Learn about the connectors section of your Fivetran dashboard.
Overviewlink
In the Connectors section of your dashboard, you can view all the connectors that sync to your destination, add new connectors, and see in-depth information about individual connectors.
You can add multiple connectors to an account. Only admin users and analyst users can add new connectors. Read more about user permissions in our account management documentation.
Add a new connectorlink
- In the top right corner of your Fivetran dashboard, click Add Connector.
- Select your source from the drop-down menu.
- Click Continue Setup to launch the connector setup form.
- Follow the detailed instructions in the embedded setup guide on the right.
- Fill in the required fields (the fields vary by source).
- Click Save & Test. Fivetran will take it from here and sync your data from your source.
Connector statuslink
The Status column of the Connectors tab displays one of the following statuses for each connector:
- Active: The connector is actively syncing your data according to your sync schedule.
- Broken: The connector is not working because of a problem with the connector or its associated destination. To learn how to fix the problem, click the connector and read the error message in the Alerts section.
- Incomplete: The connector’s setup is not complete. To finish the setup, click the connector name and follow the prompts in your dashboard.
- Paused: The connector has been turned off. To unpause your connector, click the connector and set the toggle in the top right corner to ENABLED.
If you want to only view connectors with certain statuses, filter the Connectors list by status:
NOTE: You can select multiple statuses at the same time.
Next to your connector’s status, you may see a small icon. Hover over the icon to see its description. Each icon indicates one of the following connector states:
- Syncing: The connector is currently syncing data.
- Historical: The connector is currently performing a historical sync. This could be an initial sync or a historical re-sync.
- Delayed: The connector is delayed. We consider a sync delayed when it takes more than four hours longer than normal to start a sync. We define the normal sync interval as the average time between successful syncs over a rolling 14-day period.
NOTE: You can also filter your connector list to see delayed connectors.
Sync troubleshootinglink
You can troubleshoot your connector’s sync using the dashboard or using external logs.
To troubleshoot a connector’s sync using the dashboard, select the connector from your dashboard. If you have just one instance of that connector, you will see a connector detail page.
If you have more than one instance of a connector (for example, if you have multiple Google Sheets connectors), their schema names are listed after you select the connector. Select a schema name to see the detail page for a particular instance of a connector.
Sync History chartlink
The Sync History chart visualizes the status of your syncs, how long they took, and how much data was synced each time. Use it to identify failed syncs and see what’s going wrong.
View your Sync History chart on the Connector Status page of your Fivetran dashboard. The chart breaks down your syncs into Extract, Process, and Load steps. You can view one hour, one day, or one week of sync history.
Each sync is represented by a colored bar. Hover over the sync bar to see your sync’s type, duration, start and end time, status, extract time, process time, load time, and data volume.
The bar’s color reflects the sync status:
| Color | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Completed | Your sync finished running with no errors. |
| Blue | Incomplete | Your sync is currently running. |
| Purple | Rescheduled | Fivetran reschedules syncs in two situations:
|
| Gray | Unknown | Your sync has exhibited atypical behavior and has not completed for unknown reasons. |
| Red | Failed | Your sync could not finish running. The stage your sync failed in appears in light red (for example, the sync below failed in the Load stage). |
Hover over the stage bar to view the reason why your sync failed:
For most of our database connectors, we provide more detailed data volume measurements for each sync phase in the sync history chart. These measurements help you understand exactly how much data we move through our pipeline in each phase. We define the data volume for each phase as follows:
- Extract Volume: Total volume of data we read from your source. This includes any data we filter out or don’t sync but read as part of our queries.
- Process Volume: Total volume of data we process before our deduplication process filters out data. Process volume also includes internal Fivetran metadata that we use during this phase.
- Load Volume: Total volume of data we upload to your destination after normalization.
For connectors that support priority-first sync, the forward and backward syncs are displayed as separate adjacent colored sync bars. When you hover over the sync bar, you will see ‘Priority-first sync’ specified as the sync type in the popover displayed.
Click View in the popover to see the historical sync progress for each table. The details include the date up which the data has been fetched and the total number of days of available data history to be fetched.
User Actions listlink
The User Actions list shows any actions taken on your connector in the last 30 days and identifies the user who made them. If your sync fails, use this list to see if a user action coincides with the failure, find the person who made that change, and have them reverse it.
View the User Actions list on the Connector Status page of your Fivetran dashboard, just below the Sync History chart.
Each user action has an action name to help you quickly see what your users are doing:
| User Action Name | Action Description |
|---|---|
| Connection Created | User created a new connector |
| Credentials Edited | User edited your connector’s credentials |
| Sync Frequency Updated | User changed the frequency of your syncs |
| Delay Notification Updated | User updated your preferences about sync delay notifications |
| Connection Paused | User paused your connector |
| Connection Resumed | User resumed your connector |
| Historical Re-sync Triggered | User triggered a re-sync of all your data |
| Historical Table Re-sync Triggered | User triggered a re-sync for a specific table |
| Manual Update Triggered | User triggered a manual update for your connector |
| Warning Dismissed | User dismissed a warning message |
| Connection Manually Tested | User tested your connection |
Connector logslink
Connector logs show all the major operations of your Fivetran connector. Use your logs to learn more about your failed syncs.
View your connector logs in the Logs tab on the Connector Details page of your Fivetran dashboard. You can view one day, one hour, or one week of log records.
