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Question

Fronto API Retrieving Open Conversations

  • January 28, 2026
  • 5 replies
  • 36 views

ransom

We are really struggling with this.

Our goal is to receive a list of ‘open’ conversations in our personal inbox. This includes direct messages AND a any conversation that we are subscribed to (participant of) both in Shared Inboxes and Teammates Inboxes.

However there’s an inherent problem: is:open is not useful whatsoever… Because status: “archived” is global, when a user outside of our personal inbox ‘archive in my inbox’ that status is now status:archived…

This means I have to search for status:archived to see basically all my conversations (thousands) and find a way to figure out which ones are actually open in my view… we’ve tried /conversations/{id}/followers to see if i’m attached to that conversation, looking at conversation events… but its just not easy. If we had open graph or something maybe that would help…

Does anyone know how to deal with this ‘global’ archiving issue, I should be able to see what my Front UI shows..

5 replies

ransom
  • Author
  • Conversationalist
  • January 28, 2026

Kept plugging at this and it’s just not possible, we looked at: `/conversations/search/participant:tea_XXXXX after:1736985600 is:open` and were getting a semi-accurate list of ‘subscribed’ conversations, but its still wrong both ways with the archived status:

is:open → You’ll have conversations that YOU archived in your inbox but another person with that message has yet to archive
is:archived → Someone else archived this and You actually have it open still… no clear way to tell.

Cycling through a bunch of conversation events, introduces rate limiting, and this is just a painful experience.

If we cannot get some sort of endpoint like `GET /me/open` or a boolean key/value pair for `is_open_for_me’ on the conversation then we will have to explore another platform. Deal breaker.


justin
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  • Fronteer
  • January 28, 2026

Hi ​@ransom
 

Thank you for the detailed explanation of your use case.
 
As you’ve come to realize, Front has two layers of archive state:
  • Global status (archived, open) - company-wide, queried by is:open / is:archived
  • Per-user tracking state - what you see in the Front UI; only affects your personal view
When you "Archive in my inbox," you update your personal view without changing the global status (unless you're the assignee). This is why is:open doesn't always match what you see in the UI.
 
Limited Workaround for Truly Private Conversations:
For conversations that exist only in your private inbox (e.g., messages received via a private channel that have never been shared), your archive action does sync to the global status. In this specific case:

inbox:{your_private_inbox_id} is:open

 

Important limitation: This does not fully work for:
  • Conversations that exist in both your private inbox and a shared inbox
  • Conversations in shared inboxes that you're following or subscribed to
  • Conversations in other teammates' inboxes
For those scenarios, is:open reflects the global status (controlled by the assignee), not your personal inbox state. These can differ in these scenarios. 
 
There is currently no API method to query "conversations that are open for me" across shared inboxes and subscriptions - which is what the Front UI displays.
 
Thanks for sharing this feedback and use case with us. I’ll be sure to share this with our product team. 

Javier - Developer Relations
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Hi ​@ransom,

 

Can you share more about your use case and why you’re trying to view the “open for me” conversations through the API? I work with the teams that manage the API so I can help advocate if there is a gap, although prioritization takes time. I anticipate the team will want to know whether this is for reporting/analtyics, sending to another UI outside Front, post-processing the data, etc. so the more details you can provide would help to make a better case.

You can also submit this suggestion on our ideas portal.

Thanks!


ransom
  • Author
  • Conversationalist
  • January 28, 2026

We are setting up our executive team with clawdbot, an AI agent and it has a Skill to check open messages to give a daily/weekly report of your critical opens.

We got around global provisioning by making a proxy server with a master bearer and then provisioned our own restrictive tokens that limits access for that user to their own inbox... However something as simple as getting their open convos just wasn't possible. We have many many shared unboxes so skipping those from the Open view is a non starter.

Further thinking, it wouldn't be /me/open since API token provisioning is global, however /conversations/{cnv_id}/inboxes could expose a per inbox status. It's still an expensive cycle as each convo would require a lookup but it's a start.

 

GraphQL could solve a lot and be very efficient.


Javier - Developer Relations
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Thank you for the additional context, Ransom!