General information

If Linked Helper campaign is sleeping, then that's due to a certain reason. The general rule goes “A campaign goes to sleep when there is nothing to execute at the moment according to the settings”.

To find the time when the campaign is due to resume:

check the timer in the upper left corner:
if you have Multi-campaigns runner plug-in installed, then to see a countdown you need to hover the mouse over the sleeping campaign:

To quickly find the root of the sleeping state, you need to:

click the sleeping status icon next to the campaign name and Linked Helper will show you a popup where all possible reasons are shown and marked correspondingly:
with Multi-campaigns runner plug-in installed, hover the mouse over the sleeping campaign and click the 'Click to see why is campaign sleeping' link in the tool-tip:
Linked Helper will show you a popup where all possible reasons are shown and marked correspondingly:

Case study

Let's review my inviting campaign as an example. It consists of six actions:

Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts
Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only)
Message to 1st connections (1st follow-up to those who accepted my invite)
Check for replies (moves profile to the next action if there is no reply within 3 days since the 1st follow-up message was sent)
Message to 1st connections (2nd follow-up to those who didn't reply to my 1st follow-up message)
Check for replies

As you can see in the screenshot above, my campaign hasn't used all actions from the total amount available per 24 hours, two actions in the Workflow have profiles to process, and the campaign is not limited by the Advanced limits.

The two actions which Queues are not empty were postponed as they already completed the previous job and will run later. Both actions move profiles further only in certain cases: if invitation was accepted (Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only)) or there was no reply to the previously sent message within specified period of time (Check for replies). Nobody accepted my invite and 3 days since previous follow-up haven't passed for any messaged profile, hence actions were postponed after being executed and no profile was moved to the next step.

Most likely you caught yourself with a thought that Linked Helper should invite profiles if nobody was moved to messaging actions from Filter contacts out of my network or Check for replies actions. Let's check why that could happen by going to the Workflow and reviewing the first action:

As it turned out, despite the fact that you haven't hit the LinkedIn weekly invitation limit and it was technically possible to invite more profiles, Linked Helper didn't do that due to the first action Queue being empty.

The ground reason for the sleeping state of my campaign is the empty Queue in the beginning of the Workflow, there was simply nobody to invite to my network, so all I have to do to fix the 'issue' is to add new leads to my campaign.

7 reasons of campaign sleeping state

If your campaign is sleeping and you're not sure why, please check the following:

You have reached LinkedIn limit
- You've hit weekly invitation limit
- You've hit LinkedIn personalized invitations limit
You have reached the Maximum Daily Actions limit
Linked Helper doesn't have profiles to process
An action is paused due to too many recurring errors
You are out of Advanced limits
You are out of working hours
All your Actions paused due to time-out

You have reached LinkedIn limit

You've hit weekly invitation limit

About half a year ago a new limitation was placed on every profile in LinkedIn, capping the invitations to about 100 per week - Invitation Limit Reached - LinkedIn. When the invitation limit is met, a "You've reached the weekly invitation limit" popup is shown:

When this popup is shown, Linked Helper postpones the Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts action for three hours. Other actions can still run, but if your campaign is meant for inviting only, this LinkedIn limitation may cause it to be paused.

There is nothing to worry about as this is not a warning or a restriction that may lead to an account ban. LinkedIn has been always fighting against platform abusers, so this is just another attempt to protect their users from spam and maintain their reputation as a professional platform.

In this case, if you hit the limit, the only thing to do is to wait till the next week as it is not possible to get more credits even if you have a paid subscription or you have withdrawn sent pending invitations or some of them were accepted.

Solution

We know how seriously this can affect your workflow, that’s why we developed and released a couple of solutions and workarounds for this issue. You can learn more about them in this article: Is there a life after LinkedIn weekly invitation limit?

