API news & updates

Connectors provide a no-code means of making API calls to external systems and can also transform URLs or strings found in comments or messages into structured objects that are easy to access from a conversation in Front. Connectors come in two flavors:Application objects (previously known as “dynamic objects”)—these connectors identify matching patterns (such as order IDs) in Front conversations or comments and automatically attach a structured object to the conversation that contains information about and a link to the external resource. Application requests—these connectors make API calls to external systems to provide a no-code method for building integrations. These requests can also be leveraged in rules and macros. Currently, only GET requests are supported, but additional methods will be available soon to allow you to push data to external systems.  If you are currently using dynamic objec

Front has just released an official Front Chat Android SDK that makes it easier than ever to install Front Chat in your native Android apps. Visit our Developer Portal to learn how to install and use the SDK. The setup guide includes a link to the SDK’s GitHub repo.

You can now send attachments in Connectors! To do so, set the Content Type to multipart/form-data when building the request and include the attachment data in the body.Sending attachments through Connectors enables use cases for when you want to send files to external services. For example, a Front teammate using the JIRA Connector could run a macro to upload an image to a JIRA task describing an issue they are dealing with. Watch a video of the example use casePasscode: Pi%gEU9L

Front has just released an official Front Chat iOS SDK that makes it easier than ever to install Front Chat in your native iOS apps. Visit our Developer Portal to learn how to install and use the SDK. The setup guide includes a link to the SDK’s GitHub repo. P.S. An Android version of the SDK is coming soon...

We just released sample code that demonstrates how to create a Front sidebar plugin using Vite, React, and Auth0!  Visit our Developer Portal to learn more.

We are thrilled to announce that partners and developers can now use OAuth to access all available Front permission scopes, such as personal resources and knowledge base data in addition to shared workspace data. This update means that integrations can use OAuth regardless of the type of data they need access to. OAuth makes it much easier for customers to install your integration by simply agreeing to the OAuth screen instead of requesting that the customer manually generate and supply your integration an API token. Previously, OAuth tokens could only access shared workspace data.  Visit our Developer Portal to view the full list of available scopes. You can manage scopes when you

Our new contact list endpoints are replacing the contact group endpoints, which will be deprecated on September 1st, 2025. Please update your API calls before September 1st so that the URLs use contact_lists in the path instead of contact_groups. Note that the contact list ID remains the same as the contact group ID. The following table details how to change your endpoints:Deprecated path New path Notes https://api2.frontapp.com/contact_groups https://api2.frontapp.com/contact_lists  

You can now manage ticket statuses through the Core API. Front released ticketing a couple months ago, which you can now access via the API if your company has the ticketing feature enabled. The following is a summary of the new ticketing functionality available in the Core API:Conversation responses return status_id, status_category, and ticket_ids fields. Search for conversations in the open, waiting, or resolved ticketing statuses via the is operator. Use ticketing filters in the q query string parameter when listing conversations. Access new

We are happy to announce that you can now access knowledge base API endpoints through the Core API. These endpoints allow you to read and update your internal and external Front knowledge bases. With the API, you now have the flexibility to process your knowledge base content for various purposes, including advanced display on different websites and additional means of importing content. Read the docs on our Developer Portal to start using the knowledge base API endpoints.

We are thrilled to announce a new enhancement to our Core API knowledge base resources: Endpoints now return a slug for article and category pages! The slug is a user-friendly, readable string that can be used to construct URLs to your knowledge base articles and categories. This addition makes it easier than ever to integrate and surface your knowledge base content within the search results or display components of systems external to Front's knowledge base, such as a community hub or other resource center. The following endpoints return the URL slug in their response:List articles in a knowledge base Get a knowledge base article

You can now download attachments via the following resource-specific endpoints:Download attachment for a comment Download attachment for a message template Download attachment for a messageThe ability to download message template attachments is a new benefit. The other benefit of these endpoints is that Front validates that the requester has access to the resource in question versus only validating the attachment access credentials. Fetch attachments via their download URLFront recommends you fetch attachments via their download URL (which includes resource-specific routing) versus providing only the ID

You can now access entry point data in the Plugin SDK to learn how a Front user opened your plugin. A new property called entryPoint is now available in the context object. Read the full details on our Developer Portal This property allows you to handle different scenarios depending on where the plugin was opened. The current plugin entry points are:SIDEBAR—User opened a plugin in the Front sidebar. COMPOSER_TOOLBAR—User opened a plugin in the composer toolbar while composing a message. CONTACT_HANDLE—User opened a plugin from a Front contact’s phone handle. More information on plugins that open from this entry point in order to make or handle calls will be coming soon!

The Plugin SDK now offers the delegateNewWindowsToFront utility function. This function allows you to capture link events that open in a new window and handle them through Front. This function replaces the deprecated delegateAnchorClicksToFront function.

You can now use token instrospection to specify an application channel’s name and address.Token introspection is an additional step in the OAuth2 flow where the client sends a request to the external server to retrieve information about the provided access token. This request allows Front to obtain details of the channel from the external service. Read more on our Developer Portal!

