The network stopped responding partway through publishing, so CivAll cannot tell whether the post went out. Check the account on the network before you publish again. Publishing again is how the same post ends up on your page twice.
What Unconfirmed means
Unconfirmed is not the same as Failed.
- Failed means the network refused the post. Nothing went out, and it is safe to fix the problem and publish again.
- Unconfirmed means CivAll handed the post to the network and never got an answer back. The post may be live. It may not be.
On the Publishing dashboard the post reads Checking outcome while CivAll is still checking with the network, and Outcome unconfirmed once it has stopped checking. In the Planner it reads Needs review.
CivAll labels this outcome Unconfirmed on purpose. Calling it Failed would read more cleanly, and it would be wrong often enough to matter. Someone acting on the word "failed" would republish a post that had already gone out, and the duplicate would be sitting on a public agency page.
Why this happens
The connection between CivAll and the network broke partway through the publish. That takes a few forms:
- The network did not answer in time.
- The network was unreachable at that moment.
- The network took the post and the confirmation never came back.
This is almost never caused by your post. The wording, the media, and the account are usually all fine.
Check the account before you do anything else
Open the account on the network itself and look for the post.
- Open the network in a browser or in its app: the Facebook Page, the X account, the Instagram profile, and so on.
- Look at that account's own posts around the time this one was meant to go out.
- Decide from what you see there, not from what CivAll shows.
That last point matters. CivAll does not know whether the post exists, so it cannot show it to you. Only the network can answer the question.
If the post is already there
The publish worked. Only the confirmation was lost.
Do not publish it again. Tell anyone else working the account that it is already live, so a colleague does not republish it an hour later. If a copy of the post is still sitting on the calendar waiting to run, remove it so it does not go out a second time. See The Planner.
If the post is not there
Nothing went out. Publish it again. Edit & retry is not offered on a post in this state, so use Clone post to make a copy and publish that.
If the post was time-sensitive and the moment has passed, edit it before it goes out, or write a fresh one.
Why CivAll does not republish for you
CivAll never retries a publish on its own, and it never sends the same post twice off one instruction. That is deliberate. Automatic retries are exactly the mechanism that puts duplicate posts on public pages, because the moment a retry looks useful is the moment nobody actually knows what happened.
CivAll keeps checking with the network where it can, for about a day, and updates the post if it gets a definite answer. If it does not, the post stays at Outcome unconfirmed and is listed with the failed posts. CivAll does not guess.
A duplicate is worse than a late post
A duplicate on an agency page is visible to residents. It gets reported to staff, it has to be deleted in public view, and during an emergency it makes the same alert look like two separate events.
A post that goes out fifteen minutes late is a smaller problem than the same post going out twice. When you are unsure, check the account again rather than publishing again.
When to contact support
Contact support if the post is still Unconfirmed after you have checked the account, or if you find a duplicate you did not create. Include the account, the time the post was meant to go out, and what you saw on the network. Do not republish while you wait.