Bugs in Female Health tracker

[Calathea77]

This is for reporting bugs (things that don't work), rather than feature suggestions (things that we think should be added).

- Ovulation date calculated is wrong for anyone who doesn't have a 14 day luteal phase.  There should be an option to enter your luteal phase length if known.  Otherwise, it is just as bad as telling everyone they should have a 28 day cycle regardless of their actual cycle length, only in this case it can get you pregnant when you don't want to be.  It is consistently showing my ovulation date as being three days earlier than it really is. Luteal phase length is considered normal if it is 10-16 days, and may be longer or shorter than that (if it's shorter than normal then miscarriage is likely, for instance).

Ideally there should be the additional feature of BBT (basal body temperature) tracking to calculate individual ovulation dates, but meanwhile, ovulation dates could at least be estimated by using an average luteal phase length, for people who have done BBT tracking in the past and know how their cycles work.  Clue does this.  Assuming everyone has a 14 day luteal phase is not an absent feature, it's a bug.

- Pregnancy is not recognised, which means that anyone inputting past period dates which includes a gap for pregnancy will be given an incorrect average cycle length.  One user reports that Fitbit has come up with an average of 104 for her cycle lengths, which is over three times as long as they should be.  Again, look at Clue.  There is a simple box to tick for excluding a cycle from calculations.  If someone has changed their birth control in the past (you can only record current birth control) in a way that led to cycles of different lengths, that would be another reason to need it.

- It is impossible to input flow type without having to enter each period twice, and the period has to be inputted in two different screens.  It's been theorised that this may be because some people get non-menstrual bleeding in between periods, but since those people are rare (spotting is more common, actual bleeding far less so), it should not be made a default that means that people end up with missing data on their cycles.  Again, this will cause incorrect cycle lengths which will affect averages and predictions.

- When adjusting the length of individual periods, if they are different from the average, the slider only works if you are not adjusting it over the Sunday/Monday line.  So if my period was marked as Thurs-Sun and it was actually Thurs-Mon, you can't put that in.  Similarly, if my period is marked as Fri-Mon and it was actually Fri-Sun, that can't be adjusted either.  

- The Windows tile went live before the Android tile did, so I input data into the Windows tile.  This included answering questions about my birth control and such, inputting period dates, and inputting symptoms.  All of this data was lost when moving to the Android tile and had to be inputted all over again.

- The explanation of the symbols says that a dot (or possibly multiple dots) will show up in the calendar in some way to show if symptoms have been tracked on a day.  There is no sign of these in either the calendar or the trends chart.

[WavyDavey]

Hi @Calathea77,

Good feedback. I'm moving your topic to the dedicated Female Health Tracker board, where it will get more visibility.

[Calathea77]

I put it in the Android forum because nothing in the Female Health tracker forum appears to be getting treated as a bug, and bug reports are being formally treated as feature requests instead.

Here's another bug.

- I've put flow rate and symptoms into the Android app for the last cycle and a half, and they have all been wiped. This is in addition to when they got wiped, along with all other data including my type of contraception, when I out them into the Windows app. So the symptom tracking feature does not appear to work at all. 

[WavyDavey]

I'm sorry, I'll put in a request to have it moved back.

[Calathea77]

Well, whatever you think will actually get it taken seriously! I'm shocked at how little this cycle tracker does and how poorly it's been implemented. I've seen things like the sleep stages being introduced when they were new, and there was the odd problem, but it was nothing like this, and they were far more sophisticated. We've waited four years for this tracker and it's not even near the beta development stage. 

[Calathea77]

Hang on, the symptoms weren't getting logged because I didn't realise you had to hit Save every time. Is that usual for Fitbit? I can't use the water tracker because it doesn't allow you to use your actual glass/water bottle size, and other hormone trackers like Clue automatically save entries when you go back from the data entry page. It is incredibly slow and unwieldy this way. 

[Calathea77]

- The dot that is meant to mark symptoms on thr calendar may actually mean flow rate, sex or anything that's been logged. It's meant to be for showing which days involved symptoms. 

[WavyDavey]

I think the level of detail of your feedback will be very useful for Fitbit.

Tagging @AlessFitbit for visibility and advice on the proper sub-forum for this topic.

[KaedeF]

Every time I log a symptom, sex or flow it erases the next time the app syncs. (I’m using iOS.) I get the little dot on the day to show it’s logged, I can go back into it and see my symptoms logged. I can leave the tile, check another tile within the app and go back to symptoms. If I close the app, do something else, open Fitbit app back up my symptoms will be there until the app finishes syncing with the web (based on the spinning data used icon on iOS.) I have watched my logged symptoms disappear right in front of me as the app finishes syncing. All the dots disappear. I guess this isn’t ready to actually be used yet, and am disappointed they rolled it out in this state. 

