Connections overview
A connection is a tool you already run that Scout is allowed to read — a mailbox, your accounting file, your suppliers' systems. Connections is the page that lists every one of them, tells you whether Scout can still read it, and is the only place a connection is added or removed.
Screenshot: Connections, grouped by category.
How to get there
- Click your avatar in the top right.
- Choose Connections.
Everyone in the workspace can look at Connections. Only an Owner or an Admin can connect, pause, reconnect or disconnect a source. A Member can connect and manage their own personal mailbox. A Viewer can look and nothing more.
What you are looking at
The line under the title says it plainly: Scout reads these sources — it never owns the records. Your tools stay authoritative; Scout keeps the picture current and shows when it last looked.
Top right, a counter shows how many of the catalogue's sources you have connected. Under it are three views:
- By category — the default. Cards are grouped under Communication, Promotional Products, Accounting, CRM, Customer Support, Storage and Productivity, with a count of sources in each group.
- All A–Z — the same cards in one alphabetical list, each labelled with its category.
- Coming Soon — sources Scout has catalogued but not opened yet. Every card here reads Coming soon and has no button.
The five states a card can show
| State | What it means | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| CONNECTED | Scout read this source successfully and recently. | Disconnect; open the card for detail |
| NEEDS ATTENTION | Something is degraded but not dead — one person's authorization expired, or the feed has gone stale. The card says which. | Run now, Manage access, Disconnect |
| SYNC FAILED | Scout cannot read it at all. The card names the reason and the date, for example that an authorization was rejected and Scout is working from data two days old. | Reconnect, Disconnect |
| NOT CONNECTED | Scout can read this source, but nobody has connected it yet. | Connect |
| NOT CONNECTED with a padlock | Catalogued, not open yet. The card reads Not supported yet or Coming soon. | Nothing — there is no button |
Today the sources you can actually connect are Gmail, Microsoft 365 and Outlook, QuickBooks Online, Slack for notifications and actions, and your suppliers over PromoStandards. Everything else on the page is catalogued for later.
Who a connection belongs to
Every card says how the source is owned, because that decides who its work routes to:
- Per-person connection — each person authorizes their own mailbox. Gmail and Microsoft 365 work this way. The card shows how many people have connected, for example "4 people · 2 connected", and Manage access lists them.
- Org connection — one authorization covers the whole workspace. QuickBooks Online and PromoStandards work this way.
- Per-supplier access or per-file connection — the connection is one installation, but what it reads is added item by item: a supplier at a time, or a file at a time.
Inside a connection, each thing Scout reads is a source and is labelled PERSONAL MAILBOX, SHARED MAILBOX or COMPANY SOURCE. Team-owned versus personal sources explains what changes with each.
Health and freshness
Under each connected card is a freshness line — "Synced 8 min ago", "Synced 6:00 AM · 1,840 products", "Last good sync Jul 29, 6:14 PM". Health is worst-of: if one person's mailbox authorization has expired, the whole Google card shows NEEDS ATTENTION even though everyone else is fine.
Health is workspace administration, not customer work, so a connection problem does not land in anyone's Inbox as client work. Owners and Admins get a notice — Scout's housekeeping item — and the bell in the header links straight to the card that needs help. The connection detail page has the run history behind it.
Good to know
- A brand-new workspace shows honest zeros. An empty Connections page means nobody has connected anything yet, not that something is broken.
- Scout reads and never writes. Connecting a source does not let Scout edit a record, send a message, or place or change a purchase order.
- Your plan includes an allowance of connected mailboxes, connections and supplier feeds. Your plan's allowance shows on the Plan page in Settings.
- A padlocked card is not a promise with a date on it. If a source is not available today, the card says so and stops there.