Symptoms customers hit most often in Pool, what causes each, and what to check.
Why Is This Person In (or Not In) My Audience?
Four causes account for almost all of these. Check in order.
Membership has not computed yet. Membership is calculated after you save, not at the moment you save. While it runs, the audience shows a banner reading "Members are still updating. The list and the member count are partial until this finishes." Wait for it to clear.
The contact is not in Pool. Every contact needs an email address, and applicant records only arrive once Hire is connected to Pool. Search the Talent page before assuming a filter problem.
The sync has not caught up. The Hire to Pool sync is event-driven, with a delay from a few minutes up to an hour depending on volume.
They are in the audience but not eligible. Ineligible contacts remain in audiences and are not counted as recipients.
Read the contact's own record. Open the Talent Profile and go to the Audience tab. Every membership event is listed with its date and reason. This usually answers the question directly.
Check whether they are ineligible. The Ineligible Talent table at the bottom of Pool > Settings is searchable and shows an Exclusion reason for every excluded contact, which names the rule that removed them. You can also switch on Show ineligible talent on the Talent page to see them in context.
If they should match but do not, check the attribute the filter reads. An unsynced Hire attribute or an unmapped prospect import column produces a filter that matches nobody. Also check whether the contact has two Talent Profiles, since only one may carry the data your filter reads.
If they match but should not, check whether the campaign uses static audience mode. A static campaign sends to the members who matched when it was created, so someone who has since left the audience remains in the campaign and cannot be removed by editing the audience.
Why Does My Campaign Say There Are No Recipients?
The audience is empty. Check the member count. If it is new, membership may still be computing.
Every member is ineligible. Open Pool > Settings > Talent Eligibility and read the excluded count on each rule. A single rule, such as excluding a rejection reason or a worker segment, can remove an entire audience.
Talent have aged out. The GDPR Eligibility Window marks talent ineligible when they have had no activity within the period your account sets. An audience built on people who last applied years ago can be entirely ineligible for this reason alone.
The channel does not match the data. An SMS campaign needs phone numbers. An audience of prospects imported without a phone column produces zero SMS recipients while showing members.
A static campaign already sent. Its list was fixed when the campaign was created and may be exhausted.
The filter reads an attribute with no values. An unsynced Hire attribute or an unmapped import column matches nobody.
A member count above zero with zero recipients means eligibility or channel. A count of zero means the filter or the underlying data.
Why Is the Competencies Tab Empty?
An empty Competencies tab means Pool did not have enough on the profile to infer from. Pool infers competencies from application history, employment background, and profile data, matched against the O*NET occupational database.
Why a profile has none. A prospect imported from a contact list has a name, an email address, and whatever columns you mapped, and nothing to infer skills from. A short application form that collects contact details and nothing about the person's work produces almost no signal, and volume does not help. Job titles that are internal codes or abbreviations do not match anything in O*NET.
What to do. If competencies matter to how you use Pool, the change that has an effect is collecting more about work history during application. There is no way to enter competencies directly.
Competencies on a job profile are a separate setting. Pool > Settings > Job Profile Competencies sets a Minimum Importance threshold, and only competencies scoring at or above it are shown for that job. If a job profile looks sparse, check that threshold before concluding the data is missing.
Why Does My Audience Filter Return Zero for a Hire Attribute?
A Hire attribute returning zero is usually a naming or sync problem rather than an empty field.
Are you looking for the right name? Attributes appear in the filter builder under ATTRIBUTES, listed by their underlying data key rather than a friendly label. An eligibility question may be listed as
18_or_older. Use the search box at the top of the picker.Has the attribute reached Pool? Attributes collected during the Hire application become available for filtering only after they have synced across.
Is Hire connected to Pool at all? If that setup was never completed, no applicant data is in Pool.
Has enough time passed? A few minutes up to an hour depending on volume.
Does any contact have a value? Open a Talent Profile you expect to carry it and check the Attributes tab.
Are you filtering the right value? Filters match what is recorded, including case and spacing.
My Campaign Will Not Activate
If activation fails or the activation control is unavailable, check these in order.
The audience has no eligible recipients. The activation button names the number it will send to, so a count of zero points here. Open the audience and confirm it has members who are not ineligible.
A required field is empty. Name, Reply-To, audience, audience mode, category, and recipient journey are all required.
The message has no content. A campaign needs at least one message with a subject and body before it can activate.
The end date is too early. If you set the campaign to end on a specific date, that date has to fall after the current audience finishes its message sequence.
Your role does not allow activation. Check with whoever administers Pool in your account.
If you are not ready to activate, use Save as draft and return to it later. To check the message itself first, use Send a test.
Pool Pages Are Slow or Will Not Load
Reload. Audience membership and campaign metrics are computed rather than stored, and a page loaded mid-computation can appear stuck.
Narrow the view. An unfiltered talent table loads every record in your pool.
Check whether it is one page or all of Pool. A single slow page points at that page's data, such as a very large audience or a campaign with a long history.
Try another browser. Column and filter selections are stored per browser.
A newly saved audience showing an updating banner is expected rather than slow.
If a page consistently fails to load after these checks, contact Fountain support with the page, the audience or campaign involved, the time it happened, and your account name.
Pool Limits and Quotas
Limit | Value |
Messages per campaign per recipient per day | Set by your account's Messaging Rules |
Messages per contact per day across different campaigns | Not limited. Messaging Rules apply per campaign |
Audiences per campaign | 1 |
Email address per contact | Required. A contact without one is not in Pool |
Prospect CSV import file size | 10 MB maximum per file |
New Prospect Profile forms per account | 1 |
Files attached through prospect import | Not supported |
Talent inactivity before ineligibility | Set by your account's GDPR Eligibility Window |
Email is required. Email is the key Pool uses to merge records into one Talent Profile. A record without an email address is not imported and does not exist in Pool. This applies to every route: CSV import, data pipeline, New Prospect Profile form, and the Hire sync.
One audience per campaign. To reach two groups in one campaign, build a single audience whose conditions cover both. There is no way to attach a second audience.
Large or Recurring Imports Belong in a Data Pipeline
A single CSV upload is capped at 10 MB. For larger volumes, recurring uploads, or files carrying custom attributes, configure a data pipeline instead.