A broken import can empty half a feed in one update — and if that update publishes, your ads go dark or start showing the wrong products before anyone notices. A monitor with the publish hold turned on acts as a safety net: when it triggers, affected channels keep their previously published feed live instead of publishing the suspicious new one. Nothing goes dark; the last good feed keeps serving until the problem clears.
Set it up#
- Create a monitor that checks after each catalog import or after each channel feed update — the hold is only available on these two checks, because they're the moments where there's a publish to hold. (See Create a monitor.) A good starting point is the Channel feed shrinks — hold the publish suggestion on the Monitoring page.
- Set the condition that means "something is wrong" — for example Product count change % is less than -40.
- Under Then, click + Add action and pick Hold the publish. While that action is on the monitor, its alert is always raised as an Error — a held publish is worth your immediate attention — so the alert's level is fixed at Error and says which row fixed it.
- Publish the monitor.
On any other check, Hold the publish still appears in the action list but can't be picked, and says why: there's no publish to hold unless the monitor runs after an import or a feed update.
A monitor on a catalog holds every channel that exports that catalog's products — a bad import is stopped before it reaches any destination. A monitor on a channel holds just that channel.
What you'll see while a publish is held#
- The channel page shows a Publish held chip next to its status.
- The channel's Activity tab shows the held update with the status Publish held, and its detail names the monitor. The previous feed stays live the whole time — the feed URL keeps serving the last good version.
- The monitor's Error alert appears on the dashboard and the affected catalog or channel, like any other alert.
How it clears#
The hold heals itself: the next import or feed update that passes the monitor's condition publishes normally and clears the alert. Fix the underlying problem — the feed source, the mapping, whatever shrank the numbers — and the next update goes out on its own. There's no approval queue and nothing to release manually.
Publishing anyway#
If you've looked at the data and it's genuinely fine — say the assortment really did halve because a season ended — you don't have to wait:
- Press Publish on the channel page as usual. Renable tells you which monitor is holding the publish and that the previous feed stays live, and offers Publish anyway.
- Publishing anyway pushes that one update live. It does not clear the alert — the monitor keeps checking, and the alert clears only when a check actually passes. If the monitor was right after all, the next update is held again.
If a monitor holds publishes too eagerly, loosen its condition — or pause it with the switch on its card, which lifts the hold immediately.
Good to know#
- The hold protects the published feed. You can keep editing the channel, previewing, and regenerating while it's held.
- Archiving or pausing the monitor clears its alerts and lifts the hold right away.
- If checking the monitor itself ever fails, publishing proceeds normally — a broken monitor never takes your feeds down.