When gas loses access to one of the networks, the connection is paused. gas stops downloading new data, but it does not delete anything right away and waits for you to restore access. This article describes how to recognise a paused connection, why it happens, how to restore it step by step, and what happens to the data from the days when access was not working.
In gas, connecting has two levels. First you link the service, meaning you log in to your account on Meta, Google, Pinterest or TikTok (for Sklik you paste a token), and that gives gas access to the accounts you manage on that platform. Only then do you connect specific pages, profiles, channels and ad accounts to the customer account. Pausing concerns the first level: the login to the service stopped being valid, and that is why data stopped arriving from all profiles that hang from it. The difference between the two levels is described in detail in the article How linking works.
How a paused connection shows up
An alert arrives. The owner of the link, that is the user account that once logged in to the network, gets an alert with the heading "Connection to Meta paused" (or Google, Pinterest, TikTok or Sklik, depending on the network). You will find it under the bell in the top bar and in the Notifications overview. The text contains the date by which access needs to be restored, plus an Open integration settings button. Whether the alert also arrives by e-mail is controlled by the Integration issues switch in Settings → User profile → Notifications.
A warning triangle lights up on the connected services dashboard. In Settings → Connected services, the card of the affected network gets an orange triangle with the label "One account requires attention".
A yellow Paused badge appears next to the account. When you open the network card, you will see the badge in the list right next to the account name. Clicking it opens a small window headed "Connection paused", with an explanation, the date and time of the pause, and a Reconnect button.
The same badge also appears next to individual profiles under that connection. In the column with the name of the page, profile, channel or ad account you will see the same Paused badge and the same Reconnect button. This lets you see exactly which profiles the outage affects.
New data stops arriving. The regular download, which otherwise runs several times a day, skips a paused connection. That is why the series in graphs and tables ends on the day when access stopped working. Older data stays and keeps being displayed.
The report skips the profile. If a scheduled report is generated while the connection is paused, the section with the affected profile does not make it into the report. Instead, the diagnostics page of the report shows a Skipped profiles block with the profile name, the network and the reason "Disconnected login". On top of that, administrators of the customer account and the owner of the link receive an alert "Report … skipped a disconnected profile".
Why it happens
A pause is almost never caused by an error in gas. Access is withdrawn by the platform, most often for these reasons:
- You changed your password on that network. Meta and other platforms invalidate all previously granted logins when the password changes, including ours.
- You removed the gas app in your account settings on the network, or you removed some of its permissions.
- The login expired. A login to Meta is valid for roughly two months and then needs to be renewed. Google invalidates a login among other things when it has not been used for six months.
- The network requested a security verification. When a platform temporarily locks an account and wants an identity confirmation, it stops releasing data until the verification is done.
- The account on the network was blocked or cancelled.
- The colleague who created the link lost their permissions. Typically they left the company and an administrator removed their access to the page, ad account or measurement property. This case is covered in a separate chapter below, because it is handled differently from the others.
- For Sklik, the token stopped working, the one for API access that you pasted into gas.
Before you start
A connection can only be restored by the user account that owns the link. In Settings → Connected services, everyone sees only their own links, so you will not find someone else's paused connection there and you cannot fix it from there.
Before you start restoring, check three things:
- You are logging in to the correct account on the network. It has to be the same account through which the connection was created, and it has to have access on the platform to the affected page, profile, channel or ad account.
- You know the owner of the link. An administrator of the customer account will find them in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts in the Who links the account column. The e-mail address is there and you can click it and write straight away.
- You have a sufficient role. Restoring the login to the service itself can be done by any role, because connected services belong to the user account, not to the customer account. Connecting a profile to a customer account (which is needed when you are taking a profile over from someone else) is allowed for the Administrator and User roles. The Viewer role must not do it and gas will refuse the action.
The procedure
- Go to Settings → Connected services and open the card of the network with the warning triangle.
- Find the account with the yellow Paused badge in the list and click the badge.
- In the window that opens, click Reconnect.
- gas redirects you to the login screen of that network. Log in with the same account that was used to create the connection.
- In the network's dialog, leave all offered permissions switched on and confirm. If you switch some of them off, gas will lose access to that part of the data again.
- After returning to gas, check that the Paused badge next to the account is gone.
A few networks differ slightly in this procedure:
- Google. After you click Reconnect, a window with a selection of services opens first (Google Ads, Google Analytics, YouTube). The ones the account uses so far are pre-selected. Leave all of them ticked and only then continue with the Connect account button. Google then offers a login to the same account the connection was created from.
