Find out why a reply was held
Four things hold an outbound reply and they are checked in order: the channel's autonomy mode, a narrower rule set at a closer scope, the daily allowance, and a suppression on the recipient. Diagnosing a held reply means finding which of the four fired, and the Decision Log names it directly rather than leaving you to infer it from settings.
Start at the log, not at the settings#
The instinct is to open What Connect May Do and read the current configuration. That answers what would happen now, which is not the question — settings change, and the reply was held under whatever was true at the time. The Decision Log records what was decided, by what, under which rule, and what happened, including refusals, because a refusal is a decision.
Open the Decision Log and find the entry for that message.
Result The entry names the rule that applied. In most cases the investigation ends here and the next three steps are unnecessary.
If the entry names an autonomy rule, note the scope it resolved at.
Result Scopes run contact, endpoint, channel, workspace — narrowest first. A rule at contact scope beats the channel setting you were about to change, which is why changing the channel setting appears to do nothing.
If the entry names the allowance, open Plan and Usage.
Result When the daily allowance is spent, work is held rather than dropped, and the mail read cursor deliberately does not advance. Nothing is lost; it resumes.
If the entry names a suppression, open the recipient's compliance state.
Result The suppression is shown with its origin — an unsubscribe, a complaint, a bounce or a do-not-contact entry. They are not all equally clearable.
The four holds, in evaluation order#
| Hold | How it reads in the queue | Clears when |
|---|---|---|
ask_before_send | The draft is in Needs You waiting for a yes | A person approves it |
draft_only | The draft exists but nothing is queued for approval | Never automatically — the mode deliberately does not ask |
| Allowance spent | The item stays and the approval is recorded as pending | The allowance resets, or the plan changes |
| Recipient suppressed | Approving fails immediately | Only if the suppression is one that may be cleared at all |
The cases that look like a hold and are not#
- The reply was sent and the state says uncertain
- The provider has not acknowledged it. Nothing is held; the outcome is unknown, and it is shown as unknown rather than guessed either way, because re-sending on a maybe is how somebody receives the same reply twice.
- The channel is off
offdisables the channel entirely. No draft is written, so there is nothing to hold and nothing to approve.- Connect is off
- The runtime switch stops the loop. Mail still arrives and records still update; nothing is drafted.
- The thread is blocked
- A block is a memory row tagged against the contact, not an autonomy setting. It holds across channels and across future conversations, which is exactly what a per-channel autonomy check would not do.
After you find it#
Fix the layer that fired, not the nearest one. If a contact-scope rule held the reply, raising the channel to autonomous changes nothing for that contact and quietly loosens everything else. The Decision Log entry names the scope; change it there.
Then confirm rather than assume. Approve the held reply and watch the send record: a message is only reported as sent once the provider has acknowledged it, so the acknowledgement is the proof that the hold is genuinely gone and not simply moved.
Questions#
Nothing is in Needs You and nothing was sent. Where did the reply go?
Most likely the channel is on draft_only, which prepares a reply and stops without asking anybody. The draft is on the conversation. The second possibility is that the channel is off, in which case no draft was written at all.
Can two holds apply at once?
Yes, and the order is what you see. A reply held for approval that is also over the daily allowance shows as awaiting approval; approving it then leaves it waiting for the allowance rather than sending. Both entries are in the log.
Does the customer know their reply was held?
No. A held draft has not been handed to any provider, so there is no message in flight and nothing in the sent folder. From the customer's side it is not a slow reply, it is no reply.