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Calendar publishes only events and workouts

kaleksandrov
over 8 years ago
I want to publish my Garmin Connect calendar so I can import it to my Calendar app on my laptop or/and to my Google Calendar. The calendar is imported successfully but unfortunately only "events" and "workouts" are published. None of my "goals" or "activities" are visible... Is there something else I have to do to publish them? Is this supported at all?
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    I don't think so. The functionality supported appears to be only geared towards allowing you to see your upcoming/planned activities in third-party calendar apps. Exporting records of what has already happened (e.g. timed/tracked activities) is geared towards showing them on other online fitness tracking platforms. As for goals, that sounds more like a Task type entity than an Appointment in the Apple, Microsoft and Google ecosystems; you can see those in the respective calendars, but they aren't calendar entries per se.

    It makes sense that you cannot export and replicate all that appears in the Garmin Connect service's calendar in a single alternative platform that you'd use instead.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    I don't think so. The functionality supported appears to be only geared towards allowing you to see your upcoming/planned activities in third-party calendar apps. Exporting records of what has already happened (e.g. timed/tracked activities) is geared towards showing them on other online fitness tracking platforms. As for goals, that sounds more like a Task type entity than an Appointment in the Apple, Microsoft and Google ecosystems; you can see those in the respective calendars, but they aren't calendar entries per se.

    It makes sense that you cannot export and replicate all that appears in the Garmin Connect service's calendar in a single alternative platform that you'd use instead.


    But this doesn't make sense... If I track an activity, this activity has a date, start and end time, location and everything needed to create a standard calendar event entry. On the other hand if I publish an workout it appears as a full-day event which is not correct as most of the cases the workout is planed for about an hour.

    IMHO this behavior of the calendar should be improved as for now publish a calendar is almost useless.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    IMHO this behavior of the calendar should be improved as for now publish a calendar is almost useless.
    I disagree. If someone is planning to run the City2Surf, adding the event to his/her calendar outside of Garmin Connect is useful for planning purposes; at the very least, it helps prevent inadvertently double-booking oneself for social engagements, if he/she is apt to use Google (or iCloud, or Outlook.com) Calendar to manage such things.

    If he/she then wants to plan training workouts in the lead-up to the race, again it could be useful to add those to one's calendar that also shows other (e.g. work, social) engagements for planning purposes. Isn't it great to know by looking at one's calendar that, in spite of a full work day (say) this coming Tuesday with meetings as late as 6–7PM, he/she is still supposed to fit in a ten-kilometre training run some time during the day even if the exact timing has not been decided?

    However, activities that have already taken place have no value for planning purposes. If you want to see which workouts you've done, or how you've performed on those, you're welcome to pull up Garmin Connect (or Strava, or whichever linked fitness tracking platform you use) to review those.

    Having a single calendar application/platform that does both of the above is not a requirement that anyone (including Garmin) promised to fulfil or deliver, irrespective of whether you want it. Usefulness is not judged by whether something does everything you want; giving you even 30% of what you want, when there is nothing else that delivers 100% (or otherwise overlaps that 30% perfectly), is still useful because it closes a gap. Even an inconvenient arrangement and an annoying fragmentation of one's toolset can still deliver the required functionality, without regard for one's overall satisfaction as a user.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    If he/she then wants to plan training workouts in the lead-up to the race, again it could be useful to add those to one's calendar that also shows other (e.g. work, social) engagements for planning purposes. Isn't it great to know by looking at one's calendar that, in spite of a full work day (say) this coming Tuesday with meetings as late as 6–7PM, he/she is still supposed to fit in a ten-kilometre training run some time during the day even if the exact timing has not been decided?


    Yes, it is. But it will be much better if this event can be set for a concrete day time.

    However, activities that have already taken place have no value for planning purposes. If you want to see which workouts you've done, or how you've performed on those, you're welcome to pull up Garmin Connect (or Strava, or whichever linked fitness tracking platform you use) to review those.

    Why do you think that past activities have no value for the trainer? We are talking about time events no matter if this is a training activity, birthday party, business lunch, etc - it represents time spent by the user that really matters to him.

    Having a single calendar application/platform that does both of the above is not a requirement that anyone (including Garmin) promised to fulfil or deliver, irrespective of whether you want it. Usefulness is not judged by whether something does everything you want; giving you even 30% of what you want, when there is nothing else that delivers 100% (or otherwise overlaps that 30% perfectly), is still useful because it closes a gap. Even an inconvenient arrangement and an annoying fragmentation of one's toolset can still deliver the required functionality, without regard for one's overall satisfaction as a user.


    I agree that this is not a requirement and I don't claim that someone has promised to deliver this feature. The only thing I state is that this feature is an area for improvement. For the regular calendar user (not the athlete using Garmin Connect or Strava) is important to know where his/her time was spent. It is natural to open your calendar app and check what have you done yesterday and see all your daily activities tracked in one place. This helps you plan and organize your next days.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    Why do you think that past activities have no value for the trainer?
    I didn't say it has no value at all. I said it has no value for planning purposes, specifically.
    The only thing I state is that this feature is an area for improvement.
    You said the status quo is “almost useless”. I was pointing out the uses and usefulness of it as a counter-argument. I'm not personally interested in how good it could be instead, or in debating that, or in articulating a set of requirements/methods that would make the feature more useful. You made a statement, and I challenged it in the spirit of open discussion; that is all. I'm not interested in common ground and using that to start from a place of agreement, either.

