My Connections

My Connections is the page for everything you plug into Intelligence in your own name: your Gmail and Google Sheets, plus your social accounts. What you connect there is yours alone. Nobody else in your organization can use it or see it, administrators included.

To open it, click your picture in the top right corner and choose My Connections. The Your connections card in Settings links there too. Everyone can open the page; the social accounts part appears only when the Social capability is on for your organization and for you.

Personal, not shared

Intelligence has two kinds of connections, and this page only holds the personal kind. You connect each one and only you use it. Remove it and whatever it allowed goes with it.

Your organization’s shared connections, the company systems an administrator plugs in for the whole team, are a different thing. An administrator sets them up and decides who reads each one. See organization connections.

Social accounts exist only at the personal level. A post goes out on the account of the person who connected it.

Your mailbox and your spreadsheets

Connect your Gmail and your Google Sheets so your Ask Intelligence and the agents you set up can read them. Ask can look something up in your mail or a spreadsheet, and write an email that waits in your Drafts folder until you send it.

Connect Gmail or Google Sheets

1. On the card, click Connect Gmail or Connect Google Sheets.
2. Google’s sign-in page opens. Sign in with the Google account you want and allow access.
3. Google sends you back to My Connections, which confirms the connection.

If the button is grayed out, Google connections aren’t open yet, and the card tells you so. The BearingBridge team can help.

What each connection may do

A connected card shows the Google account, a status (Connected or Paused) and a list of switches in two groups.

What it may read lists the reading tools. For Gmail: search the mailbox, read a message, list labels and list drafts. For Google Sheets: find a spreadsheet and read its tabs and figures. Google Sheets is read-only.

What it may do in your name lists the writing tools. For Gmail: write a draft, and send a draft. Writing a draft is on by default. It leaves the email in your Drafts folder and sends nothing.

Sending starts off. Only you can switch it on, and the page asks you to confirm.

Important: Once sending is on, Ask and the agents you gave this mailbox may send email from your address to real people without asking you first. Drafts alone are the safer setting.

Want Ask to leave your mail alone for a while? Untick Available to my Ask Intelligence. The connection stays, paused.

Note: Your administrators can’t read your mailbox through Intelligence. Only your own Ask and your own agents use this connection.

What was written in your mailbox

Under the cards, Written in your mailbox lists every draft and every sent email Ask or an agent wrote for you. Each line shows Draft or Sent, the subject, the recipients, what wrote it and when.

Change or remove a Google connection

Change account starts the Google sign-in again so you can pick another account. Disconnect removes the connection after a confirmation: Ask loses access, and the permission is also withdrawn from your Google account.

Your social accounts

That covers Google. The second half of the page is for publishing. Connect your social accounts so the posts you write in the Social capability go out in your name.

You can connect LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X.

Connecting publishes nothing. You sign in on the network itself, so we never see your password. Once connected, your accounts appear in the scheduling form of every post, marked as yours. Not even an administrator can publish on them.

Connect an account

Every network gets its own card with numbered steps in plain words. In short:

1. On the network’s card, click Connect an account.
2. The network opens in the same tab. Sign in and allow posting.
3. You come back to My Connections. The page says how many accounts came back, and lists them below.

To add a second account on the same network, click Connect another account on its card.

The networks don’t all work the same way:

Sometimes a network says yes but hands back no account. The page tells you when that happens. Check that the account is of a kind the network allows posting from, then try again.

Note: A network card that reads “Not available yet. Ask us to open this network for your organization.” can’t be connected yet. Contact the BearingBridge team.

Your connected accounts

Each connected account has a row with its name, the network and handle, and its type (Profile, Page or Account). The row shows Yours alone and the date of the last post.

Four buttons act on it:

• Rename changes the name shown in Intelligence, handy when two accounts look alike.
• Switch off stops the account. Nothing new can be scheduled on it, and anything already queued will not go out. Switch on brings it back.
• Connect again runs the network’s sign-in again to renew the connection.
• Remove deletes the connection. Nothing can be published on it afterwards, including posts already scheduled on it. Posts it already sent stay on the network.

How long a connection lasts

Only LinkedIn needs you on a schedule. Its connection lasts 60 days, and one click on Connect again renews it.

The others take care of themselves. Instagram and TikTok are renewed for you every day; an Instagram connection only dies if the account stays disconnected for 60 days. Facebook and X keep themselves alive, though a Facebook page stops publishing if you lose your role on it, and you’re emailed when that happens.

Each row also carries a status line:

You won’t have to watch the counter. About a week before a connection runs out, and again if it expires, we email you a Connect it again button. See emails and notifications.

Troubleshooting

Most connection problems come from the network’s own rules rather than from Intelligence. These are the usual ones.

What it costs

Connecting an account is free. Publishing on X costs credits, and the publishing step shows the price before you send anything. See what costs credits. When Ask or one of your agents reads your mail or a spreadsheet, that reading is part of the answer or the run, and its cost is counted there.