Focusmate "Focus Now" sessions grant unearned minutes when canceled

Bugabee
1

Hey Beeminder team,

I think I stumbled into a “weasel risk” / integration bug with the Focusmate autodata sync.

My goal is configured to track minutes (not session counts). However, I noticed that if I use Focusmate’s “Focus Now” feature (the on-the-spot booking tool instead of the common calendar booking way) and then immediately cancel the session, Beeminder instantly credits me with the full 50 minutes.

It looks like the API is pulling and stamping the scheduled duration the absolute second the “Focus Now” block is created, but it isn’t currently checking to see if the session status changes to “cancelled” afterward.

Here’s a screenshot of 4 sessions i started with (Focus Now) and then cancelled that i did:

I don’t want to get into the habit of exploiting a loophole to save myself from the red line, so I wanted to report it. I would love to know if a patch could be done for that.

Thanks!

2

Ah, interesting. Thanks for sharing the feedback! My guess is that this because Focusmate treats it in their data as a scheduled session that doesn’t get a partner… which we count because it avoids people derailing if they schedule a session at the last minute but can’t find someone. More about this rationale in another thread.

Whether we can change this very much depends on whether there’s a way to tell the difference between the two situations in Focusmate’s API. “Focus Now” didn’t exist when we built the integration, so I don’t really know – we’ll have to look into it.

3

Thanks for your quick reply, and the link. I understand now. I guess for now I can delete the sessions that were not “real” manually. It’s been the most productive week anyhow for me, so thanks for this great tool and support.

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