Health Connect and Apple Health in detail
Sociana's wellness module does not talk to individual wearables. It reads from the phone's own health layer: Health Connect on Android and Apple Health on iOS. Participants grant permission once, and daily sync then transfers their step data into the programme according to the organiser's start date, goals and rules. Wearables that write to those stores, such as many watches, therefore contribute indirectly, but Sociana does not connect directly to Fitbit, Garmin or Strava. Because the data comes from the health store, it can distinguish measured steps from manually entered ones, which lets the programme exclude manual entries. Organisers should plan for permission friction: giving participants simple instructions, a help-desk route and a first-week check on who has synced reduces silent drop-out. Privacy-wise, only the data needed for the challenge is used, and consent wording should say so plainly.
How Sociana uses it
Sync is part of the step-challenge module. Permission, start date, goals, caps and manual-entry exclusion are configured per programme; valid synced days drive reporting.
Example
A corporate walking programme asked participants to grant health permission at onboarding and monitored sync status in the first week.