Time-of-day — Early Access Beta

Aaron

We've been working hard the past few months on a highly requested feature — the ability to track the time-of-day with your diary entries.

Despite seeming simple, this is actually a rather large and complex project — it requires a lot of new UI, charting library, database changes, support with all of our device integrations, data exchange formats, dealing with timezones and timezone changes, and so on. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us to complete this, but we're ready to invite a few of our Gold users to an early preview so we can get some early feedback.

Please note this is open to Gold and Pro users only, and that being beta, there may be undiscovered bugs and issues to encounter and we cannot guarantee preservation or correctness of your time-data during this early stage. Please do not apply unless you're comfortable with this and the fact that the experience is still incomplete with many rough edges. You can email our support team to request access to this early beta.

The early access beta lets you set/edit times on your diary items, as well as pull in times from most of the device integrations automatically. It does not yet have an upgraded charting library to view at the sub-day time granularity, and the mobile app will also not yet have support for time-of-day.

We're very interested in feedback on the user interface changes, and the default behaviours, and in making sure they work well with the myriad ways our users will organize their data (often in unexpected ways!).

A quick overview of the changes below showing the time of day editor and how it will appear in the diary:


We appreciate gathering any early feedback you may have!

tittiger

Hi! Does it yet time stamp biometrics? Thanks
Joe

Aaron

@tittiger Yes, any diary item can include a time

tittiger

Thanks either way sign me up. I just shot off a letter to support: support@cronometer.com

finnd1

I'm game, email sent to support as well

Vickie

I've emailed and been given access to the new feature. @Aaron, how would you like us to report any issues and feedback? I assume you'd want one ticket per issue, but other observations and comment?

Aaron

@Vickie you can post your feedback here and we’ll make sure we track it all internally.

AnthonyBaker

Can't wait to try this feature out. Have been a long-time MyFitnessPal user, but came over to Cronometer yesterday after reading praise about your app/service from folks on Reddit. Have to say, I'm mightily impressed. You guys have done a fantastic job with your product. One of the things I especially love is how you've made the presentation of macro and micro nutrient data front and center as part of your design in the diary, versus buried in another screen. Am cancelling my MFP subscription shortly and will be upgrading to Cronometer gold. Look forward to the ability to set times on my meals, which is very helpful.

finnd1

Looking good so far!

Vickie

Two issues noted so far:

1. Notes with content starting with a number saved before the update have been incorrectly assigned a time on new feature activation on my account. Notes starting with an alphabet didn't have this issue. I don't have any example to show as I have already removed all the incorrect automatic times.

2. If there is a timestamped entry in the diary group, and I add a new item without a timestamp, it will be inserted above the first instance of a timestamped entry. Adding a new item with a timestamp will add it to the bottom of the diary group as before. For example:

   Step 1: Existing diary entries.
   [ no time ] Food A
   [11:38 AM] Food B

   Step 2: Add new entry Food C with no timestamp; Food C inserted above first timestamped row (Food B).
   [ no time ] Food A
   [ no time ] Food C
   [11:38 AM] Food B

   Step 3: Add new entry Food D with timestamp; Food D added below Food B as expected.
   [ no time ] Food A
   [ no time ] Food C
   [11:38 AM] Food B
   [10:05 AM] Food D

Mehdi

I'd like to be invited too please

are there reminders too ? that would be amazing to centralize all my "take your supplements" and "eat that avocado" reminders haha.

also, i just sent an email to support yesterday suggesting a feature that would complement this well, is the notion of "done" (or eaten to be more accurate), I plan my day meals and macros in advance, and it's sometimes hard to keep track during the day of what I did or did not already eat, especially when playing with many avocados and olive oil tablespoon that can so drastically change the numbers.

In any case, great product it's really helping me a lot

Mehdi

tittiger

An observation on these forums is that I get emails informing me that a post has been made but unlike some forums, the content of the post is not in the email and is much more of a PITA to keep current on. It almost makes me want to NOT subscribe to a thread in any forum that does reporting and notifications in this manner. It may not seem like much but having to come here to see a post adds significant time to going through my email. TIA

tittiger

The lack of a note field in each biometric is a glaring omission IMHO. It takes any context from the biometric and makes them much less useful. Having a note field (as we already do but not as a part of the biometric entry) also suggests that it would be useful to be able to search the note fields to find things.
TIA

Schenbew

Will this upgrade allow us to chart more than one biometric value, as opposed to the current averaged value, per day?

I'm very interested in monitoring changes of a single biomarker throughout the day; the average value Cronometer currently provides is not as useful as seeing the daily fluctuations.

