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Developer discussion

Discuss the Front Platform APIs, SDKs, and integrations

  • 34 Topics
  • 68 Replies
34 Topics
Javier - Developer Relations
Javier - Developer RelationsCommunity Manager
published in Developer discussion
Share integration ideas, tips & tricks, and API workflow wins

Want to talk about the Front APIs? This is your space!  If you have a technical question to ask, please use our Developer Q&A, but if you have ideas to bounce off other developers, or workflow wins you’ve accomplished through integrations that you’d like to share, everyone would love to hear about it.This space is ideal for sharing your best Front Platform hacks or any code you’re proud of that you’d like others to benefit from. At Front we believe there’s always something to learn, and we expect we’ll be learning quite a lot from our community of outstanding developers.  In addition, please let us know in this space about any documentation, tools, sample applications, or other resources that we could add to make your development easier on the Front Platform.Happy coding, happy sharing, and happy chatting!

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Javier - Developer Relations
Z
zqushHelper
posted in Developer discussion
Is anyone working on creating an MCP server for FrontApp?

It appears like Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the protocol that everyone is moving towards as it puts the burden of keeping everything “tidy” on the service provider rather than the client.  There are already many official MCP servers available and more on the way. There are also community developed ones. Is anyone else exploring this?Cheers!

2447
Z
jross
jrossRookie
posted in Developer discussion
PHP Send API Request via Curl

Hello,Sharing how to send an API request using PHP Curl and Bearer token:<?phpdefine('FRONT_API_KEY', 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx');/** * Performs an API call using cURL * * @since 1.0.0 * * @global string FRONT_API_KEY * * @param string $url URL. * @param string $requestType 'GET', 'PUT', 'PATCH', etc. * @param array $postFields Array of fields and values to be posted to URL * * @return array Associated array of JSON objects returned from API call. * */function api_call($url, $requestType, $postFields) { try { $ch = curl_init(); if ($ch === false) { throw new Exception("Failed to initialize"); } curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, $requestType); if (isset($postFields)) { $json = json_encode($postFields); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $json); } curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "curl/7.7

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Javier - Developer Relations
jross
jrossRookie
posted in Developer discussion
PHP Verify Front Webhook Signature

Hello,Working on my Front Admin certification and this is my contribution to the community. I haven’t seen many PHP integrations and wanted to share how I am verifying the Front signature.<?phpdefine('FRONT_WEBHOOK_API_KEY', 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx');/** * Verify Front rule webhook request function * * Calculates the base64 encoded HMAC hash of the request body (payload) using SHA1 algorithm and the Front API key. * Compares the hash to the X-Front-Signature header to verify the request is from Front. * * @since 1.0.0 * * @param string $payload Request body. * * @return bool true if verified, otherwise false. * * @link https://dev.frontapp.com/docs/webhooks-1#configure-rule-webhooks */function is_valid_front_webhook($payload){ if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FRONT_SIGNATURE'])) { $hexHash = hash_hmac('sha1', $payload, mb_convert_encoding(FRONT_WEBHOOK_API_KEY, 'UTF-8')); $base64Hash = base64_encode(hex2bin($hexHash)); return hash_equals($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FRONT_SI

230
jross
jason
jasonFronteer
posted in Developer discussion
Never miss an SLA, with Front Application Requests and PagerDuty

If your team has SLA agreements you can’t afford to miss, or you already page on-call teammates for urgent issues, you might want to consider automating this using Front Rules and Application Requests.This post will guide you through how to add a Front Application Request to trigger a PagerDuty incident, and how to enable that from a Rule in Front. 1. Create a PagerDuty ServiceThe PagerDuty Service is required as the “entry point” for creating the incident. When creating the PagerDuty Service, select the Events API V2 integration;Creating a PagerDuty Service2. Create your Front Application RequestHead into Front > Settings > Developers, and create a new App. Give it a useful name like “PagerDuty”. Click into the Servers tab in your new App, and create a server. The PagerDuty events API is hosted at https://events.pagerduty.com, so we can add that as the Server Origin value. No auth is needed here - this is specified elsewhere.Click Save. 3.  Add Application RequestClick into the

270
jason
rmace
rmaceConversationalist
posted in Developer discussion
Microsoft PowerApps

Does anyone have any insight or tips to share regarding using the Front API in PowerApps via PowerAutomate?  I've been considering exploring this possibility. 

