Connect appears to be doing nothing

What the symptom looks like#

The screens open, the data that was there yesterday is still there, and nothing new appears. No replies go out, the activity list does not grow, and the queue does not move. There is usually no error anywhere, which is exactly what makes this hard: an error would tell you where to look.

The distinction worth drawing first is between *not deciding* and *not acting*. If Needs You has items in it, Connect has already read, thought and written — it is waiting for a person. If Needs You is empty and the activity list is flat, the work is not being started at all, and the causes below split cleanly along that line.

The seven causes, most common first#

What Connect completed#

• Mail already delivered to a connected mailbox has been fetched and stored, up to the point where anything stopped it.
• Every message that was ingested has been made canonical — thread, contact and message records exist, and the read position moved only over messages actually stored.
• Anything the engine had already decided is recorded, including refusals, with the reason and the rule that produced it.
• Drafts written before the hold are kept exactly as written; approvals already given are still recorded.

What Connect did not complete#

• No outbound message was handed to a provider. Nothing is half-sent, and nothing is in flight waiting to surprise you later.
• No conversation was marked as answered. A held reply is no reply, not a slow one, and the record does not pretend otherwise.
• Scheduled work skipped while a breaker was open was not started, so no partial run has to be cleaned up.
• Nothing was deleted, expired or written off while it waited.

What you can do now#

1. Open Needs You before anything else.

   Result Items there mean the engine is running and waiting for you — the cause is in the 1–3 range and the fix is a decision, not a repair.

2. Check whether Connect is switched on at all.

   Result An off runtime explains every symptom on this page at once, and is the single most common answer.

3. Look at the mailbox's last successful sync rather than its connection badge.

   Result A connection that says connected and has not succeeded for a day is the disconnection you are looking for.

4. Check the plan and usage screen for the day.

   Result An allowance at its limit explains work that stopped mid-afternoon and resumed the next morning without anybody touching it.

What an administrator can do#

• Change the autonomy mode for the channel, or narrow it to one contact rather than loosening everything.
• Reconnect a mailbox, which requires consent at the provider and cannot be repaired from inside Connect.
• Raise the plan or wait for the daily reset, depending on which of the two limits was reached.
• Confirm the workspace: an Owner session and a customer session take different paths through the application, and a report about one account is a question about both.

When to escalate#

Escalate when all seven have been ruled out — the runtime is on, autonomy permits acting, allowance remains, a mailbox synced successfully within the hour, no breaker is open, mail has demonstrably arrived, and you are in the workspace that owns it. That combination is genuinely unusual and is worth reporting with the times of two things: the last successful sync, and the last recorded decision.

Do not escalate on the strength of an empty screen alone. The same screen is produced by a working system with nothing to do, and the two are only separable by the evidence above.

Questions#

Related#

• Connect is preparing work but sending nothing
• Needs You
• The allowance is spent
• Mailbox health
• Turning Connect on and off
• You are in the wrong workspace