Mostly automated goals

[dpangier]

Hi,

I have a goal (run 3 times per week) which I have linked via IFTTT to Strava. This has been fine until recently, but now the season is changing I have started to do treadmill runs instead. To put them into Beeminder I have been changing the goal data source to manual, putting in the treadmill run, and then changing it back to IFTTT.

Is there a better way? And automated with manual override type setup is what I am looking for.

Cheers

David

[dreev]

Great question. One slight streamlining you can do is not bother to change the data source back to IFTTT. We automatically do that when IFTTT sends a datapoint to a goal.

If we just killed that feature then it sounds like it would be exactly what you want. But I don’t think we want to kill that feature.

Actually, I’m a little uncertain myself now how this feature works. The following UVI from 3 years ago makes it sound like we auto-infer the data source once but then don’t tamper with it anymore if you change it:

http://beeminder.com/changelog#1711

If that’s right then are you sure it doesn’t work to set the data source as “manual” and then let IFTTT also feed it data?

[apolyton]

You can add manual data to an automated goal by
a) sending a mail to the beeminder bot via email or
b) using the slack integration

Both without changing the source of the data.

[dpangier]

I’ll try leaving on manual, and seeing if the Strava auto-import still works then. Worst that can happen is I’ll have a manual entry to do.

Cheers

David

[dpangier]

I just finished a Strava run with the goal set to the manual data source, but with the IFTTT link still established. It worked as desired, the run automatically got recorded, but the goal still allows manual input.

Thanks

[zedmango]

@dreev, @bee

@dreev

One slight streamlining you can do is not bother to change the data source back to IFTTT. We automatically do that when IFTTT sends a datapoint to a goal.

This seems to conflict with this old post - did things change?

@bee

Nothing will be screwed up by setting it as manual. when we see data come in from ifttt or zapier we set the data source, which lets us customize the email reminders and the form view – so we don’t ask you to enter data etc. changing it back will mean the reminders say “go enter data”, and the entry form below the goal will show back up. The data will continue to get added by IFTTT, and if you go in and intentionally set it to manual we will leave it as manual (and not change it back every time we see a datapoint from IFTTT.

Also see:

IFTTT and Manual Entry Fiasco

I pushed a fix for this 8 days ago. The bug, as far as I can tell, was in failing to set the “don’t try to be helpful and guess the data source of this goal” flag. That is supposed to happen when you change the source back to manual from IFTTT or Zapier. Have you set a goal to “Manual” and then had it overridden and switched back to IFTTT in the last 8 days? I just went through the steps locally to reproduce the bug, and it does seem to be fixed to me. Prediction: if you go and set the data so…

[dreev]

What @bee said sounds correct. I think I was forgetting that the feature is all clever and only auto-switches the data source once! Nice catch!

[zedmango]

@dreev @bee Thanks! Was searching for this because I’m setting up a Complice/Beeminder integration and wasn’t sure whether the goals getting data from Complice should be set to Manual or API - but it sounds like it doesn’t affect functionality either way. Is this right?

[dreev]

Right, manual goals still accept data added via API.