130
rmace
jason
jasonFronteer
posted in Developer discussion
Application Webhook Template - TypeScript app deployed on Railway

I put together a simple TypeScript template app to reliably handle incoming Application Webhook events. It can be deployed to Railway in a couple of clicks.Where can I try it?You can install the template here → Front.com Application Webhook ReceiverHow does it work?At a high level, there’s an exposed API endpoint which you register with Front as the destination for for your webhook events.On receipt, various security and validity checks are performed, the event is added to a background processing queue, and the app quickly responds to Front, acknowledging successful receipt. You then have a secondary process monitoring the queue, which is where you add your logic to save the events to your own data store, or performing your custom business logic to handle them.What tech is used?This is a template which can be deployed on Railway in a couple of clicks. The API router and middleware is powered by Hono - a fast, lightweight web framework.The background job queue uses BullMQ, built on Redi

1220
jason
M
MathewConversationalist
posted in Developer discussion
NetSuite

I’ll be working on NetSuite > Front.Just starting up the post, here!

6267
davidv123
Maxime Haudebert
Maxime HaudebertFronteer
posted in Developer discussion
Post automatic comments in your JIRA issues when linking them in Front

This will help you make sure a Front conversation being linked to a JIRA issue will not go unnoticed. The idea here is to leverage our JIRA connectors through an app request rule that will automatically post comments in JIRA issues when those are linked to a Front conversation. Here’s how your rule should look like: This rule will trigger on app objects being added to a conversation, will check that the added app object is a JIRA issue, and will post a comment in that JIRA issue  This is the dynamic variable used to determine if the added app object is a JIRA issue This is the dynamic variable used to extract the JIRA issue key used to post the comment The comment body referencing the conversation ID to link JIRA users directly back to the conversationComment body:{"version": 1, "type": "doc", "content": [{"type": "paragraph", "content": [{"type": "text", "text": "New report for this issue (automated message)", "marks": [{"type": "link", "attrs": {"href": "https://app.frontapp.com/open

410
Maxime Haudebert
timchambers
timchambersRookie
asked in Developer discussion
API access to Teammate Groups (not contact groups)

I understand that Teammate Groups is a relatively new feature, which might explain why it’s not available in the API yet, but I was wondering when/if we might gain access to those groups of Front users that we define and use for managing Inbox access, etc. (found in the app under Settings > Company > Teammate groups).So far, references to “teammate groups” in the API documentation seem to reference contact groups owned by a team member, which is not what I’m looking for.Perhaps this question is also related to Front’s SCIM functionality–is there any documentation related to that functionality?

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jason
littleprint
littleprintRookie
posted in Developer discussion
Looking for developer to build custom pipedrive plugin

Looking for a developer to assist in building a custom pipedrive plugin. The existing one is limited in terms of functionality, we’d like to create one that allows us to create a proper deal/opportunity with more information/fields. Please comment contact details/info so i can reach out :)

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Javier - Developer Relations
Andy
AndyFronteer
posted in Developer discussion
Python code to merge Inbox exports

Hi Front Community! A lot of times you might need to request a full (or multiple) inbox export from Front Support. These exports follow the following file structure:Inboxes → Inbox → Conversation → Messages.csvThe export format provided can make it challenging to get a clear overview of all messages within an inbox. This is a common issue for teams that frequently conduct inbox audits to review messages for analytics or other purposes.To address this, I’ve developed a Python script that consolidates all messages.csv files from Front Support inbox exports into a single consolidated Messages CSV file for each inbox:import osimport csv'''This is for a multiple inbox export.Please note if the exports are quite large you should consider chunking output CSVs. This is because applications like Excel have a row limit on CSVs that is just over 1 million.Expected file structure is:Inboxes -> Inbox folder -> Conversation folder -> Messages.csv'''# Path to the Inboxes folderparent_folder_

1112
Andy
jorge_medina
jorge_medinaConversationalist
posted in Developer discussion
Google translator plugin into Front

I think it would be a marvelous idea to Integrate a google transaltor plugin into Front.  Who else agrees?

2432
jorge_medina
jeremyb
jeremybConversationalist
asked in Developer discussion
Allow trigger to run rules retroactively

If i want to tag or archive conversations that happened in the past, I would like to be able to trigger a rule manually that can do that.  

1621
cat_apac
jack_after
jack_afterEnthusiast
posted in Developer discussion
Documentation suggestion: Add new page/section on how to open a message/conversation in the Front app

I think the developer documentation under your “Guides” section needs to include a page on how to link to messages and conversations in the Front web app.I went to the high level “Guides” section hoping to find information on this, and couldn’t, so had to turn to Google and found two related conversations in these forums from other users who had the same question:In both instances, there were confusing responses from the Front team that the links returned from the API under the _links property could be used to link to the Front app, however this is not the case. You need to construct the URL yourself with https://app.frontapp.com/open/{message_or_convseration_id}Here is the relevant API Reference pages for conversations and messages: https://dev.frontapp.com/reference/conversations#opening-a-conversation-in-fronthttps://dev.frontapp.com/reference/messages#opening-a-message-in-frontI think there could be either a new page under Guides / Fundamentals that discusses this, or at least addi

1221
Javier - Developer Relations
Nico Prevoo
Nico PrevooRookie
asked in Developer discussion
Sharepoint Onedrive integration

I see a google drive and Dropbox plugin. Is there an idea to also develop a plugin for SharePoint / OneDrive. Where you can easily select documents to share them with a client or directly upload files from mails into SharePoint?

