How the platform keeps connections working, and what to do when one breaks.
Overview
A connection has exactly two statuses. It's Active when it's authenticated and usable — automations and apps can run through it. It's Inactive when it can't be used: either someone disconnected it deliberately, or the platform disabled it after its credentials stopped working (repeated failed health checks, or a token refresh that kept failing). An Inactive connection won't work for anything that depends on it until you re-authenticate it. The status reflects current health, not just whether it was set up once, because the platform keeps checking connections in the background.
Where: Connection status (Active / Inactive)
Screenshot TODO — Connection health, status, and reconnecting
How token refresh works for OAuth connections
For apps that issue expiring access tokens (OAuth), the platform refreshes the token automatically — using the refresh token the app issued — both on a background schedule and on demand when the connection is about to be used with an expired token. Your automations keep working without you re-authenticating. If a refresh attempt fails (for example, access was revoked or the refresh token itself expired), the platform retries quickly a few times with growing waits; after five failed attempts it marks the connection Inactive. So routine token expiry is handled for you — only a genuinely broken authorization needs your action, and that shows up as the connection going Inactive.
Where: Connection (automatic token refresh)
Monitoring connection health across all my connections
Beyond a single connection's status, the Connections area has an Insights tab — a dashboard summarizing your connections' health and usage, so you can catch problems proactively (a wave of failures after an app changed its auth) rather than discovering a broken connection only when an automation errors. Viewing it requires the view insights permission for connections. For one connection, check its status in the list and use Test Connection on it; for the whole picture, use Insights. The Status column on the connections list is also sortable, so you can surface Inactive connections at a glance.
Where: Connections › Insights
FAQs
How does the platform check that my connection still works?
For connections whose credentials don't expire on their own (API keys, passwords, and similar), the platform runs a periodic health check: a lightweight test call to the app to confirm the credentials still work. While checks pass, the connection stays Active and is re-checked on a regular cadence (about every five minutes by default). When a check fails, the platform retries with growing waits — roughly 5 minutes after the first failure, then 15, then 45, and so on — and after five consecutive failures (by default) it marks the connection Inactive so you know it needs attention. This is why a connection that authenticated fine last week can flip to Inactive today: the key was revoked or the app became unreachable, and the health checks caught it. (Connections with expiring tokens — OAuth — are kept alive by automatic token refresh instead; see below. A few connectors don't support a test call at all and are skipped.)
Where: Background health checks (automatic)
Why did my connection fail, and how do I see the reason?
Common causes: an expired or revoked token, a changed password or rotated API key, insufficient permissions/scopes, or the app being unreachable (network/firewall). The clearest way to see the specific error is to test or re-authenticate the connection: open it (Edit) and use Test Connection (available for key/password-style auth) or re-run the authorize flow — any failure appears as an error banner on the form, usually naming the cause directly (an authentication error vs. a network error). Fix that specific thing, then authorize again. The connection's Activity tab also shows when it was disabled, which helps correlate a failure with a change.
When a connection is Inactive, open it (Edit) — its credential fields are unlocked, so you can:
API key / Basic auth: enter the new key or password, then click Authorize. The platform tests the credentials first and only saves them if the test passes.
OAuth: click Authorize / Re-authorize to re-run the app's login-and-consent flow.
On success the connection returns to Active, and everything that depends on it works again. If the connection is still marked Active but you know its credentials are bad (its fields are locked while Active), use Disconnect on the connection first — that clears the authentication and flips it to Inactive so you can re-enter credentials. Reconnect promptly: automations that depend on an Inactive connection fail until it's healthy.
