating a search isn't too hard to manage, but managing the lifecycle could be trickier if there is an expectation of delete sync incorporating with removing monitoring etc. Also, how would this impact set ups like yours, where you have some episodes monitored? Override with whatever settings?

[adherzog]

I have some clarifications regarding this one. How would cleanup work? Or is this only for requests and not something delete sync should interfere with? Toggling monitoring and initiating a search isn't too hard to manage, but managing the lifecycle could be trickier if there is an expectation of delete sync incorporating with removing monitoring etc.

I don't think there's any need for changes to the delete sync, at least not for my purposes. (Although I would like it if Delete Sync could ignore items that have a specified tag in radarr/sonarr, similar to how it can ignore items in a Plex playlist. But that's a separate matter.)

Also, how would this impact set ups like yours, where you have some episodes monitored? Override with whatever settings?

You'd previously said:

I envision a flow where it's a toggle, and when enabled, instead of doing a simple existence check, it can check the monitoring settings and modify them according to instance settings / router rule settings. I will likely treat ANY seasons as monitored as do nothing, to not interfere with peoples configurations, but if nothing is monitored, it would modify accordingly.

I think that would be best - any partially-monitored show would be left as is, and any completely unmonitored show would be updated according to the specified instance/router rule settings, and searched.

If this is getting too complicated, I really only need two things to happen when a show/movie is added to a watchlist and it already exists in radarr/sonarr: 1) Toggle the 'Monitored' option. (Labeled 'Download movie if available' in Radarr and 'Download monitored episodes in this series' in Sonarr.) and 2) Initiate a search. If a show already exists in Sonarr, Pulsarr could assume that the rest of the show's settings are already correct.

[jamcalli]

Ok I will dig into it some more. There's quite a few complicated features being worked on but I will update you once I figure something out for this flow.

I don't think there's any need for changes to the delete sync, at least not for my purposes. (Although I would like it if Delete Sync could ignore items that have a specified tag in radarr/sonarr, similar to how it can ignore items in a Plex playlist. But that's a separate matter.)`

^ This already exists. It requires using tag based deletion, then you can specify a regex for tags to ignore.

[adherzog]

This already exists. It requires using tag based deletion, then you can specify a regex for tags to ignore.

Oh! So it does - awesome. Thanks

[Kris4o4]

Subscribing as I'm interested in the Monitor toggle option.

@adherzog My workaround atm is to run a parallel Pulsarr-synced instance of Radarr pointed at the same content root to trigger quality upgrades. I advise my users to add items to their Watchlist if they don't like the quality; so the parallel Radarr instance could then create the item and trigger an upgrade if necessary for said items.