Each log record has an event name to help you quickly see what’s happening in your connector:
| Connector Event Name | Event Description |
|---|---|
| api_call | API call to source service |
| sql_query | SQL query executed on source database |
| create_schema | Schema created in destination |
| change_schema_config | Updated schema sync configuration |
| create_table | Table created in destination |
| drop_table | Table dropped in destination |
| alter_table | Column(s) in destination table added/modified/dropped |
| connection_successful | Connection established with source system |
| connection_failure | Connection not established with source system |
| sync_start | Sync started |
| sync_end | Sync completed |
| status | Sync status |
| json_value_too_long | JSON value truncated because it was too long for destination |
| info | Sync information |
| warning | Sync warning |
| error | Sync error |
You can search connector logs by keyword or filter by log type (schema change events, errors, and warnings). Click the black arrow next to a log record to expand it.
Sync frequency and schedulinglink
By default, Fivetran syncs your data from your source to your destination every six hours. If you want Fivetran to sync your data more or less often, you can adjust the sync frequency. The sync frequency defines the time period between the start times of two subsequent syncs. For example, if your sync frequency is 30 minutes, your next sync will start 30 minutes after the start of your last sync provided the latter successfully completed within 30 minutes from its start. The baseline sync start time for the first sync within the 24-hour cycle is midnight in the destination timezone.
IMPORTANT: When you add a new destination, Fivetran assigns it a fixed time offset. The offset can be any random value in minutes ranging from 0 to 60. It is derived from the destination ID hash. This offset is shared by every connector in the destination. This offset ensures that all Fivetran connectors do not launch at once, which would slow down the sync process. The offset value remains the same regardless of the set sync frequency.
Depending on your plan level, you can choose from the following sync frequencies:
- 5 minutes
- 15 minutes
- 30 minutes
- 1 hour
- 2 hours
- 3 hours
- 6 hours (default)
- 8 hours
- 12 hours
- 24 hours
Select your sync frequency on the Setup tab of your connector’s details page:
Alternatively, you can create a custom sync schedule using the Fivetran REST API (Standard and Enterprise accounts only). Learn how in our REST API documentation.
If a sync is already running at the time of the scheduled sync start, Fivetran postpones the scheduled sync to the next scheduled sync start time. Here’s an example for a connector with a 15-minute sync frequency and an offset value of 0 minutes:
| Sync Number | Start Time | End Time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 08:00 | 08:10 | |
| 2 | 08:15 | 08:35 | |
| 3 | 08:30 08:45 | 08:55 | Sync 3 is postponed because Sync 2 is still running. Sync 3 then starts at 08:45. |
Fivetran supports custom sync scheduling for connectors that sync once a day. You can choose what time your daily syncs start if you don’t want to use Fivetran’s default midnight starting time. If you don’t know how often your connector syncs, check the sync frequency on the Setup tab of the connector details page in your Fivetran dashboard.
Sync start times and offsetslink
Fivetran uses the following formula to calculate the actual start times:
actual sync start time = scheduled sync start time + remainder of (offset value / sync frequency)
For example, we calculate the actual start time of the second sync in a 24-hour cycle with the following values:
- the sync frequency is 15 minutes
- the offset value is 44 minutes
00:29 = 00:15 + 00:14 where 00:14 is the remainder of 00:44 / 00:15.
Thus, the actual sync start time is 00:29.
Here is another example where we calculate the actual start time of the second sync in a 24-hour cycle with different values:
- the sync frequency is 15 minutes
- the offset value is 2 minutes
00:17 = 00:15 + 00:02 where 00:02 is the remainder of 00:02 / 00:15, which equals the offset value in this case.
In this example, the actual sync start time is 00:17.
The following table provides further examples of sync start times, which depend on the relationship between the sync frequency and the offset value:
| Scheduled Sync Times (Sync Frequency 15 minutes) | Actual Sync Times (Offset Value 2 minutes) | Actual Sync Times (Offset Value 44 minutes) | Actual Sync Times (Offset Value 15 minutes) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 | 00:02 | 00:14 | 00:00 |
| 00:15 | 00:17 | 00:29 | 00:15 |
| 00:30 | 00:32 | 00:44 | 00:30 |
| … | … | … | … |
| 23:30 | 23:32 | 23:44 | 23:30 |
| 23:45 | 23:47 | 23:59 | 23:45 |
NOTE: For the sync start times presented above, we assume that all syncs are successfully completed by the start of the next sync.
NOTE: When you change the sync frequency, the next sync will follow the new sync schedule corresponding to the set sync frequency regardless of the last sync’s start time. For example, the sync frequency is set to 3 hours, the offset is 6 minutes, the last sync started at 15:06 and completed at 16:50. At 17:00 you set the sync frequency to 12 hours. The next sync will start at 00:06 rather than at 03:06.
For failed syncs, Fivetran calculates the start time for the next sync using the following formula:
time of the sync failure + 60 min OR sync frequency period where we use either 60 min or sync frequency period, whichever value is less.
For example, if the sync failed at 13:38, and the sync frequency is 6 hours (360 min), then the start time of the next sync will be:
13:38 + 60 min = 14:38 since 60 min is less than 360 min.
For rescheduled syncs, the rules and formulas used to define the sync start time depend on the connector type. Although rescheduling is most commonly caused by Fivetran hitting API quotas in the source, causes of sync rescheduling vary depending on the connector type.
Using the Sync Frequency slider to check the sync start time offset valuelink
You can use the sync frequency slider to check the sync start time offset value.
- On the Setup tab of the connector details page, set the sync frequency to 24 hours.
- Click Change.
- Open the Daily Run Time menu. The offset value is the minute value. For example, if the sync start times are 00:48, 01:48, 02:48, and so on, then the offset value is 48 minutes.
- Using the slider, set the sync frequency to the value you had before.
Syncing empty tables and columnslink
Most Fivetran connectors do not sync source tables and columns that have no data and don’t create them in your destination. However, Fivetran can create empty tables and columns in your destination for some connectors. See our Features documentation for a list of supported connectors.
Note: Under no circumstances will we sync an empty schema.