Developer Q&A

The documentation mentions that React is not needed, but there aren’t any examples of subscribing to context events without using React, so I’m hoping you can point me in the right direction.Is there a simple way to use the sdk without React for sidebar plugins? Preferably, a way to include a script directly on a page (without a build step) and then subscribe to events.Something similar to this would be great:<script type="text/javascript" src="https://dl.frontapp.com/libs/frontjs.min.js"></script><script>Front.contextUpdates.subscribe(context => { switch(context.type) { case 'noConversation': console.log('No conversation selected'); break; case 'singleConversation': console.log('Selected conversation:', context.conversation); break; case 'multiConversations': console.log('Multiple conversations selected', context.conversations); break; default: console.error(`Unsupported context type: ${context.type}`); break;

Hi, we setup the webhook to receive inbound events. We also have rules on Front to tag each conversation based on its channel. The rules work well on tagging.However, we have some hiccups on the webhook. In the ideal case, once there is a new conversation, the rule tags the message, our webhook receive the inbound events about the message and the event comes with tag list, so we can route it to proper processors. However, we sometimes receive the inbound events with empty tag lists, therefore I cannot do the proper routing for the next step. It appears the tagging happened after Front server send out the event to our webhook.Anybody knows how to fix this?

Hello, I am assessing whether Front will work for my business use case. I need to use a number of Twilio WhatsApp channels for my clients all of which are Business accounts. Business accounts have some limitations around messaging and messaging windows and as a result need to use pre-cleared message templates when sending messages to users outside of a conversation window. Does Front support sending Twilio message templates via the Front API?Additionally does Front support web hooks for listening to messages (both inbound and outbound messages to the channels?Thanks!

I am looking to setup on Front to allow agents to view conversations happening in WhatsApp Business accounts that I manage as well as handle quick questions with my API so that agents do not need to handle those types of questions. I have already added the channel but am confused as to how to send messages to users via Front or if I should be sending messages via the Twilio SDK and Front will just sync with Twilio through the channel. Usually platforms like Front have a webhook that I have to plugin to my WhatsApp sender in twilio but that documentation/requirement does not seem to be present for Front? 

I am looking to retrieve the First Reply Time for messages via the Analytics API. Maybe I am missing something, but this doesn’t seem to be available in the .csv downloaded. Is there a way to pull this metric via the API?

I created a Telegram bot, linked to my inboxes, and I’m developping a custom integration to send advanced Telegram messages, how can I get the chat_id of this conversation (Telegram-one), so my integrated plugin can retreive it on the current/opened conversation?I managed to get the @username, I have my Telegram bot tokens, but no way to get the chat_id.

I want to send an email using the frontapp api. When the recipient of that email reply to that email, I want him to send that reply email to someone else. How to I set that Reply-to property when I create an email in front? This is the email header I want to set a value for: https://www.getresponse.com/help/reply-to-field.html

Love all the new chatbot features - but when using chatbot a message is automatically hovering over the chat widget - is there a way not to have that and only have the chatbot start when a user actually opens the chat? It is quite annoying for customers to have a big bubble showing if they have no intention of chatting.  

We want our application to be used as public. That's why we filled out your form and sent it, but we haven't received a response from you for a long time. https://app.frontapp.com/oauth/authorizeWe do not want to receive this warning during authorize. We would be happy if you could help us. 

I’m currently using the custom channel API to send messages into a channel. When replies are made, we get a call on the outbound endpoint. I would like further clarification on what the recipients array is supposed to represent in the payload of that outbound call. It looks like there can be two recipients, with roles “from” and “to”. If I want the user handle of the original message that started the conversation, is it reliable to pull the recipient with role = “to”? Or is that meant to represent something else? Thanks!Kevin 

Good morning,When using front’s chat widget, the size of the close button is very small making it difficult to close when on mobile. This is particularly bad because if you miss the `x` button it opens up front chat.Is it possible to change the size, maybe by passing an option to `window.FrontChat("init", { … }` or by styling with css? Thanks,Scott attached below - a screenshot of the small `x`: 

If we’re using api tokens, what’s the preferred way to handle different environments like staging and production? I would want to ideally create separate tokens based on what data they can access, but it looks like access control is not that granular. If I create a token with “shared resources” access, it basically gives access to everything that is shared. Should we be creating a different workspace instead?

Hello, I want to download a message (email) as msg file-type via Core API. It’s possible?