You've hit LinkedIn personalized invitations limit

LinkedIn has been always pushing its customers towards paid subscriptions. Recently, they started limiting the number of personalized invitations (i.e. with invitation message, invitations without a message are not limited) per month for a significant part of their users:

The invitation note length in such cases is shortened to 200 characters:

Solutions

Here are several solutions available:

If your LinkedIn account was affected but you still want to continue sending personalized invitations, then you need to buy a LinkedIn Premium subscription. It's better to test invitations during the trial period since we saw a case when a paid subscription did not work.
You can send invitations without a text message to be able to use all 150 - 250 weekly invites LinkedIn provides you with. For that, you need to delete the invitation note completely. In some cases, this change may lead to an increased acceptance rate since an invite without a note looks intriguing, and people see that you're not trying to sell something.
You can clone your inviting campaign and delete the invitation note there. Then, using the Action working hours plug-in, schedule personalized inviting action in the original campaign active on Monday, for example, and the inviting action without a note in the cloned campaign to be active from Tuesday to Sunday.
You can send free InMails to open link profiles:
- How to send free InMails to Open profiles.
You can send messages to your 2nd and 3rd-degree connections via groups or events (the number of such messages might be limited by LinkedIn as well):

You have reached the Maximum Daily Actions limit

Please, go to the Limits section of the Settings menu and check the Max actions per 24 hours:

This setting guards your LinkedIn account security. It prevents you from doing too much activity on your LinkedIn account. Please note that there is no reset point, each credit is taken and released separately in exactly 24 hours - When the 'Last 24 hrs actions' number is reset? It means that even if you have 150 out of 150 in the middle of the day, it could be that Linked Helper did only half of the total amount in the morning, and the other haft will be executed in the evening.

Solution

Simply wait till credits are restored. You can also raise this number — all campaigns will kick off immediately or after you click “Start campaigns runner”, however, we don’t recommend exceeding daily limits of 150 actions too often, but occasionally, if you need to send just 5 more invites and you can’t do it because of the daily actions cap — why not?

Linked Helper doesn't have profiles to process

The Processing list of the campaign contains profiles that have been pushed through the workflow, yet haven't reached the end of it. The list combines profiles from Queues of all Actions except the very first Action. But if you have profiles in the processing list, it does not mean there are profiles that can be invited, messaged, etc., and in most cases, you need to feed the campaign before the Processing list is empty.

Open your Campaign Workflow and check whether other Actions apart from Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only), Delay between actions, and Check for replies actions, if you have them in the Workflow, have profiles to process.

Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only) action does not move all profiles from the Queue to Successful list but only those who have accepted your initiation and become a 1st-degree connection, the rest will be kept in the Queue until the invitation is accepted.

Delay between actions is just keeping profiles in the Queue for the specified amount of time without any activity, and when it's time to be released, such profiles are just moved to the next Queue.

A similar case can happen with the Check for replies action - profiles are kept in the Queue till the reply is found or till it's time to move further down the workflow.

All actions mentioned above do not process profiles the way other actions do (open web page, click buttons, etc.), instead they simply check once in a while whether certain conditions are met and if yes move the profiles further.

As a result, it seems that the Processing list has the profiles which should be processed yet the campaign always sleeps or does something but no profiles are processed. In fact, Linked Helper does process profiles in a certain way.

Let's imaging you have a simple campaign created from the "Invite & follow up" template that consists of four Actions:

If Queues of Action #1 and #3 are empty, but Action #2 has profiles to process, then Linked Helper simply checks whether any profile has accepted your invitation every 60 minutes and if not, goes to sleeping state as no profiles are moved to the Message to 1st connections | Group members, and the first Action Queue is empty as well.

The same situation is with the Check for replies action: even though there are profiles in the Queue, they won't be moved to the Successful list and to the next Action (if there are any of them further down the Workflow) with the "Never" option enabled. Linked Helper will simply be checking for replies every 6 hours or so, depending on the Action settings.

Solutions:

In a case with Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only) action, all you need to do is to feed your campaign with new profiles, since you won't be able to make your 2nd or 3rd connections who are in the Queue of Filter contacts out of my network (keep 1st level only) to accept your invitation.

