Let’s say I have been toying with an activity for a while, and now I’ve finally decided it needs its own goal to ensure consistency. Toggl is where I track time input, so I have a few entries over the past couple of weeks for this project for which I created the goal. I thought it would be nice to have the graph start with those past data points, to show the entirety of my time input into this activity (at this iteration, after many years of not doing the activity). I hoped that manually pushing back the goal start date and refreshing data would help me, but it doesn’t seem to work.
Is there a way to force-pull the data for a goal for the past days? Or manually submit the daily totals? I don’t see an option for the latter in the interface, and the eep! reminders for autodata goals don’t suggest that data can be fed by email anymore — is it actually accepted for autodata goals? Any other way? I could probably send them via API, hardcoding the values? Should this work, technically? — are API data points allowed for autodata goals?
Okay! I was lazy and wanted to get an opinion before coding, but then I decided I should finish the setup already, so I did this. It looks like it IS possible to send data points through API for an auto-data goal. And because the goal doesn’t want to pull data for days before today, those manually posted ones are not (so far) overwritten, in the way it happens with manually edited autodata.
Here is the script for reuse. Just add your credentials in the first block and the goal name, value, comment, and date in the last one.
This won’t work for cheating on this type of goals because manual entry is overwritten on the next automated check. Just for situations like this, for retro entry.
Oh, neat solution. It would be nicer if it was possible to force it to pull the old data, but it’s pretty rare that I need to do this, so indeed an API call is probably good enough.
In case there’s more data than I had, it’s possible to pull the data from Toggl via API, convert them to the datapoint format within the script, and send to Beeminder. Because I only had a few that I wanted to get credit for, it wasn’t worth the effort. But it totally is possible! (My initial doubt was about Beeminder accepting data.)
Generally when we retrieve data from autodata sources, we retrieve the last 7 days and overwrite anything that’s there already. This generally means that if you could find a way to add older data than that (e.g. via the API), then it would remain in place.
We’ve been doing a lot of changes in the Todoist back-end code of late, trying to work through the API changes that Todoist themselves are making. So I’m not totally sure what we’re doing right now, and it’s by no means certain that whatever solution you have that is working right now will still be working in a few weeks!
But it does raise a more general question: should we allow API datapoints for autodata goals? Clearly we’re doing it right now, but since we don’t (in general) allow you to manually enter datapoints for autodata goals, it seems like a bit of a bug to allow you to do it via the API. What do people think?
This also matches my previous expectations. But, as my attempt to pull data from previous days upon the creation of this goal showed, probably the goal creation date overrides that norm of “last 7 days”. Even if “start date” for the road is then pushed back to include those 7 days and more.
Does this also somehow apply to the current case related to Toggl?
I hope this question opens up a broader discussion; I am also eager to learn what people think! If I think about the underlying philosophy, I think there’s a distinction between when an autodata source reflects the actual beeminded outcome vs. it is just a way to track something existing in real life.
An example of the former would be blog posts. Making a blog post is something that is actually beeminded. Hence, if there is no blog post, there cannot be any other reason for there to be a data point (leaving aside temporary situations when there is a loss of connection between the data source and Beeminder for any reasons). Something like doing a certain amount of Duolingo points goes here. The metric is exactly what is beeminded, no additional layer.
An example of the latter case would be tracking time spent on an activity with any platform — Toggl in my case, but I guess there are other ones? Also integrations with Garmin, Strava, etc., that relay details of exercising sessions to Beeminder. Here, what I care about is the actual activity. The autodata source is just a way to ease the process of keeping track of it. If, for any reason, it wasn’t possible to run the timer on the tracking platform at the moment of the activity, it still happened, there is still sense to get credit for it. (Of course, the info on the activity session can also be entered into Toggl itself post factum. So that can usually be taken care of on that side, not by manually adding data to Beeminder. But a different example would be pomodoros from Intend. E.g., I have a goal based on pomodoros. But it happens I am doing the activity without tracking pomodoros — I am not at the computer, etc. It’s impossible to enter pomodoros into Intend post factum, so I am glad I can also send a data point manually reflecting how much time I spent on the activity. Intend is not an autodata source in Beeminder’s sense, of course, but this is just for the sake of an example for the philosophical argument about these two types of relations between what an external platform “knows” about an activity and the actual activity.)
So, my own impression is that manual entry should not be allowed (philosophically speaking) for the former type and allowed for the latter type. Of course, it is impossible to distinguish between them technically. Then there are also situations when an integration is down and users want to avoid derailing when they actually did the thing but Beeminder is not pulling it, so some way of allowing manual entry (even if through emailing support only) should still remain for such cases.
I think that the current setup — that when an integration is functioning normally, the data for the past 7 days is pulled and overrides any manual changes — generally stops most possible abuse cases.
Yes, this is correct: Beeminder’s object model knows the “actual” start date for a goal, even if you push the goal matrix start to earlier. I’ve tried this myself before now, so I’m pretty sure that’s how the code works.
Arguably it shouldn’t, perhaps: if I push my goal matrix start date earlier, then I should be able to do this kind of stuff.
because manual entry is overwritten on the next automated check. Just for situations like this, for retro entry.