Connecting to schedulers and other external flight sources

For many people, importing flights into MyFlightbook is a one-and-done process: you transcribe a logbook from paper or export it from another logbook, import that, and thereafter you enter each flight one-at-a-time.

But MyFlightbook has additional ways to pull flights from other sources on an ongoing basis.  As of this writing, MyFlightbook can connect to three separate airline scheduling systems (Leon, RosterBuster, and Flight Crew View), as well as debriefing services from CloudAhoy and FlySto, and you can pull flights from all of these except for FlySto (which is push-from-MyFlightbook only).

The process for each of these is the same: First, you must do a one-time authorization, which grants permission for MyFlightbook to access your information on the external site.  Then, whenever you want to import flights, you use the Import functionality on the website to import flights that fall within a particular date range.

Authorization

To grant authorization to MyFlightbook to access your data, use the website to to to Profile/Preferences and expand the section titled "Airline Scheduling Systems" or "Debriefing Services".

Next to the service you wish to use, follow the instructions to set up the authorization.  You will be taken to the service and asked to sign in there (if you're not already signed in) to prove that you are authorized to access the account.  The service should prompt you to confirm that you want to grant MyFlightbook access to your data.  You will then be redirected back to MyFlightbook.

If you later wish to revoke your authorization, you can do also from Profile/Preferences.

That's all there is to it!

Pulling flights

When you want to pull flights from the service, you'll again use the website.  Go to Logbook/Import, and you'll see options for the services that you have set up.  

Click on the appropriate service and you will be asked to specify a date range.  

Some services require both a start date and an end date, but for most these are optional; if you leave an optional start date unspecified, then it will pull in all flights up to the end date; if you leave an optional end date unspecified, it will pull in all flights after the start date, and if you leave both empty, then all data will be pulled.

The system will then try to pull in the matching flights, and will put them all into your pending flights (Logbook/Pending Flights), where you can review them, make any changes as needed, and then add them to your logbook proper.

Why do these flights to into Pending flights and not directly into your logbook?  There are two main reasons:

• Probably the most important reason is to avoid duplicate flights.  There is no reliable way to definitively say that flight X on, say, Flight Crew View is the same flight as flight Y on MyFlightbook, and therefore distinguish a new flight from an update (possibly accidental, and reverting data!) of an existing flight.  And it's very easy to accidentally import the same flight multiple times.
• Imported flights often need additional data or errors to be fixed before they can be committed to your logbook; Pending Flights can have errors that flights in your logbook are not allowed to have.  Two very common examples here are future flights that are in your schedule but are not yet flown, and flights that do not have a specific aircraft identified.  But you may also want to fill in your role in the flight, the amount of instrument flight or approaches performed or any number of additional details.

Note too that the system will automatically perform autofill on each flight according to your autofill settings (Profile/Preferences) on import.

MyFlightbook has a generalized architecture now for pulling in flights from an external source, so as new partners become available, they can be added with minimal effort.