A connection shows Warning or Error
A connection card carries a state and a sentence explaining it — for example "Authorization was rejected" with the date, or "No successful run in 9 days." Read the sentence first; it usually names the cause.
What the states mean
- Connected — Scout is reading it, and the card says when it last did.
- Warning — Scout can still see the source but something is not right: it has not read successfully for a while, or the data has gone stale. A brand-new connection also sits here briefly until its first health check completes, which is normal.
- Error — Scout cannot read at all. Almost always an authorization problem.
- Off — paused deliberately, or never connected.
- Locked — not available to connect in your workspace.
What to do
- Open Connections and select the card. You must be an Owner or Admin to act on it.
- Choose Reconnect. This is the fix for the most common cause by a wide margin: the grant expired, or someone changed their password and the provider invalidated it. Scout re-enters the provider's consent screen aimed at the same account, so you cannot accidentally connect the wrong mailbox.
- If reconnecting fails, check at the provider. Access may have been revoked there, the account may have been disabled, or your Microsoft or Google administrator may have withdrawn approval for the application.
- If the state is a warning about freshness and nothing is wrong with the grant, give it a sync cycle. Scout reads on a schedule, not continuously, and different sources have different cadences.
Why it matters even when nothing looks broken
A source Scout cannot read is a hole in the picture, and Scout will not paper over it: your morning brief reports a lower coverage figure, marks itself partial, and withholds recommendations that depended on the missing source. That is why the header shows Attention needed and the alerts bell carries it.
See The connection detail page for the run history behind a state.