[Calathea77]

To everyone experiencing bugs, log there here and also contact Fitbit support at http://help.fitbit.com/?l=en_US&cu=1&fs=ContactUs

Interesting that they have a whole support section just for the Female Health Tracker!  Did I miss something or did they not mention it in this forum at all?  I am concerned that when people have been reporting bugs in this forum, they're being brushed off with "Why don't you post about that as a Feature Request", which is not how they should respond to bugs.

- The blog posts that you click through to from the tracker say that you can see your other Fitbit data, such as sleep or food intake, related to your menstrual cycle. There is no means to do this. You can't even see the symptom data laid out in any way.  It looks like something is missing.

[Calathea77]

- I'd have called the lack of proper ovulation tracking through BBT and cervical data the absence of a feature, but since this article states that the Fitbit tracker really may be used as a "fertility tracker" and says "the more data you put in, the more accurate it will become as a predictor", then it is actually a bug. It does not calculate ovulation correctly. You should be able to enter a minimum of three types of data to do this: basal body temperature (BBT), cervical fluid and cervical height/openness/softness. All you can track is the cervical fluid, which makes to look as if there is at least some chance it will use that data to calculate ovulation, but it ignores all the cervical fluid data and continues to give an incorrect ovulation date. I put in cervical fluid data for the last nine months to check this. 

http://www.coachmag.co.uk/fitness-trackers/7493/fitbit-s-new-female-health-tracking-features-explain...

[AlessFitbit]

@Calathea77 Thanks for stopping by the Female health tracking board! I appreciate you taking the time to leave some feedback on our newest feature. 

I understand you're very concerned with the current functionality and we are very interested in all your feedback. Some of your suggestions mirror those I have already seen mentioned here in this board and would make for great additions. At this time, I'm welcoming this type of feedback to be posted as a Feature Suggestion. You can create or find existing ideas through the 'Female Health Tracking' label and vote for the ones you are most interested in. 

When we fully released Female health tracking to Android users this week, it was expected behavior to onboard in the app even if this had been done previously through Windows 10. I'm sorry that you lost your data, and for the future, we'll work on having the data transfer between platforms. 

When logging any details, you will see a period on the date for which you logged details for. Keep in mind this is separate than logging a period which is done through the pencil icon. Lastly, to edit a logged period you should be able to drag up until the following week over Sunday/Monday. For Android devices, I recommend dragging slowly across dates and holding it for a few seconds over the day the period should end. After that, it should save for that date. 

Please let me know if I can help with anything else. 

[Calathea77]

These are bug reports, not feature suggestions. The tracker isn't functional. 

[Jamie1972]

BUG REPORT:  My predicted period days are NOT being marked. WHY?

[Emberni]

Why cant you log a cycle that is shorter than 11 days? Not very inclusive of women with irregular and erratic cycles. Disappointed 

[PopcornCat]

I recorded my period using the app and all worked fine, it was saved and there were no issues. Today I wanted to check my last entries and all was lost: I get the introduction screens as if I were using Female Health for the first time and when I'm in the calendar there is zero data.

I logged out of the app and back in last week, could that be the reason? But still, my data shouldn't be lost.

Would be nice if next time I log out I don't lose my data 🙂

[Best7797]

I'm having a similar issue.  Everytime I give into female health tracker I have to answer the same series of questions again ( like I'm going in for the first time).  What the heck?

[MarreFitbit]

Welcome on board @Best7797, it's nice to see you here! Hmmm... this is very strange my friend. Have you logged any period yet? If you haven't, I guess that's why you're being asked with those questions. 

In the meantime, I'd recommend doing the following:

• Make sure that your Fitbit app is up-to-date
• Log out of your Fitbit app
• Force quit the app
• Turn off the Bluetooth
• Shut off your phone and turn it on after 1-2 minutes
• Turn on the Bluetooth
• Log back into your Fitbit app

Looking forward to your reply.

[SarahRhea]

Period predictions don't account for late periods. For example: my period was supposed to start yesterday but it didnt.  Yesterday my tile said "9 days unil period ends", today it says "8 days until period ends" despite me pressing the "not yet" button to indicate if the prediction was correct. If I edit the prediction it acts as though my period has started. And if i mess with the prediction then its harder for me to keep track of how late it is.

Ive used other period tracking apps in the past that would say period was x days late if until you didnt enter the actual period start date in the app for that month. 

[MarreFitbit]

Hey there @SarahRhea, thanks for stopping by! While in the period tracker, go to Settings in the top right corner. It should bring up the option to remove "predictions". Turn it off, set your period then turn predictions back on. This way it seems to just put in your average period days and not what the predicted end date would've been. 

Give this a go and let me know if this works!