- Meta. A single login covers Facebook, Instagram and Meta Ads at once, so reconnecting fixes all three.
- Sklik. There is no Reconnect button here, because Sklik does not use a login dialog but a token. In the Sklik administration, check that the token for API access is still valid, and generate a new one if needed. If data still does not start arriving after that, please write to support.
What happens next
- The Paused badge disappears from the account list and from individual profiles, and the warning triangle disappears from the network card.
- The pause alert closes by itself, so you do not have to dismiss it in Notifications. For Google and Pinterest you also get a confirmation "Connection to … restored" with the information that the data has been preserved.
- Data starts downloading. Right after the connection is restored, gas requests a catch-up download, so you do not have to wait for the next regular run. It can take anything from a few minutes to a few hours before the numbers appear in the graphs, depending on the network and the volume of data.
- Profiles that were left without a working login in the meantime are relinked automatically. When the new login can see a profile and its old login no longer works, gas automatically moves it under the new one and sends you an alert "… automatically relinked" with the list of profiles.
- The report is completed. A report that skipped a profile because of the pause will be regenerated in full by itself after the connection is restored, and recipients get an alert "Report … has been completed and regenerated". This applies for roughly a month from the original delivery; later the report does not regenerate itself and needs to be run manually.
When a profile was connected by a colleague who has left the company
This is the most frequent cause of data that stopped arriving "for no reason". The profile was once connected by someone who no longer works at the company. As soon as their permissions on the platform are removed or their account is cancelled, the link stops working, even though you still see the profile in gas.
How to recognise it:
- The data for the profile ends on a certain day and does not continue, even though the profile is still running on the network.
- You do not see any paused connection in Settings → Connected services, because the link does not belong to you.
- An administrator of the customer account sees the former colleague's e-mail address in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts in the Who links the account column. When Nobody is there instead of an e-mail address and the row is highlighted in red, the link no longer exists at all and the profile needs to be connected again.
- Instead of the Paused badge, the profile may show a Missing permission badge with the label "No data since …". That means the colleague's login as such still works, only the platform no longer gives it access to this particular profile.
Waiting will not solve the situation. The connection is tied to the former colleague's user account, the alerts go to them and nobody else can restore it. On top of that, gas removes the data of a long-term paused connection once the deadline passes, so postponing the fix costs you history.
The solution: an active colleague connects the profile again and chooses to take ownership while connecting it. Do not create a new profile for this and do not delete the old one, you would lose both the history and the settings.
- Log in to gas as the person who has access on the platform to the affected page, profile, channel or ad account, and who has the Administrator or User role in the customer account.
- Go to Settings → Connected services and open the card of the relevant network.
- Link your own account for that network using the Connect account button (Add TikTok profile for TikTok, Add Sklik account for Sklik). Log in and leave all permissions switched on in the network's dialog.
- Open the detail of the newly linked account and start adding a profile (for example Add new page for Facebook or Add new channel for YouTube).
- Select the profile in question from the list and confirm.
- gas recognises that someone has already linked the profile and shows a window with a message along the lines of "Page … was linked by user …. You can take ownership of it and thereby change its settings and availability for customer accounts."
- Click Take ownership. The profile moves under your link, the history and settings are preserved, and data starts arriving again.
Often you do not need to take ownership of profiles one by one. When you link your network account in step three, gas takes over all profiles that your new login can see and whose existing login no longer works. You will learn about it from the alert "… automatically relinked". You only have to manually take ownership of the profiles whose original login still works.
It is a good idea to agree on linking with an administrator of the customer account. In Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts they can see what is connected, who connected it and what state it is in, so they can tell you whether a new link is needed at all.
What happens to the days when access was not working
After the connection is restored, gas tries to close the gap, but only what the platform itself releases retroactively can be filled in. The limits are these:
- Daily statistics are usually filled in. For Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, YouTube, Pinterest and Sklik, gas reaches back after the connection is restored and calculates the missing days.
- The window offered by the platform decides. Meta returns daily overviews for roughly 93 days back; for advertising data the history reaches further. Anything beyond that window cannot be filled in, even if gas asks for the data.
- Figures such as "number of followers on a given day" cannot be filled in retroactively. The platform does not remember them and only returns the current value, so a gap for the outage period stays in such a graph permanently.