The Update conversation endpoint now correctly updates conversation statuses in personal inboxes. Before the update, the status update would only be applied at the team-level. The status update did not affect private conversations or propagate to the conversation assignee.From now on, the conversation status update will follow the behavior of our rule engine: the status update will be applied to the conversation assignee and owners for private conversations in addition to the shared inbox at the workspace level. This update will gradually be released to all customers over the next week. Please comment below if you want to access it immediately. PS: The update only impacts the conversation status for assignee and private conversation owners. It does not impact the status of the conversation for its followers (participants who are not the assignee or owner of the

We are excited to announce that you can now manage teammate groups via the Core API! Teammate groups allow you to create centralized lists of users that make it easier to manage shared inbox and contact access. We’ve added 14 endpoints to help you fetch, create, update, and delete teammate groups or related access like inboxes or teammates within the group. Some example endpoints include:List teammate groups Create teammate group Add teammate group team inboxes Add teammate group teammates

We are pleased to announce that the Core API now supports:Updating comments via the API—Using the comment ID, you can update the body or the pinned status of the comment. Controlling whether a comment is pinned in the conversation—A pinned comment is displayed in the pinned comments link within the conversation UI. You can mark a comment as pinned via the API using the new is_pinned field, which is available when adding or updating a comment and in all comment responses. Let us know if you have any feedback in the comments below, no pun intended.

On July 22, 2024, Google released a blog post indicating that regulators may allow the continued use of third-party cookies if users opt into them. If this turns out to be the case, it will still be important to provide alternatives to third-party cookies for those users who do not consent to the use of third-party cookies, as noted in our original post. However, Google continuing to support third-party cookies would allow you to keep using these cookies in Front plugins if you have control over the browser decisions of your users (if all your plugin users belong to your company, for example).

Highway Integration Enhancements: New "spoof warning" workflow and cleaner dynamic object variables If you had configured the Highway dynamic object configuration per our tutorial prior to May 31st, 2024, then the configuration contained errors that could lead to false positives for the fraud use case described in the tutorial. It also did not include the spoof warning property from the Highway API. Our tutorial now reflects the correct setup, and we’ve created a migration guide to make it easier to know exactly what changes to make (limited only to the fraud use case). When you complete the changes,

On September 1st 2024, we will be introducing E.164 phone number normalization to the Front API to address issues caused by inconsistent phone number handles attached to contacts. Phone number handles for contacts in Front can be created via the API, the Front contacts manager, incoming messages in channels, CRM contact syncs, and CSV import of contacts. With so many different ways of creating contacts and storing phone numbers for those contacts, it’s important to normalize the data because the different input formats can lead to duplicate contacts and related search issues. To prepare for this change, make sure your API requests (including those made through the Zapier integration) are sending valid phone numbers with the country code included. Country codes must be preceded by a plus (+) sign. Read the “Potential impacts” section below

Based on recent developments, we’ve updated our original post on handling Chrome’s third-party cookie deprecation to note the following:Google has postponed the deprecation to Q1 2025 (originally Q3 2024) We now also recommend the Storage Access API as a viable solution to handling the deprecation, in addition to CHIPS. More details in the original post. We’ve linked to an example of handling partitioned cookies in Next.js for a Google Sign In authentication flow.

Due to breaking changes in Postman, the Postman collections previously supplied in our Developer Portal can no longer push changes to forks. To obtain the latest Postman collections of our Core API and Channel API, create new forks from the following links:Core API collection Channel API collection These forks should be able to pull changes as expected whenever we update the source collection. Thanks for being part of our Front developer community!

Dynamic objects are now integrated with rules. This means that you can use Front’s powerful rule system to customize when and how dynamic objects apply to your workflows.  IMPORTANTRules have been auto-generated for all existing dynamic object configurations. These auto-generated rules have been named Create dynamic objects. While you are welcome to edit these rules, please note that disabling or deleting these rules will stop the associated dynamic objects from working.   Where to manage dynamic object rulesYou can manage existing dynamic object rules from Settings > Company name / Workspace name > Rules. As noted in the above callout, dynamic objects that you created prior to

You can now sort messages returned by the List conversation messages endpoint by their creation date.The endpoint now includes the query parameters sort_by and sort_order. Set sort_by to created_at, and then specify whether you want the sort_order to return messages as asc (oldest first) or desc (newest first) results.

Important update: Google will continue to support third-party cookies. It is still important to provide alternatives to third-party cookies for those users who do not consent to the use of third-party cookies, as noted in the rest of this article. However, Google continuing to support third-party cookies allows you to continue using these cookies in Front plugins if you have control over the browser decisions of your users (if all your plugin users belong to your company, for example). There is no longer a planned deprecation. The rest of this topic is left for historical context, but please note it is outdated.********************************************************************************************************** In a significant move towards enhancing user privacy, major web browsers are on a trajectory to deprecate support for third-party cookies to lim