Hi! I have a few questions/comments: Is there a way to export Front contacts just from individual Lists or Accounts, rather than the entire contact list only?  Can Front’s AI suggest changes to contact details, such as:When the contact name format is "Last name, First name" and switch them around Suggest the job title in a signature as their description Suggest the phone number in a signature as phone (and allow extensions)From Front’s API, getting contact details returns "handles" which is a list of all emails and phone numbers in one field. It would be great to get emails and phone numbers separately—even better if there was a "primary" email address.Thanks for the help! 

We want to use channels to support facilitating messaging in our app. At first, it looks like custom channels could work pretty well. The only issue is that when a message is first created by the “Receive custom messages” endpoint, we can’t immediately follow up with a query to get the message and conversation id because the message creation is apparently asynchronous. That would make our implementation more complex because we would have to retain the body of the message on our side in order to play back what was sent by the user while we wait for the message to completely flow through Front’s system. Would this be any different if we used application channels instead of custom channels- is the message creation also async when using the “Sync inbound message” API? Thanks!

Is there an API endpoint that would allow me to create a new draft?

Hey,We tried setting up a standard email address in Front and when we tried to authenticate using Gmail account. We Receive the following Error.Despite the fact that in google admin console. - Front is added as a trusted app. The error exists. Please do help.

Can Forms Created in Gravity Forms be used with Front’s Forms Channel?  We’re in the process of updating our website.  We currently use Gravity Forms to build forms and collect contact and quote requests.  “Ideally,” we would like to continue to use Gravity Forms, with Front’s “Form Inbox” functionality.  Is it possible to use Gravity Forms with Front’s Forms Channel?Related:  I was surprised neither Gravity Forms nor any other Web Forms solution was present in Front’s Integrations Directory.

I’ve added a custom Account field. But it has no value. How do I actually set the value? I can’t find this anywhere, and the documentation says nothing about it.I was under the impression a custom field for the Account itself allows you to set a global field value that can be added into signatures, for example.

Hey, we’re trying to integrate our analytics platform using OAuth.We’ve created an app and copied correctly the client_id, added the redirect urls in the Oauth page as specified and followed the docs but in the Request authorization step we get: “403: Unauthorized client”What is the meaning of this response, please?

I’m trying to send a SMS message on a Twilio channel using the API and Postman with a contact card / vcard and it doesn’t appear to play well with attachment files. Or maybe something is missing in the documentation.I get a success response, and the sms comes through with the attachment, however the attachment doesn’t use the name or the file type so the user can’t just tap the attachment to add to contacts.It does show up correctly in the Front UI.From API Response:"attachments": [ { "id": "fil_231iuypv", "url": "https://equipmentshare-com.api.frontapp.com/download/fil_231iuypv", "filename": "vcard.vcf", "content_type": "text/x-vcard", "size": 2238, "metadata": { "is_inline": false } } ], How the message comes through. It shows as a plain text file that you have to download, then rename to open. It should use the name provided from Postman. 

Hi all, How are linked conversations represented in the API? Specifically about talking the new feature from this past November:  There’s a notion of Links in the API, and an ability to connect them to conversations, but that seems to be primarily for external links. Are linked conversations treated as Links in this way, just that they’re internal ones? Would they have a guaranteed/stable “type” field? Or are they accessible/editable in some other way? Thanks!

Front does not support a development sandbox, so we setup a separate Front instance to build our app integration. We are hitting the 2 channel limit on the free plan, so we are not able to test all 3 channels that we support: chat, SMS, and email. Is there a way to get our staging instance upgraded at no cost? Or is there some other way to configure our paid Front instance for use in a staging/development environment?

Hey everyone, I am in need of some assistance.I am currently working on a feature where once an email is sent, we want to assign a specific user to the conversation and also immediately snooze.The good thing, is that both assignment and snoozing works just fine, but… for some weird reason, the newly snoozed email stays in the ‘Open’ tab of my inbox rather than moving into ‘Snoozed’.  When I scroll to the bottom of the conversation, I can also see an orange notification bubble which does confirm that it has been snoozed ⬇️ Is anyone able to help me with this?Kind Regards,Gabor

Hello everyone, In this thread it states that it is not possible to reply to WhatsApp threads with a mimicked template body:  I was wondering what happens in the following scenarios:   a. If I have pre-approved templates for WhatsApp that I can trigger from the UI. Is there a way to trigger them from the API ?   b. If yes, is there a way to reply with one these templates as a follow up to the users answer through the API ? Thank you for your time. - George