Wanted to get some insights and perspectives. Presently, it is not possible for a coach or an athlete to apply notes to a specific workout prior to it being completed. For me, I see this as essential because often times athletes have questions on a given workout and based on my usage of another platform, they can just comment or add a note, so we can discuss at the workout level. Likewise, if I want to call something out or ask a question in maybe a workout that was missed, I want to be able to make a note on that specific session.
There are workarounds, of course, but all of them seem workflow disruptive (e.g. use chat feature, but then it’s decoupled from the workout, or a text, or email, etc.). So, I’m interested to know how you deal with this and/or if you see it as a feature gap that you’d like to see in intervals.
Update: maybe more of a direct question because the intent of this post isn’t to solicit workarounds that are not comprehensive. The direct question: how do you effectively manage communications with an athlete within the application and in a way that athlete and coach actually receive a notification? Context: I currently use training peaks, and at the workout level before workout is complete, it is simple to have bi-directional communication between the athlete and the coach, with notifications.
Hi @Power2Tri_Endurance,
Here we use that “Notes” sidebar quite a lot - although it’s only available for completed workouts*.
One possibility that might address your idea (for planned workouts) could be having those comments directly within the workout body - perhaps as a header message before the workout steps. The athlete could click “Edit” and add text lines there. But for this to make sense, it would require implementing the feature of coach being notified when an athlete edits a workout (already requested in another forum post) and vice versa.
What do you think?
*Regarding that space for notes and comments, the only change I would personally like to see would be moving the comments up to the top of the page, just below the activity summary. That would help to 1) avoid taking up lateral screen space, which compresses the charts, and 2) allow us to see athlete comments and feedback before shifting focus to the graph. This would be important to have context and a deeper understanding of the athlete’s subjective response before analyzing the workout data. But again, this only applies to completed workouts.
Yes, notes would work perfectly fine if they were enabled prior to the workout being completed. I don’t think I was clear, but that’s my exact context for my post, being able to do it before. The way it is now presumes that there is communication between the coach and athlete only after the workout being completed and that is categorically false.
Yes, you were clear! Sorry if I was confusing.
The first longer paragraph of my reply actually refers to the exact same idea that @WindWarrior nicely outlined above.
But I’d like to highlight one detail I think is important: for this to work well, I believe it would be necessary for coaches (as well as athletes) to receive a notification whenever the other party edits a planned workout.
Also, something new to me: text will be bold (I love that) if you write a single “-” one line above the “—”:
