FitnessSyncer Permissions and Authentication

When you wish to access your data from an external website, you must grant FitnessSyncer access to that data. Depending on the service, this may be a username and password you specify on our site, or this may be a permission you must grant on the service’s site.

For those services which you must grant us permission, the editor will provide you with a pulldown menu which will offer these options:

• Don’t Change: This keeps the existing permissions
• Grant New: This acquires a new permission
• Reuse Permission: This re-uses the permissions grant from a separate task

We have broken up the permissions like this to allow you more flexibility to sync with other accounts.

Where possible, we recommend that you use Reuse Permission. Some sites require that you do this; failure to do so will result in authorization failures. To aid with this, we have the Grant New Permissions and Apply to Other Sources and Destinations option when re-authentication services.

Some services may have other options as well. For example, Google Services require different authentication depending on the combination you are using with FitnessSyncer. Such cases will be covered in the FAQ of those services.

Solving Authentication Issues

There are many reasons authentication issues could happen:

• If you need to provide a username and password, ensure that it is the username and password for that service, not our service.
• If you are asked to grant permissions and do not approve all of the permissions we ask for, this could also happen. If you have questions/concerns, please review the FAQ’s for that service or contact us, and we can tell you why we need the specific permissions we requested for the service you are using.
• If you are using one service for multiple data sources or destination (such as a Fitbit Activity and Fitbit Sleep feed), please use the “Reuse Auth” option (described below)
• If you have added the service via our mobile apps, you may wish to try to authenticate the services via our website.
• If you have recently changed your password or revoked access to our service from the provider’s portal.

Some services have specific instructions, including:

• Garmin Connect

If you are still experiencing issues, please contact us.

What does “Reuse Auth From” or “Grant New Permissions and Apply to Other Sources and Destinations” mean under the Authentication menu? When should I use it?

The Reuse Auth Feature allows you to use the same credentials as you are using with another task in FitnessSyncer. You should use this when you have more than one source or task using the same service to use the same account. For example, if you are using Withings (Nokia Health) for your Body Composition and Activities, you could use this feature to share the credentials. Some services (including Garmin, Withings, MapMyFitness, and Fitbit) may have authentication errors if you do not use this feature.

To use this feature:

• Pick one of your sources or destinations and re-authenticate it.
• For each of the other sources and destinations using the same provider, you should edit them and change the authentication to Reuse Auth from that first source or destination.

If the service has a “Grant New Permissions and Apply to Other Sources and Destinations” option, we recommend using that and then you do not need to do the second step above.

Google Fit, Google Drive, and Sleep As Android only work the first time, and then I get an authentication problem; why?

A security feature from Google causes the issue. To work around this, try this:

1. For the affected Google Account, visit your Security Settings: https://www.google.com/settings/u/1/security.
2. Under “Connected apps and services,” select “View All”.
3. Find FitnessSyncer and click “Revoke Access”
4. Under My Account, edit your Google Fit or Sleep As Android connections and Reauthenticate. If you have more than one Google Fit source or destination, reuse the authentication from one other connection.

What is “Grant New Permissions for All Google Services”?

Each Google Services requires separate authentication. Because we support multiple services that use Google Services, we only request the minimum by default. If you use more than one Google-based Service, please use the “Grant New Permissions for All Google Services” option to ensure you have the permissions for all and re-use that authentication for all other services.