In a case with Check for replies action, the solution depends on what your goal is: if there is no follow-up message after Check for replies action and you're not planning to add one, then you leave everything as it is and maybe add some profiles into the first Action Queue. If there are other follow-ups that should be sent after Check for replies action (in three days, for example), then you need to uncheck the "Never" option, set the delay to three days, and add follow-up Actions if needed.

In a case with Delay between actions you need to add profiles to the Campaign Queue (if it is empty) so that Linked Helper has profiles to process while those in the Delay between actions Queue are sitting there.

An action is paused due to too many recurring errors

Linked Helper is programmed to stop an action for 4 hours if 5 profiles fail fail in a row with the same error, provided that error may look suspicious for LinkedIn. For example, profiles fail because they cannot be invited by Linked Helper due to LinkedIn update yet they still can be invited manually.

In a case when an action is stopped due to 'Too many recurring errors. Please check the latest records of the action's 'Failed' sub-list' error, please:

Navigate to the sleeping campaign and find the action that experience the issue.
Open the Failed list:
Go to the last page:
Find the last repetitive errors and click on one:
Send a screenshot similar to the one below to our support team at info@linkedhelper.com:

You are out of Advanced limits

Advanced limits allow you to limit certain types of activities of your LinkedIn account, such as endorsing, inviting, messaging, etc.

There are three main reasons why advanced limit was applied:

Some of them are enabled by default to protect your LinkedIn account (Load profile via URLs is limited to 40 per day to avoid logouts, Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts is limited to 50 per day to avoid issues with LinkedIn).
The other are limited by the license type. Standard license limits certain activity types such as Like and comment posts and articles or Message to Event attendees to 20 profiles per day.
You set the limit manually.

If Advanced limit is reached, it will be displayed at the upper left corner of the instance:

For example, it could happen that your campaign contains only one action - Profiles Auto-Follower - and previously you limited that activity to a certain number of actions per hour, hence the campaign goes to a sleeping state even though there are free action slots in the Maximum Daily Actions limit:

Solutions:

If you reached the limit that was set by default, then we do not recommend increasing it though it is technically possible. You can increase Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts up to 70 - 150 depending on the solution you use to overcome LinkedIn weekly invitation limit, but we strongly advise to keep Load profile via URLs as it is to avoid log outs.
If you have the Standard license but would like to do more than 20 actions per day, then you need to upgrade to the Pro license.
In case you set the limit manually, you can simply increase it in the settings.

You are out of working hours

All running campaigns, when they reach the non-working hours in the Global schedule, will go to sleep mode.

Also, in Linked Helper you can create a custom schedule for every action using Action working hours plug-in. It could happen that you have only one active campaign with only one action that has profiles to process, and that action is being limited by the custom schedule.

Solution:

To change the schedule, go to Settings => Working hours => find the restriction and hit ‘Trash bin’ to remove it or change ‘Do not work’ to ‘24 hours’ mode.

Also make sure non-empty actions don't have custom schedule:

If none of the above is the reason, check your Campaign’s time-outs.

All your Actions paused due to time-out

All your current campaign’s actions or part of them can be paused because of the following reasons:

due to time-out between iterations. By default timeouts are 1 min, but it's possible to install Action steps delays plug-in and change it:
you installed Postpone action start plug-in and manually changed ‘Start at’ date to a future date:
action has built-in integration with snov.io and was postponed because you're out of credits:or were limited by snov.io due to simultaneous access from several accounts via one IP address:The actions that have snov.io integration are: Invite person by email, Invite 2nd and 3rd level contacts, Visit & Extract profiles.

If your Workflow has a sequence of three actions, and Action 3, let’s say, goes to sleep due to time-out, other action(s) with profiles in queue will take on. This will not yet put the whole Campaign to sleep. However, if Action 1, Action 2 and Action 3 are all in time-out state, the Campaign goes to sleep as there’s no action to execute for the time being.

Perhaps, at some point in the past, you postponed the ‘Start at’ date.

In either cases, check actions with non-empty queue(s). They will have a future ‘Start at’ date. If you must start the campaign immediately, you need to manually change “Start at” date.

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