Fitness - Connecting Fitness Apps
Provide a clear explanation to your supporters on how to connect up their fitness apps to record their activity.
What is it?
A guide for admins to explain to your fundraisers how to connect their apps to their profiles.
What are the benefits of it?
Your supporters will often ask questions about how to connect their fitness apps, so the below guide provides information to add to your FAQs.
Enabling Fitness Apps
If your event is fitness based and your supporters will be tracking their activity, you can include the option for them to link up their FitBit, Strava, MapMyFitness, and Garmin.
We need to add a few API keys in order to connect fitness apps to your platform, so please pop a support ticket in and the team will be able to begin the process of setting up the apps. Please allow a few days for this to be updated. Once done, they will be available for all your events if you wish.
Tracking kilometres, steps, miles and durations
After you’ve enabled fitness apps for your event, you’ll likely want to tell your fundraisers how to connect up their preferred app to start tracking their data. We’ve put together some copy you can use to help them get started! Feel free to edit as you need to.
Please do not link directly to this article - please create a page on your own site if linking from an EDM or add as an FAQ.
How does it work?
To accurately track their steps, users need to start and stop an activity and then save it. This will then sync to the platform, usually within 24 hours.
There is one exception to this with Fitbit, depending on the settings you have in place on the platform.
Fitbit will count your cumulative steps taken throughout the day. So even if you didn't go on a run, you may have clocked up 10,000 steps during the day.
- If you use Fitbit and you log an activity, e.g. start, stop and save a run. This run will sync to the platform.
- If you use Fitbit and you do not log an activity, then at the end of the day this total step count/distance will sync to the platform.
Fitbit will not sync a logged activity AND cumulative activity.
To check your settings, navigate to:
Platform setup > General Setup > App Settings> Scroll down to Fitbit
There is a tickbox: Only pull in data from activities via "starting and stopping" the app.
If this is ticked, then the cumulative activity will not sync at the end of the day, and the app will work just like Strava, MapMyFitness and Garmin.
Excluding Activity Types
If you'd like to exclude certain activities from sycning, then there is an option within each event. This can be useful to prevent long bike rides from syncing KM's in a running/walking event.
To exclude activity types, navigate to to:
your event > Fundraising Options > Fitness Settings > Allowed Activities.
In the Allowed Activities field you can enter a list of fitness activities that you want to sync to your event. All other activites will be excluded.
Please bear in mind that if you only include the activites "Walk" and "Run" this will mean that no fitness activities sync from Garmin apps. To make sure that the Garmin fitness activites sync, you also need to include the activities "WALKING" and "RUNNING".
For a full list of Garmin Fitness activities that you can include or exclude, please visit their documentation or watch specifications (scroll halfway down the page to Activity Profiles here).
Copy to add to your FAQs and EDMs:
Your profile page includes your personal distance tally so you can track your distance towards your target. This is a great way to keep your friends updated on your workouts!
If you track your workouts with Fitbit, Strava, MapMyFitness or Garmin your distances will automatically add to your tally.
Follow these steps to track your KMs automatically:
1. Download the Fitbit, Strava, MapMyFitness or Garmin app and set up your account
2. Log in to your [charity or event name] account.
3. Under the heading Connect your preferred Fitness app, click your chosen app.
4. Follow the prompts to connect your account
5. When you next work out, select start your workout in the app on your phone. Once you end your workout, save your workout and your distance will be published to the tally on your page the following day.
If you have synced your app already but it is not working, please log in and re-connect it.
- Fitbit: You must start an activity and save it. If no activity is logged, then your cumulative activity will sync at the end of the day. If you are having issues, try syncing through BOTH your Fitbit and the Fitbit app on your smartphone.
- MapMyFitness: You must start your workout, stop your workout and then SAVE your workout.
- Strava: You must start your workout, stop your workout and then SAVE your workout.
- Garmin: You must start your workout, stop your workout and then SAVE your workout.
Your tally will be updated each day with the previous day’s distances.
Manually adding activity
Remember, you can manually add your exercise to the tally in the My Fitness Activity tab within your logged in dashboard. This is a great option if you’re using a pedometer or a different method of tracking your distances.
Follow these steps to manually add your activity:
1. Log in to your account and select My Fitness Activity.
2. Under Add activity, enter the required fields. Depending on the challenge this may be steps, distance and/duration.
3. The logged activity will now appear on your fundraising page!
Screen recordings of connecting fitness apps
These examples walk through the quick process of connecting an app on a laptop. When connecting, the user will only be asked for their app username and password if they're not already logged into it on their laptop/mobile.
These are for admin use. Please do not share with your supporters.
Garmin
Fitbit
MapMyFitness
Strava
If you'd like further help, please pop in a support ticket from your admin and our team will assist you.
