When a mailbox disconnects

Mailbox connections can break: a password change, a revoked approval, or an expired sign-in. InboxAgent makes a broken connection loud, and fixing it is one click.

How you’ll know

Four signals fire, so it can’t break silently:

1. On the mailbox row (Settings → Integrations): a red “Connection lost.” notice with the reason and when it happened — e.g. “Microsoft sign-in expired or was revoked — reconnect required.”
2. The bell in the top bar shows a connection alert (“Mailbox disconnected: …”) for everyone in the workspace.
3. The Dashboard shows ”⚠ disconnected — reconnect” on the Inboxes Monitored card.
4. An email alert goes to your alert recipients — the “a mailbox loses connection” toggle, on by default. See Alerts.

Brief network blips don’t set off the alarm — those clear themselves on the next successful check. The signals above mean the connection genuinely needs a person.

How to fix it

1. Go to Settings → Integrations (admins only — the alert says so if you’re not one).
2. Click Connect on the affected mailbox and sign in again — the same rules apply as the first time (personal: that exact address; shared: a delegate account — see Personal vs shared mailboxes).
3. Click Test to confirm, and check the bell alert clears.

What happens to mail while it’s broken

InboxAgent can’t read the mailbox while disconnected, so nothing is processed from it. Once reconnected, it resumes checking for new mail; mail that arrived during a short outage is generally picked up on the next checks. After a long outage, spot-check Inbox activity for the gap period and handle anything critical by hand — and remember the one-time backfill only ever ran at first connect.

If reconnecting keeps failing

• Wrong-account errors: you’re signing in with the wrong identity for the mailbox’s Personal/Shared setting — the error text says exactly which account to use.
• “Was not given permission” errors: the sign-in completed but a required permission wasn’t granted, so InboxAgent refused to mark the mailbox Connected rather than show a green badge over a mailbox it can’t read. On Google, reconnect and tick every checkbox on the consent screen; on Microsoft, accept all requested permissions (an IT admin may need to approve InboxAgent first).
• Microsoft “Need admin approval”: your IT admin’s approval may have been removed — see the admin-approval section of Connect a Microsoft 365 mailbox.
• Gmail: if sign-in expired, click Connect and sign in again. See Connect a Gmail mailbox.
• Still stuck? Contact support with the mailbox address and the exact error text from the row.