Thanks,

Walt

Aaron

Hi Walt -- In the current private beta, we have not yet replaced the charting library, but, when we finish charting, yes, this will be possible.

chokokhan

Hi Aaron, Just joined gold today specifically for this feature. I've been requestiong it for a while and you linked this thread in my last comment/request. Needless to say I'm very excited. Emailed support to request access to beta today, and Frank just replied telling me it will be released soon, in small groups, he doesn't know when. Can I please be on the beta?

finnd1

When copying an entry in the afternoon, from the morning, and then pasting it into the afternoon snack slot, it retained the time of the morning entry rather than updating to the time of the pasting

keepthebeet

I just sent an email too Excited to try this out!

chokokhan

Good point, Finnd1! On the other hand I copy all of my breakfasts, so I'd like them to be at the same time every morning. For people who have the same thing at lunch/breakfast everyday it's more useful this way I guess.

finnd1

The time stamp is handy for me because, when I test my blood glucose and blood ketones, it helps me know how long postprandial my tests are

tittiger

Nothing has changed. In the past my "notes" started with a time. Now I have the time done automatically, but that does not in the least save me from having to write a separate note to give context to that biometric.

As it now stands the time stamp feature IMHO is a complete and utter bust from a software design standpoint. I still need to create a separate note for many if not most of my biometrics. When I don't I have quite frankly usually dropped the ball... as the biometric did need clarification.

TJMag

I love the time-stamps.

TJMag

Please add a feature to be able to shift-select several items in the Diary and then select a right-click menu item to mass-change the time-stamp for the selected items. So, for example, click on an item in the Diary to select it, and then shift-click select a few more items, and then right-click and select "Change time-stamp to" from the right-click menu, and have it pop up a time-stamp field that defaults to the current time. When the user enters time values and then clicks away, the time-stamp for all of the selected Diary items are set to the value that was entered. This will be very convenient for copying & pasting sets of items and quickly grouping them in time. Thanks!

TJMag

Possible bug: If the user creates a note that has a "less than" character (e.g. "<") followed by an alpha character (a-z), then when the user clicks the "Save Note" button, Cronometer hangs up and never finishes closing the Note pop-up window.

If you "x -out" to close the Note pop-up window, and then refresh the browser screen, the note has been saved correctly, so the user can use the "<" character but will have to x-out and refresh to see the Note.

I did not test every possible character, but found that it also hangs up on the following character combinations <! and <?

keepthebeet

How about having the option of time-stamping the section, instead of the food? Eg I have my diary split into 8 sections (only 6 of which are for food). One of those sections is 'breakfast' - which could be timestamped at the appropriate time for that day.

TJMag

Problem: Please ask for confirmation before clearing amounts.

How to repeat the issue: When I clicked on the gear icon in the upper right of the screen, I meant to click on the "Sort All By Time" , but accidentally clicked on the option right above it ("Clear Amounts"), which immediately cleared all amounts in the Diary for that day.

Please add a step to confirm the selection, such as Cronometer has for the "Clear All" option, such as a popup window that says:

        "Clear amounts?  Clear all amounts for the current day. [Cancel] [Ok]".  

Thank you!

TJMag

Problem: Export of Notes does not place the Time Stamp into its own column in Excel. The time stamp is appended to the date.

How to repeat the issue: In the Profile tab, in the Account Information section, click the "down arrow" next to the gear and select the menu item for "Export data...". In the pop-up window that is displayed, select a time period, such as "Last 7 days" and click on the "Export Notes" button. When you open the .csv file the Time Stamp has been appended to the end of the date rather than being placed into its own column, and the column labeled "Time" has no values stored in it.

The Time Stamps seem to be working well for the other types of exports (Servings, Exercises & Biometrics).

Thank you!

Julia

Is it possible to get 24h instead of 12h timestamps?

Hilary

It sure is, @Julia ! There is an option to change this in the 'Account information' section of the Profile tab!

Aaron

Good Morning testers!

We've just updated things. You'll need to do one little thing to get your timestamps visible again:

• Go to Profile tab -> Account Information & tick the 'Show time of day in Diary' box.

We've updated our charting library to be time-aware, so you should now be able to chart your time-data properly.

We've cleaned up a few UI elements and fixed some bugs. We're still working on the mobile app changes to support timestamps.

Thanks for all the feedback so far, and please keep it coming!

tittiger

Hi Aaron
I do not know if your pricey forum allows this (many free forums do) but it would be extremely helpful if notifications of posts in my email would contain a text copy of the post.
Does not seem like much of a time saver but believe me it is when multiplied a few dozen times a day! I simply do not have the time to waste to follow a link when the information that I seek should already be there. If this were done I would have known about this and not had to take 3 other actions to solve the issue.
TIA
Joe