1902
JohnW
K
kyoung6Rookie
asked in Developer discussion
API change notification by email

I used to receive email notification of changes to the API functionality.I recently found that the maximum limit parameter for an event fetch has been reduced from 100 eventsto 15 events, but I had not received an email relating to this.Do such changes still get announced to an email distribution ?

751
Javier - Developer Relations
gregor
gregorRookie
asked in Developer discussion
Looking for a developer to help us migrate to a different Front account

Hello,We are looking for a developer to help us migrate 6000 email conversation as well as 10 inboxes (and some tags and contacts) over to a different Front account. We have been using Front for a year through a third-party company that we pay to perform customer service duties, but we now want to do this in-house and are looking to open our own account.

1752
alexo
anna
annaRookie
asked in Developer discussion
Zoom Plugin

Hi,  I am debating utilizing the Zoom Plugin in Front to streamline the automation for my team. Due to the type of work that is common in our field I believe that there may be too many factors to add-on in our rules. Since all email’s received can have incorrect information, e.g. wrong date referenced, wrong start time, different start dates/times/locations listed on the attachment that is sent to us from what is mentioned in the body of the email. Is there a workaround that will forego these factors to all the ability to automate this in Front? Or does anyone have any ideas on suggestions? 

1951
jason
M
mfrischEnthusiast
asked in Developer discussion
404 Not Found - The resource was deleted

Sometimes when creating a new conversation this error is returned, however it’s not always clear which resource presents an issue creating the conversation.Usually it’s a tag, and we have to investigate which tag doesn’t exist, although we’ve also had issues where the channel was re-added and presented a new channel ID. For debugging purposes, it’d be great if the ID of the resource not found was returned along with the error.

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Javier - Developer Relations
isaiahcelleslopez
isaiahcelleslopezConversationalist
posted in Developer discussion
Exploring the Future Integration of LinkedIn as a Connector

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the role of social networking platforms in connecting individuals and professionals becomes increasingly significant. One platform that stands out in the professional networking sphere is LinkedIn. With its focus on career development, networking, and industry insights, LinkedIn has become a staple for professionals worldwide. This discussion stems from the intriguing possibility of leveraging LinkedIn as an additional connector within Front's App Store, offering new avenues for businesses to tap into diverse markets and streamline their recruitment processes. Let's consider a scenario: Imagine a startup business seeking to recruit young, talented software engineers for new graduate positions or summer internships. Typically, startups face challenges in sourcing candidates due to limited recruiting resources. One of their primary channels for sourcing candidates is LinkedIn, where they reach out to graduating students to explore potential o

2502
JohnW
andersen
andersenFronteer
posted in Developer discussion
Dynamic Objects Discussion: Highway

Spinning up this thread to discuss all things related to implementing and maintaining a Highway dynamic object.

1812
stevep
scott_reid
scott_reidConversationalist
asked in Developer discussion
Email pairing

During Frontlines 2023 it was mentioned that the ability to link separate email threads together would be coming soon.  How soon will that feature be coming?  We typically have 2 email threads for every shipment and this will definitely save us some time! I am using Dynamics to get there now, but I can only imagine the ease of use this will add! 

1889
helena
jason
jasonFronteer
posted in Developer discussion
Dynamic Object example - fetching order data from Shopify

I put together a screencast showing how you can build a Dynamic Object (with no-code) which can fetch order data from your Shopify account. It was built from scratch in ~10 minutes. Let me know what you think! 

1371
robby_p
rwilson
rwilsonConversationalist
posted in Developer discussion
When to use Dynamic Objects for linking vs Setting up full API

My company currently uses Front to sort messaging and work flow on the front end but we’re looking to potentially leverage more of the functionality moving forward. I’ve been looking to at least utilize Dynamic Objects to make linking our incoming messages to our TMS tickets but am also looking at setting up an API integration to utilize read/write functionality from Front, similar to a couple of the examples in the “flow-and-tell” section. I’m curious if anyone has any insight into some variables that helped you decide that it was worth it to go beyond the basic Dynamic Objects and create a full blown integration.For example did you wait until a certain percentage of your total company as using front?Did you wait until you had enough data about how much more efficient Dynamic Objects made your teammates’ workflow?How much time did it take you to set up the full integration along with how many different commands with your TMS or similar software are you utilizing?

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robby_p

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