I’ve been using arc for a while and I recently had to reset my phone. When I tried to restore my backup it didn’t work. I tried the copy the folder into the import folder and then import all in the app. I see it doing things and putting check marks on the items but I cannot see the information anywhere in the app.
Hi Callan!
Someone had a similar problem a while back with imported data not showing up in timeline view. At that time I found a subtle bug in Arc and fixed it in an update. So… given that you’re on a new phone you must have the most recent Arc version, which means it can’t really be that old bug that I found. Which makes this a mystery, unfortunately.
But don’t worry, as long as you’ve got that backup data nothing is lost! We’ll just have to work through the problem and figure out why it’s not appearing after import. As step one it’ll be worth trying swiping Arc closed then reopening it, to see if that changes anything.
Though I’m not thinking up any other smart ideas for what to try. So if the data still doesn’t appear, it might have to come to you sending me some of your backup data for me to test with here on a test device.
I tried reinstalling the app, restarting the app, and rebooting my phone. How much data do you want and how do you want it delivered?
Hmm. It’ll probably be easiest to just zip up the entire Import folder (iCloud Drive / Arc App / Import) and email me that (matt@bigpaua.com).
Then I can test with the same conditions as on your phone, but with the app connected to the debugger to see what’s going on under the hood. Should be the easiest way to figure out what’s happening!
Sorry for the delay @Callan! I was off work sick for a few days. But back at it now.
So I’ve done a test import of the most recent week of data from your backup, and it’s imported fine so far. Which is mysterious, given that it hasn’t done so for you and you will be on the same version of Arc as is on my test phone.
I’m noticing a lot of temporary mess in the import, which is my fault. The importer / restore system leaves a lot of work to the processing engine, to clean up after it. But leaving the imported data alone and coming back later tends to fix that - the processing engine cleans it up in its own time.
I want to do a bit more work on refining that part of the restore for the next update, which I’m going to ship before the end of the month. But that still doesn’t explain why the restore/import hasn’t worked for you! So we’ve still got a mystery to solve.
What I did in my test was to only tap on one Sample File row in the File Importer - the most recent week, and just import that and nothing else. When you tap “Import All” it will queue up all the weeks, starting from the most recent and working backwards in time. Which is fine and good, but for testing I just wanted that one week. That shouldn’t be any different from what happened on your phone though if you tapped the “Import All” button.
Ok, so, let’s figure out what is/isn’t showing up in the app for you, to narrow down the possibilities. When you open the calendar view from timeline view, does it let you navigate to any previous days, from which you would have had imported data? For the week I tested importing, I can navigate to the timeline days for 25 November to 1 December, which are all showing data. Is it letting you navigate to those?
I am able to navigate to those days. What do the days that are circled mean vs the days that are not?
The grey circle on days in the calendar indicates that there are items in that day that need confirmation/correction.
When viewing one of those days in timeline view you will see at the top a bar that says there are some items either “uncertain” or “unconfirmed”. If it says they’re uncertain, it’s especially useful to tap on that button and go through the cleanup flow for those items.
For items it says are merely “unconfirmed”, it’s beneficial to go through the flow and confirm them, in order to set those choices in stone, so that they won’t be changed automatically later, if the processing engine thinks it sees a better choice (or either assigned place or assigned activity type).
The “uncertain” items are ones that are both unconfirmed and that the classifiers (place or activity type) don’t feel confident about their choices with. Like, maybe the activity type classifier assigned “walking” but it really isn’t sure that’s right, and needs you to confirm/correct it so that it can learn how to do a better job on that one next time.