Garmin Connect Activity Sorting

Yes, it is a known bug. At least known and already reported on this user forum. The only thing you can do is contacting the Customer Support, and insisting on creating a case for that, or asking to have it escalated to a higher level, if the first level support is unable to handle it properly.

I looked at this and actually the sorting works fine! BUT! There is also the second sorting as extra now!

AlanB said:

The only reason I would use the web app is to rank my activities by various criteria e.g. longest

Yo Dawg, we herd you like sorting, so we put sorting in your sorting so you can sort while you sort.

The first sorting - sorts by requested parameter.
And the second sorting - sorts by date (from newest).

Note that results are returned partially - by default it's 20 activities.

So, you sort by distance from longest, and you get 20 longest, but it's also sorted by date. When you scroll down, it loads next 20 longest activities and sorts those 20 by date separately.

Each loaded pack of 20 is sorted by date separately, so looking at full list when you scrolled few times - won't be fully sorted by date, only each pack of 20.

BunBun! said:

I looked at this and actually the sorting works fine!

I am sorry, but no, it does not. Even though it works like you tell, and the first 20 activiities get loaded using the selected sorting, having the list resorted by the date is definitely not what I would call "working fine". If I select sorting by distance, I do not want to see 20 longest activities sorted by the date, but I want to see them sorted by the distance - that would be what I'd call "working fine".

The main sorting works fine, you can ask for only 1 result and you get the longest:

activityType=running&sortBy=distance&sortOrder=desc&limit=1&start=0

The second sorting by time is just extra, of course it's strange someone put it there. Some asked (@Brooking) if there is a problem with data of activities, looks there is not, so it's a good info. It's just extra resorting of correct list.

I used to be able to sort my activities just in distance order but now it appears the results are random, although I think @bunbun!  may have something about date being included as a second sort criteria in someway. To my mind the sorting is only working fine if it only sorts in the criteria I selected (distance) not a combination of two criteria (distance and date). BunBun! how do you make the system only sort on one criteria. Garmin have acknowledged there is a fault and are working on a fix by the way.

Brooking said:

how do you make the system only sort on one criteria

No, returned list is still resorted by date, but only 1 result won't change place.
The list has the limit parameter - number of returned results.

By default it's 20 results which are correct, but resorted later by date.
To fix the issue, that second sorting needs to be removed.

If the second sorting criteria cannot be removed then the sorting is not working, do you agree? I simply want (and it used to work) a list of my activities in distance order. I do not want this list to be further sorted by date, that would be of no use at all and nonsensical. Even worse than it including the unwanted date in the sort it limits this to packs of 20 you suggest? Well who set that limit and why? Basically the sort function is totally and completely wrong and not fit for purpose, and whoever told AlanB that sorting is not supported is just lying or stupid.

Please dont use the word 'correct' anywhere this issue otherwise Garmin might not think there's a problem. The displayed result is wrong and Garmin need to fix it. Its as wrong as a wrong thing. Whether any part of the sort process is working or not is irrelevant, all we need is the display result to be accurate.  The internal workings and stages  of the system's activity sort function  are of no interest to me, but they should be to Garmin.

Thanks all for your input. I see now how the sorting is "working". But I agree it makes no sense as a use case. A secondary sorting should only come into play where activities are tied in their primary sorting. So if I sort by Distance, and there are 3 runs of the same length, it makes sense to sub-sort them by an agreed second column like Date. Maybe this is where the bug is? The only reason I posted here is because I was told by Garmin Support that sorting simply does not (and by implication never did) exist in the web app, which makes even less sense :).