The Sidepanel is empty or an approval is missing

This article is for when the Sidepanel opens and signs in normally, but does not show what you expect: an approval you were told to review is not there, the analysis stays empty, or the Actions tab says there is nothing for this conversation.

If the panel does not load, stays blank, or keeps asking you to sign in, that is a different problem. See Troubleshoot the Sidepanel instead.

The Sidepanel behaves the same way here whether you use it as an Outlook app or as a browser extension, so the checks below apply to both.

Start with what the panel is telling you

The panel shows a different message for each situation, and the message narrows down the cause considerably.

"Nothing here" does not mean one thing

It is worth knowing that Nothing here is the least specific message in the panel. It means the panel asked Tekst for this conversation's actions and got nothing back, which covers three very different situations:

• No automation produced anything for this conversation.
• The automation ran, but you do not have access to this inbox in Tekst.
• You are signed into a different Tekst organization than the automation ran in.

The panel does not tell these apart, and an access problem in particular looks exactly like "no automation ran". That is why it is worth working through the checks below in order rather than assuming the automation is at fault.

Check 1: Are you looking at the conversation the automation ran on?

The Sidepanel always shows data for the item you currently have open, so the first thing to rule out is that you are looking at a different conversation than the one Tekst processed.

• Open the item itself, not a list. A folder view, a Salesforce list view, or an inbox with no message selected gives the panel nothing to work with.
• A changed subject line starts a new conversation. If someone edited the subject when replying, Tekst treats that reply as a separate conversation, and the approval stays on the original one. See Why does changing the email subject in Outlook create a new thread?
• A forwarded copy is not the original. If a colleague forwarded the email to you, you are looking at a new message in your own mailbox. The automation ran on the original, in the mailbox it arrived in.
• The panel follows the page. If you navigated from one item to another and the panel still shows the previous one, close and reopen it.

Check 2: Are you in the right environment?

This is the most common cause when a colleague can see the approval and you cannot, or when everything worked in testing and stopped working afterwards.

The Sidepanel identifies the page you are on by a single address and matches it to a connected Tekst integration:

Anything that changes that address points the panel at a different integration, or at no integration at all:

• A Salesforce sandbox is not your production instance. A sandbox has its own subdomain, so it counts as a different integration. The extension activates on sandbox addresses, so the panel does open and only then reports that it cannot find a match.
• An SAP test tenant is not your production tenant. Same reasoning.
• The mailbox matters, not the account. If you are reading a message in your own mailbox while the automation runs on a shared mailbox, the panel uses your mailbox.

When the panel reports Integration not found, read the message closely: it names the exact address it used. That one string usually settles the question on its own.

When you belong to more than one Tekst organization

If the address is not connected in the organization you are signed into, but it is connected in another organization you are a member of, the panel switches to that organization by itself. A short reload when you open an item is normal and is not a fault.

If you are not a member of the other organization, the panel stops at Integration not found and cannot switch. Ask your Tekst administrator to give you access to the organization the automation runs in.

When a test organization and production both exist

If your company runs a separate test organization in Tekst and the same mailbox is connected in both, the panel uses whichever organization you are signed into and gives no warning. You get a perfectly healthy looking panel with no approvals in it, because the approval was created in the other organization.

The panel does not display which organization it is signed into. To confirm which one you are using, log out with the button in the bottom-right corner and sign in again, paying attention to the subdomain you enter, or ask your Tekst administrator to confirm which organization your account is in.

Check 3: Do you have access to that inbox in Tekst?

Access to an integration can be restricted to specific users or user groups in Tekst. If you are not on that list, the panel loads normally, shows the conversation, and then simply has nothing to display. There is no message telling you that access is the reason.

Two things point at this cause:

• It works for one mailbox and not another. Restrictions are set per integration, so you can review approvals in one shared mailbox and get an empty panel in the next. That asymmetry is usually the first clue.
• A colleague sees the approval on the same conversation. If someone else can open exactly what you cannot, the difference is on your account, not in the automation.

To confirm it, open the same conversation in the Tekst web platform. If you cannot find that inbox there either, this is an access question rather than an automation question. If your account only signs in to the Tekst apps and not the web platform, you cannot run that test, so ask your administrator directly.

An administrator can check this on the Access tab of the integration. Leaving the user and group lists empty means the whole organization has access. See Restrict access to models and integrations.

Check 4: Is the panel still loading?

No actions yet, with The automation is still running underneath it, is what the panel shows while it is still fetching this conversation's actions. It appears for a moment after you open an item and clears by itself.

Read it as a loading state rather than a report on the automation. The panel has no separate signal for a run that is in progress, so this message cannot tell you how far an automation has got, and waiting it out is not a diagnosis. What happens next is what matters:

• It clears and the content appears. Nothing was wrong. An approval created while you already have the conversation open also arrives on its own, because the panel holds a live connection and does not need a reload.
• It clears to Nothing here. The panel asked and got nothing back. Work through checks 1, 2 and 3, then check 5.
• It never clears. The panel cannot reach Tekst at all. See The Sidepanel does not load on your network.

Check 5: Did the automation step fail, or never run?

Two messages in the panel point straight at the automation:

• Could not load actions. Use the Try again button. If it keeps failing, the automation needs an administrator's attention.
• This message can not be reviewed. The automation is off, has been removed, or is blocked by your organization's rules. The approval can no longer be decided, so if the conversation still needs handling, contact whoever owns the automation.

An automation can also simply never have run for this conversation. Common reasons, all of which an administrator can check:

• The automation is not published, or was published after this message arrived.
• A filter block excluded this conversation.
• Tekst is restricted to specific mailboxes and this one is not in scope. See Restrict Tekst to specific mailboxes.
• The integration is not healthy, so messages are not coming in. See Understanding integration statuses on Tekst and Troubleshoot integrations.

For administrators: check the automation

Open the automation and switch from Builder to Monitor. Monitor shows how each block has been performing, so a step that is failing for every run stands out immediately. Look at the block that pushes content to the Sidepanel, whether that is an Approval Form or a step that pushes text or a file.

For how the Approval Form step is set up, see Add an Approval Form to an automation.

The approval is there but cannot be decided

• The card already shows a decision. A colleague decided it first. The panel picks that up live, so the card switches to its processed state on its own, naming who decided it and when. Edits you had made but not yet approved are dropped, because the recorded decision is theirs.
• Expired after 30 days. The review window closed before anyone acted and the automation moved on. The window is set per automation, so the number in the message may differ.
• Approve is dimmed. A required field is empty or invalid rather than anything being broken. See Use the Approval Form in the Sidepanel.

Still not showing?

Contact support@tekst.com and include:

• The conversation ID. Open the menu in the bottom-left corner of the panel and select Copy conversation ID.
• Your Tekst subdomain, the one in <yourcompany>.tekst.com.
• The mailbox address, Salesforce instance, or SAP tenant you are working in.
• Exactly which message the panel shows, in its own words.
• Whether a colleague can see the same conversation.

That combination lets us tell an access question apart from an automation question without a round of questions first.