    For the regular calendar user (not the athlete using Garmin Connect or Strava) is important to know where his/her time was spent.
    Even the non-athlete who uses a Garmin device to track his/her sport activities can use Garmin Connect and/or Strava; there is no inherent barrier.
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    Even the non-athlete who uses a Garmin device to track his/her sport activities can use Garmin Connect and/or Strava; there is no inherent barrier.


    Yes, he can, he can also track it down on a sheet of paper... The point is that it is not convenient to use 2 calendar systems for tracking your time. That's why most of the systems that provide a calendar features also provide publishing that allows the user to use third party clients to manage it (or at least view it). The idea behind calendar publishing is to use a single point for tracking/managing your time events. Take for a example your account in the local cinema - if you book a movie for Friday evening, you can see the event in the cinema's online system. You can see your previous bookings too. The booking has a start and end time. You are able to import this calendar to a third party calendar app and view your bookings there. You cannot edit them but at least you can see them. This way when you review your last weeks time schedule and do the planning for the next one you can use only a single app.

    I use my calendar app to track lots of stuff - my personal events (my personal calendar), business meetings (imported from the calendar system I use at work), a bunch of other third party calendars that give me information about my cinema bookings, holidays in my country, etc. It is not convenient to open Garmin Connect each time you want to check when was your last running session. In addition this feature has already been implemented about Events and Workouts so for me it was strange to don't have activities published too. No offense, I just wanted to share my opinion on the calendar feature based on my experience and ask if I'm missing something in the configuration :)
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    No offense,
    None taken.

    I just wanted to share my opinion on the calendar feature based on my experience
    And, with due respect to a fellow Garmin customer, product owner/user and forum member, I disagree that it's “almost useless”. It certainly could be better, but by framing it in the negative, it invites negative feedback to what you say (as opposed to solidarity as ‘aggrieved’ customers being dealt a bad hand).

    and ask if I'm missing something in the configuration :)
    Back to my first words in this thread: “I don't think so.”
  • 0 over 8 years ago
    Garmin to Google calendar import

    Not trying to hijack this thread but it seems somewhat related to what I was trying to and I didn't see the point in creating a new one as I figured someone who may be able to assist me may already be reading this!

    I'm new to Garmin (and fitness watches overall, although I've been using RunkKeeper on my phone for years) and thought I'd give one of their training programs a go. Normally I put manually schedule my marathon training into my Google calendar as I need to know what has to fit into my schedule however I managed to use the 'publish' function on Garmin Connect's calendar then import this into my Google calendar. The problem is that it's only showing my training for the next month and not the whole 16 week program. Is this normal? How can I make it show the whole program?

    Thanks in advance!
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 4 years ago

    kaleksandrov, thank you for posing this question - I couldn't agree more how useful this would be - the GC (Garmin Connect) calendar has all these automatically produced ACTIVITIES & workouts from when I've pushed buttons on my watch or the watch has auto detected my running: It would be very uplifting to be ABLE to see them when I glance at my Google Calendar; to show me I haven't been a lazy couch potato all the time during lockdown...

    Garmin Connect has this great Publish feature (click the three dots at the top right of the Connect Calendar page, and you'll see this option)...however the ACTIVITIES simply do not appear, whereas painstakingly typed in EVENTS do...(I plan my life using Google Calendar, but like to retrospectively observe what's been happening the last month or so, to allow change for improved use of time)

    Meanwhile, in desperation I tried sharing the GC calendar directly to Microsoft's 365 Outlook Calendar in the hope of then sharing that somehow...guess what, in sharing the GC calendar this way, there is specifically an option to share ACTIVITES, (as well as EVENTS and WORKOUTS).

    The outcome? Initially no success...then after two days, the events and workouts showed up in my outlook calendar (no activities)...then, after about a week, THE ACTIVITIES ACTUALLY APPEARED...FINALLY. So I proved to myself that Garmin Connect can really share my activities with 3rd party applications - well, only Microsoft 365 so far... Now, perhaps "all I need to do" is figure out how to share my Outlook calendar into my Google calendar, and I have all my info where I want it. I get the feeling this should be a whole lot simpler!..

    Anyway, I hope this helps somebody.

    p.s. Garmin - please fix the basic publishing of a calendar as per mine and kaleksandrov's posts.

    p.p.s ASmugDill ; thank you for replying to kaleksandrov initially just to make sure someone took an interest in this post.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Former Member

    I have the same Problem. I would really like to be able to publish ALL my past activities + future acitivities (+events etc.) to my google calendar.. Last time i looked into this Problem is now 8 (!) years ago.