Improved Upload Process - New Agent

The MotionBased Agent 2.1 was just released for download yesterday.  We highly recommend this Agent for all to use.

Choose Activities to Send

The big addition for the new Agent is the ability to choose which activities you'd like to send to MotionBased.  No longer will you have to Send Entire History!

Notice the radio buttons in the Configure Agent page:

If you choose Send new activities only then the Agent will behave much as it did before.  Only the new activities will go and you won't see any selection page. 

If you choose Always choose activities to send then you will always see the new choice page...

Notice only the activities that have not already been sent to MB on this computer are checked. 

NOTE: Even though you have Send new activities only checked this screen will appear if you choose Synchronize and the Agent doesn't find any new activities to send.  This way you can pick which activities to send instead of sending the entire history.  Yes, that was painful.  Sorry to make some of you deal with that poorly implemented feature.

NOTE: For all non-Forerunner users the sport type will be Unknown and you will see a lot more entries on this page than activities that you performed.  This is a limitation of the track log segmentation found on Garmin non-Forerunner devices.  Simply choose to send all those that appeared on the date you performed your activity or better yet just use the Send new activities only  feature. 

Foreign Language Support

In preparation for our World launch, the Agent has now been modified to send languages other than English.  Previous Agents were having trouble encoding some language written into the speed zones and workouts.

Email Address Verification - No More GPS Spam

This one is for you John, Mike, Eric and all the other early MBers that won your first name as your username.  Since we used to require only a username to send activities to MB sometimes another Mike or John would send their activities into the wrong inbox.  Not fun for the recipient that gets someone else's activities and definitely not fun for the person that can't find their activities in the inbox.

Note:  We require your Email Address and not your password.  This is done so you may have someone else send activities for you without having to expose your password. 

Import Activities

Essentially the same as the manual upload via a web browser, but since the Agent is sending the activities the files are compressed.  This will save you lots of time uploading those big Logbook and Garmin Training Center Export files.

Note:  Garmin Training Center Export Files are not being accepted at this time.  We will be doing so shortly once we can ensure there will be no performance degradation for the server.

Messaging

Pretty much the only time you are going to get a red X is when MotionBased is unavailable, you aren't connected to the Internet or you have a firewall blocking the Agent from sending files.

If your Agent can't communicate with MotionBased you will see Send Queued Activities at the top of the list on the main menu after you have chosen synchronize.  This means that your files were successfully retrieved from your device and stored in a local queue, but not able to be sent to MB.  You can simply try to resend this generated file until it is processed.  This is especially handy if you are on a road trip and uploading activities to your laptop when you don't have an Internet connection.

 

For most other errors then you will get the green check-mark telling you synchronization is successful, but the messages on the right side will be the final say about the status of the upload.

Notice the error message on the right. I sent a file that MotionBased does not recognize.  Every time there is an error MotionBased Customer Support receives an email and starts to investigate.

The Green check-mark says all was successful, but the message on the right side says there was an error.  The message on the right explains the results of the upload where the messages on the left tell you if the Agent was able to communicate or not.

We admit that the green check-box successful message can be contradictory to the actual results relayed by MotionBased on the right side of the Agent.  We may change the wording of the Green Check-mark message, but the results will always be relayed almost entirely by the Upload Results messages.

Inbox and Upload Restrictions

Some of you have noticed that we are not allowing you to upload if you have more than 5 activities already in your Inbox.  This DOES NOT mean that you must upload 5 or fewer activities at once.  It simply means that you cannot start a new upload if you have too many activities waiting in your Inbox.  If you have 30 activities in your Forerunner and want to upload you may do so...once.  You won't be able to send another activity until you have submitted those 30 into your Digest.

We are also restricting only 3 uploads per user per hour.  This shouldn't affect the normal user, but will restrict someone that is having difficulty sending their files from continually trying.  We have found many people are impatient and instead of waiting for MotionBased to finish processing the uploads they send again and again and again. Ironically the more times you send the slower the system gets. Perhaps if the stoplight crosswalk button would make people wait longer the more times the button is pressed then we wouldn't have this dilemma.

These changes are not meant to keep anyone from sending actual activities to MotionBased, but are necessary to help some users understand that they don't need to send their upload 15 times.  The record was over 400 activities in the Inbox...in the long run we are doing everyone a favor.

If you have a special need then please email customer service.

Advanced Users

The presence of Send Queued Activities means you have a file waiting to be sent to MotionBased.  Your files are stored locally in system folder that is accessible by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + F from the main Agent screen.  There you will see folder named Queue where your files are temporarily stored.  QueueResend is the place where files that will be sent and will show up in your inbox whether you have already uploaded them or not.  Sent is a history of all the files sent to MotionBased.  If you are running out of Disk Drive space then you may want to delete all the files in your Sent directory.

Summary

The upload process has been one of the biggest bummers about using MotionBased for many people.  We do our best to stay in tune with our customers and react with new features that should continue to make MotionBased a cool place to track your activities and share them with the community.

Comments

[Bob Godman]

I like your program. The only thing I think that would improve it would a column for totals for running, biking seperately.

Thanks,

Bob Godman

[Clak]

Good idea. We'll note that for future enhancements. In the meantime, did you know that you can use the Quick Filters link near the top of the Digest to show only values related to a category or specific sport-type? Also, you can create more custom filtering using the Reports option in the Digest. That is located on the left-side of the page in the gray box.

[Mike DeNovellis]

Hey there,

What a great site / product! When are you folks coming out with an Apple OS X version of your agent?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Thanks,

Mike

[Gerty]

Opening the window to browse files only works if I do Ctrl-Shift-F, and not Ctrl-Alt-F. Typo? Or maybe my laptop is just funky.

[Clark Weber]

That was a typo. I changed it. Thanks.