Step Challenges
Step Challenges are a great way to encourage a healthy dose of daily movement. This challenge type allows everyone to join, whether they walk their dog or do a run.
Please keep in mind that step counters are never 100% accurate, but on an average of 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day missing a few steps will not likely make too much of a difference.
Step Challenges use daily summaries
One thing that sets a Step Challenge aside from other challenge types is that most step challenges will use the daily summaries. In other words: they use all the steps during the day, whether that was during an activity or not doesn't matter. Every step will count.
As not all apps and GPS devices support daily summaries only the following integrations will work with step challenges:
- Our own app using the build-in step tracker in the app (iOS and Android)
- Garmin watches
- Fitbit trackers
- Apple Watch
- Oura Ring
- Manual Entry
Convert Activities to Steps
We allow conversions of other activities into steps. This needs to be enabled in the setup of the event though. See this article to learn more on how this works and how you can enable this feature.
Linking multiple devices
When multiple daily summaries are available on the same day, either because multiple devices are connected or because of a manual entry, the system will automatically take the daily summary with the highest step count on each day and use that as the best possible score for that specific day.
In order to do a manual correction it's therefor important to do an entry of the corrected total daily score and not just add more steps.
Please note that converted steps are added automatically to the daily total. For instance, you have 1,000 steps tracked by your Apple Watch and then go cycling for half an hour (which can get converted into 5,000 steps) this will actually get added up (6,000 in total) as the converted steps are treated differently than manually entered steps.
The main reason why it works that way is that some people wear and connect multiple step trackers at the same time, and you don't want those to be added up but rather take the device that reported most steps. When multiple devices are connected the system might select steps from different devices on different days as it will use the steps from the device who reported most steps.
Enable Step Tracking in our app
When using our app the automatic step tracker will automatically sync the daily step count from your phone. We use the AI powered algorithms that are already included in your phone to provide as accurate as possible step counts. This ensures there is no impact on battery life and enables the most accurate results.
On Android devices we use the Google Fit step counter which is available on most phones. On iOS devices we connect with Apple Health and sync from your Apple watch or from your phone itself.
Please keep in mind that, even though we try to sync the step progress automatically in the background, some phones do not allow this background process to run when you haven't opened the app in a while. So please check back in the app once every few days to make sure background syncing may continue. In case a day is missed for whatever reason it is always possible to sync the last 7 days from your Profile page in the app.
Instructions to Enable Automatic Step Tracking
Please share these instructions with the participants of your step challenge to ensure they enable automatic step tracking.
Make sure you have installed the app and have joined the event before proceeding with the steps below:
Enable Automatic Step Tracking from the event page by clicking 'Configure' button from the Step Tracking card.
- The next screen will differ between iOS and Android:
On Android: Enable the connection with Google Fit so we can access your daily steps. Google is asking to select an account, we don't access your account directly, but this is a requirement by Google. Click 'Sign-in with Google' and follow the steps.
Please note that due to privacy settings by Google we can only access your steps from the moment you have granted the permissions. Any steps from before setting up the connections cannot be accessed by the app due to Google privacy settings.
After enabling the daily steps it can take a few minutes before step data becomes visible. Rest assured, any steps taking after this moment will automatically count towards the challenge goal!
On iOS: Enable the connection with Apple Health and grant access to read at least your daily steps.
Once connected we will automatically sync the step data from the last few days and add this to your challenge progress.
- After the connection is enabled the app will track your daily steps automatically in the background. There is no need to have the app opened all the time. On iOS it will help to open the app once in a while to allow us to keep syncing in the background. If you haven't opened the app recently Apple might not allow us to do the background syncing due to how their algorithms work.