I’m looking for a way to include a link that users can click on to compose a new Twilio SMS in Front. Ideally it would work similar to clicking the phone number on a contact record (where it opens a compose window with the To: field already pointing to the phone number.
Is this possible today? It would be great if it was possible to just have a link like app.front.com/compose?type=sms&to=1234567891 but I’m also open to using the core API to create a new conversation and then link to that conversation.
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Hi twilanswer,
Yes, you can totally do this! It may look a little odd, but we have a Help Center article on how to open Front’s composer with mailto: links and SMS numbers:
@evano Thank you for sharing. Unfortunately I’m having a bit of trouble implementing it consistently. Here’s what I’m seeing:
If I try to use the mailto: approach, it works well on web and desktop (opening the compose window), but mobile opens my iPhone mail app and tries to send an email to the phone number.
If I try to use the mailto-frontapp approach, clicking the link does not do anything in any application (web, desktop, or mobile)
For debugging purposes, when I “inspect element” in Chrome, I can see that the link doesn’t actually have an href attribute. This is strange because I’m able to see it for the standard mailto approach.
Using the app.frontapp.com/compose approach does not appear to work for SMS composing (see below - it does not fill the “To” line.
@twilanswer Yes, unfortunately the mobile app is a special case and doesn’t register Front as the assigned app to the mailto-frontapp: “protocol”. You might be able to improve the mailto: approach by setting Front as the default mail handler on iOS. I believe you can set this with these steps:
Open Settings
Go to Apps
Within the Apps section, locate and tap on "Default Apps."
Choose "Email" from the list of default app options.
Select Front from the list to set it as the default.
There’s one type of deeplink that is supported on mobile. It takes this format:
frontapp://go?link=/open//conversation id]
Lastly, if you’re using Dialpad SMS, there are currently some limitations that prevent compose links from working at all. We have an engineering ticket tracking this. However, I assume you’re not using Dialpad since you say it’s working on desktop and web, correct?
