Gorilla Dash posts to Facebook, Instagram, Google and LinkedIn on your behalf. To do that it holds a permission, sometimes called an access token, that the platform gave it when someone in your team signed in and approved the connection. Gorilla Dash never stores your password. Each connection is set up for a tribe (one location, branch or business unit inside your organisation), and you can see its state on the tribe's Social Connections screen: open the tribe, and in its menu choose Social Connections under Tribe Admin. To change anything there you need permission to edit the tribe's social connections, and to remove a page link you need permission to delete them. Without those the screen shows the state but not the buttons, and a tribe admin has to make the fix.
A connection has two parts, and the screen shows them as two steps. Step 1 is the sign-in: the account that approved Gorilla Dash. Step 2 is the page: which Facebook Page, Instagram account, Google business profile or LinkedIn page this tribe posts to. Either part can stop working, and each is fixed in a different way.
The line under Step 1 describes your own sign-in, the one you are using to look at the screen, not the sign-in of whoever linked the pages. It reads Your Facebook account is connected when your sign-in works, and Your Facebook sign-in has expired when you signed in before but that sign-in has since stopped working, because it ran out or the permission was withdrawn. In both cases the button beside it is Reconnect. While your sign-in has expired, Choose page in Step 2 stays unavailable, because Gorilla Dash reads the list of pages with your sign-in. Choose Reconnect first.
What Gorilla Dash repairs for you
Gorilla Dash checks every connection overnight. Platforms sometimes ask it to slow down or are briefly unavailable, and that is not treated as a broken connection: a page is only marked Expired when the platform says it can no longer be reached.
When a page is marked Expired but the sign-in behind it still works, Gorilla Dash tries to repair it within a few minutes, and after that about once an hour, or once a day if the platform refused the last attempt outright. It asks the platform, using the same account that linked the page, whether that account can still see the page. If it can, the page is linked again and its status returns to Connected without anyone doing anything. The same check runs just before a post goes out, and a post that is published successfully also clears the Expired status.
When you still need to act
| What you see | What it means | Who fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Under the page in Step 2: Sign in to Facebook again to restore this page (Instagram pages also ask you to sign in to Facebook) | The sign-in behind the page has expired or been withdrawn, so no page on that account can be reached. | The person shown as Connected by under the page, by choosing Reconnect in Step 1 and approving the permissions again. |
| This page is no longer reachable, next to Fix page link in Step 2, for several hours | The sign-in works, but the account that linked the page can no longer manage it. | Someone who manages the page, by choosing Fix page link and selecting the page. |
A page that shows as unreachable for only a few minutes is usually repaired automatically, so there is no need to act straight away. If it is still flagged several hours later, Gorilla Dash has not been able to repair it.
Why a sign-in expires
- The person who connected the account changed their password on the platform, or signed out of all their sessions.
- Someone removed Gorilla Dash from the business's connected apps on the platform.
- The platform ended the permission on its own schedule. Facebook, for example, asks for permission again after a period without use, and Google can end a permission that has not been used for several months. The platforms do not publish exact timings.
Why a page becomes unreachable
- The person who linked the page lost their admin role on it, or left the business.
- The page was deleted, merged or unpublished on the platform.
- The Instagram account was unlinked from its Facebook Page.
Reconnecting a sign-in
- Open the tribe, and in its menu choose Social Connections under Tribe Admin.
- Find the platform marked Action needed.
- Check the Connected by line under the page in Step 2. Only that person's sign-in can bring the page back, so they are the one who carries on from here. If there is no Connected by line, or that person has left, see the note below.
- In Step 1, choose Reconnect. The platform opens its own sign-in screen.
- Sign in with the account that manages the business on that platform, and approve every permission Gorilla Dash asks for. Leaving one out means the connection fails again.
- Back in Gorilla Dash, check that each page in Step 2 shows Connected. If one still shows as unreachable, follow the next section.
Choosing a page again
- Open the tribe, and in its menu choose Social Connections under Tribe Admin.
- Make sure no page in Step 2 says Sign in to Facebook again to restore this page or the same message for another platform. If one does, the sign-in has to be reconnected first, as described in the previous section.
- In Step 2, choose Fix page link next to the page.
- Select the page for this tribe from the list, and wait for the status to change to Connected.
If the page is not in the list, the account you signed in with does not manage it. Ask an admin of the page to give that account a role on it, or to sign in to Gorilla Dash and choose the page themselves.
Keeping connections healthy
- Have someone who will stay with the business connect the account, rather than a contractor or a person about to move on.
- Avoid removing Gorilla Dash from the platform's connected apps while tribes are still posting through it.
- Glance at the Social Connections screen when you schedule a batch of posts, and deal with anything marked Action needed before the posts are due.