- For TikTok, history is not downloaded retroactively at all. Profile metrics are snapshots taken at the time of measurement and TikTok does not provide them retroactively. The missing days therefore stay empty.
- Filling in is not instant. It runs in the background and can take several hours for larger accounts. Some networks only catch up on longer history during the regular catch-up run, which happens on a scale of days to weeks.
By when access has to be restored
A paused connection has a 14-day deadline. You will find the exact date in the alert and in the window next to the Paused badge, always in the form "If you do not restore the connection by …, we will remove the related data."
Seven days before the deadline ends, a reminder arrives with the number of remaining days. Once the deadline passes, gas removes the link and the related data, that is the profiles, their history and their connection to customer accounts. Restoring the connection at any point during the deadline cancels the countdown and the data is preserved.
Common problems
A yellow Paused badge is showing next to the account
The login to the network stopped being valid or was revoked. Click the badge and then Reconnect, log in with the same network account and leave all permissions switched on in the dialog.
Data stopped arriving, but there is no badge anywhere
Most often because the link belongs to someone else and only its owner sees the paused connection. Ask an administrator of the customer account to look in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts to see who links the account, and then follow the chapter about the colleague who has left the company.
I do not see any paused connection in Connected services, but there is data in gas
That is a normal state, not an error. A service link belongs to the user account of the person who logged in, whereas a connected profile belongs to the customer account. So the profile was connected by someone else on the team and you do not see their link in your own settings.
The profile shows Missing permission instead of Paused
The login to the network still works, but the platform no longer gives it access to this particular profile, typically because someone changed the roles for the page or the ad account. Click the badge and then Reconnect, and allow the profile again in the network's dialog. If permissions are managed by a colleague or a client, they have to give the role back on the platform side.
I restored the connection, but there is still no data
Filling in runs in the background and takes some time. First check that the Paused badge really did disappear, because an interrupted login (a closed window, a permission switched off) does not restore the connection. If the badge is not showing and there is still no data after several hours, write to support.
There is still a gap in the graph after the connection was restored
The platform does not release some numbers retroactively. Daily statistics are usually filled in, but values such as the number of followers on a given day are not remembered by the platform, and for TikTok history is not filled in at all. That is why the gap in such a graph stays.
A report arrived without one profile
The profile had a paused connection at the time of generation, so gas skipped it and noted this on the diagnostics page of the report in the Skipped profiles block. Restore the connection. The report will then regenerate itself in full within roughly a month from the original delivery and you will get an alert about it.
An alert arrived saying that we will remove the data
The connection is paused and the end of the 14-day deadline is approaching. Restore access using the procedure above and the countdown is cancelled. If the link belonged to a colleague who has left the company, take the profile over by taking ownership of it; waiting will not help here.
The connection was not restored after I logged in to the network
Usually because the login was completed under a different network account than the one the connection belongs to, or because some permission was left switched off in the dialog. Run Reconnect again, check on the network's screen which account you are logged in under, and leave everything switched on.
One of the services is missing for Google after the connection was restored
After a login, Google only remembers the services you ticked in the window. If you unticked Google Analytics, for example, gas loses access to it. Run the Google account link again and tick all the services you use on that account, or use the Select all button.
The connection keeps getting paused
Check whether the account on the network has a security check that needs to be confirmed, whether someone is deleting granted permissions in the app settings on that network, and whether the password is being changed. If the problem returns even after you have checked these three things, please write to support and include the name of the customer account, the network and the approximate date when the connection was paused.
A colleague took ownership of the profile and I no longer see it in my Connected services
Taking ownership moved the profile under the colleague's link, which is the intended behaviour. Neither the data nor the settings are lost and the profile stays connected to the same customer accounts. You will no longer see it in your settings, because the link belongs to them.
There is no Reconnect button for Sklik
Sklik does not use a login dialog but a token, so access is restored on the Seznam side. The window next to the badge shows when the connection was paused. In the Sklik administration, check that the token for API access is still valid, and if not, generate a new one. If data still does not start arriving after that, write to support.
The Who links the account column says Nobody
That means the profile has no live link, which is why the row is highlighted as an error. Taking ownership will not help here, the profile needs to be connected again: link your account for that network and add the profile in the link detail.
I need to restore the connection, but I am not an Administrator
You can do the login to the service itself in any role, because connected services belong to your user account. However, the Viewer role must not connect a profile to a customer account; for that you need the User or Administrator role. Ask an administrator of the customer account to change your role.